Trying to follow this programme, with its cold bath regime, is a little harder when it's really cold out - you start the day freezing, and it's hard to warm up. Having no central heating makes things considerably worse. Until today, I didn't realise just how much difference it would make - I've had no heating for over a fortnight, but the boiler repair guy finally managed to come round today and get it going again.
Knowing he was (probably) coming today, and having felt pretty rubbish yesterday, I decided to sleep in a little and postpone the bath until the heating was working. What a result! It was a lot easier to cope with than on days when the air in the house was colder than the water in the bath (which is to say, pretty much every day so far). I wonder whether this will make any difference to the effectiveness of the bath? My body heat certainly warmed up the water more than usual - not a lot more, but I figure every calorie counts, and seeing as I found the bath more bearable as well, that would be a win all round.
I'm now on week four, which means my bath temperature is 17.0C at the start. This is really pretty cold. I find that taking a deep breath, and exhaling fast as I immerse myself, somehow helps me deal with the cold more effectively. It's almost as if it's a weight lifting exercise.
Perhaps I'm feeling more motivated because I found yet another piece of research relevant to my Alzheimer's concerns. This study found a direct connection between insulin resistance in the brain and the development of Alzheimer's disease. This was true even in patients who were not otherwise insulin resistant - in other words, people who did not have diabetes. In short, if you induce insulin resistance in your brain, even if you're otherwise pretty fit and healthy, you are going to end up with Alzheimer's disease.
Does that mean I don't need to lose weight after all? Well, perhaps I don't. However, I have a feeling that the wisest course of action is to carry on indefinitely with this diet that rules out sugar and alcohol, and to consume plenty of omega-3 in one form or another. Now, the result of that is likely to be maintenance of a relatively low weight. The main reason I put on the pounds, I believe, is over-consumption of calories, and what I crave is always carbohydrates - especially in combination with fats (waffles, pancakes, buttered toast, chips...). Keeping a lid on my consumption of them should help me keep to a healthy weight, and also protect my brain.
The research on insulin resistance in the brain seems to be in its early stages, but the conclusion of the New Scientist article that sent me on this weight loss journey is that dietary fat and sugar are the essential cause. Not weight per se, not exercise, but rather the stuff flowing around in your blood stream. In other words, it would seem that the diabetes of the brain that leads to Alzheimer's is all about what you eat. We are not what we eat, but perhaps our future is more determined by what we eat than we realise.
Now, that doesn't mean I need to take cold baths... but I figure, why not carry on for the moment, at least to the end of the six week programme. By then, I hope I'll have had time to research the connection between body fat and Alzheimer's, and I should know whether carrying on with these is a good idea. Having said that, once I've really got down to a slim body, I can't see why I would need the baths. That's certainly something to look forward to!
It's remarkable how much better I'm feeling now that the house isn't cold. My sense is that prolonged cold isn't a good idea - but somehow the short, sharp shock of the cold bath routine doesn't seem to depress either my mood or my sense of well-being.
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