Article Summary #8

Couzin-Frankel, J. Can Thin Mountain Air Make You Slim? ScienceNOW Daily News. 4 Feb 2010.

A new study details twenty obese men spent a week near the top of Germany’s highest peak and saw their metabolism speed up, appetite decrease, and had lost more weight here than if they stayed at home. Unfortunately, the study did not have a control group, so the results were inconclusive. Mountain air contains less oxygen, so breathing it causes the heart to beat faster and the body to burn more energy. A couple of studies have found that athletes training at higher altitudes tend to lose more weight than those at lower altitudes.

Lippl, a gastroenterologist of the University of Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich in Germany, and his colleagues invited these twenty men to a research station 300 meters below the summit of Zugspitze. They wanted to see if the men would lose weight if they weren’t doing any more physical activity than normal. The men could only take the same number of steps each day that they were usually at home, which was monitored by a pedometer, and were also allowed to eat as much as they liked. Blood was taken so the researchers could test for hormones linked to appetite and obesity. Starting at about 105 kg, by the end of the week the men had lost an average of 1.5 kg. Also, the men’s blood pressure had dropped which researchers say was contributed by the loss of weight.

Researchers say that what actually caused the weight loss is uncertain, that a various number of variables can be a factor. Loss of appetite is common at higher altitudes, but the men ate less than normal not only because the loss in appetite, but because the men’s eating were being monitored. Lippl thinks the increased metabolic rate also contributed to the weight loss, but again the variables cannot be separated to see which factor helped with the weight loss.