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Cara Ocobock, Director, Human Energetics Laboratory:
A lot of these things on the wall are from student projects from my courses. This student wanted to talk about the link between Neanderthals and anatomically-modern humans. And so she drew this, which was absolutely stunning.
Jenna Liberto:
That's beautiful.
Cara Ocobock:
This student was pre-dental, and wanted to go to dental school. And so he decided to draw the different dental arcades throughout human evolution.
Jenna Liberto:
Will you tell me about the skull?
Cara Ocobock:
Yeah, so I actually made these.
Jenna Liberto:
Really?
Cara Ocobock:
Yeah. I molded and casted the original skulls, and then just made tons and tons and tons of copies. I would actually have dreams about these skulls.
Introduction:
Welcome to Notre Dame Stories, the official podcast of the University of Notre Dame, where we push the boundaries of discovery, embracing the unknown for a deeper understanding of our world.
Jenna Liberto:
Extreme winter conditions are here, and millions of Americans are feeling the chill. But can you imagine choosing to work in negative 25-degree air temperature? Anthropologist Cara Ocobock does, and she genuinely likes it. Her research is unlocking the secrets of how our bodies adapt to extreme conditions. And she's teaching her students about it using some surprising facts about our ancestors.
Hi, Cara.
Cara Ocobock:
Hi, how are you?
Jenna Liberto:
I'm good. How are you?
Cara Ocobock:
I'm doing all right.
Jenna Liberto:
I'm so excited to talk to you.
Cara Ocobock:
Thank you for the invite.
Jenna Liberto:
Tell me if I'm wrong. We are in your lab, the Human Energetics Lab?
Cara Ocobock:
Correct.
Jenna Liberto:
OK, what does that mean?
Cara Ocobock:
So basically, we look at how many calories people burn in various different conditions. And so that goes from resting, so there's that giant cot behind you, there. And so we'll have people lay down, just to measure baseline when they do absolutely nothing all day, how many calories they're burning.
But I also have other units that allow me to measure how many calories people are burning running, or by doing jumping, or when they're exposed to cold, but those are in Finland right now, because there's ongoing research.
Jenna Liberto:
It's also hard to miss some of the embellishments to the lab, although they probably have a lot of meaning, so...
Cara Ocobock:
That's a nice term, embellishment. The strange things you see.
Jenna Liberto:
So we have what appears to be a unicorn, like, a six-foot unicorn.
Cara Ocobock:
We're gonna call it a unicorn, yes. Yes.
Jenna Liberto:
OK, so what ... Just tell me the story.
Cara Ocobock:
So this wonderful unicorn, which we named Dazzle Flash, by the way.
Jenna Liberto:
Of course.
Cara Ocobock:
This is Dazzle Flash, the unicorn, is technically a woolly rhinoceros.
Jenna Liberto:
OK.
Cara Ocobock:
And so in my Fundamentals of Biological Anthropology course, we talk about all sorts of things of the basics of evolution, non-human primates, and then human evolution, and we talk about the culture as well. And so I teach them about hunting and you know, how much fun would it be to actually experience kind of, what hunting is like back in the past.
And so I purchased a six-foot tall lawn ornament unicorn from Home Depot. And my husband and I covered it in fur, added an extra horn. And I take my students out to the track and field throwing practice area. And they use traditional spears like this traditional bow and arrow and an atlatl, to see what it was like to use these kind of original weapons to actually hunt, and how difficult it must be and how much skill it takes to take something down.
And so I bring Dazzle Flash out there, and they all aim and almost invariably miss to hit Dazzle Flash with every single weapon.
Jenna Liberto:
Even though he's six feet tall.
Cara Ocobock:
Six feet tall.
Jenna Liberto:
Talk to me about what appears to be a narwhal in a dump truck.
Cara Ocobock:
That is exactly what this is. As absurd as it is.
Jenna Liberto:
Very good.
Cara Ocobock:
So part of, you know, preparation for going hunting and whatnot, I had my students look into the different animals that were hunted by Neanderthals and early modern humans. And they learned from a recent paper that came out that Neanderthals may have hunted narwhals.
Jenna Liberto:
Oh, that's fascinating.
Cara Ocobock:
Right, it's absolutely fascinating. I'm like, well now I have to get a narwhal into this whole activity. And I wanted to add an additional level of difficulty, so I put it into a remote control pickup truck. And I'm driving the pickup truck around the field and they're trying to aim at a moving object. They also miss that, but ...
Jenna Liberto:
I feel like you're having fun. This clearly ... We're gonna talk about your very impactful and important research, but it sounds really fun.
Cara Ocobock:
So much fun. It is a lot of fun, and students really enjoy the experience. And I think it's also very humbling of what it took for our ancestors to survive and thrive when they don't have convenience stores to go to or dining halls to go to.
I think it gives a whole lot of respect to what our ancestors did to live each and every day.
Jenna Liberto:
I pulled this quote just right from your bio online. Your research is described as "an integration of human biology and anthropology." Give me that, in your own words, what does that mean?
Cara Ocobock:
Yeah, so I'll start with the anthropology part. And so anthropology is this beautifully huge umbrella of, basically, anything in which you are studying humans or their relatives. So the non-human primates fall within anthropology, and this includes the past and the present.
And so you have, within our own department, we have Cultural Anthropology, Linguistic Archeology, and then Biological Anthropology, which I'm part of, which is very much focused on our own physiology and how our own physiology responds to extreme conditions. And so I try to apply it to our ancestors from the past who were experiencing extremes as well.
Jenna Liberto:
So when we're talking about the extreme cold, the effect of that on our bodies, what does that research entail? What are you trying to ... Tell me more about what you're trying to get to?
Cara Ocobock:
Yeah, so I am fascinated by how our bodies respond to cold. And I won't lie, there is a personal side to it as well that I-
Jenna Liberto:
Do you like the cold?
Cara Ocobock:
I prefer the cold. Yesterday I was so happy when it was like, seven degrees outside.
Jenna Liberto:
It's cold out right now.
Cara Ocobock:
And I went snowshoeing yesterday. I love the cold. And so when thinking about humans in extreme conditions, like, well, if I'm gonna be spending a career doing this, I should choose an environment I actually like. And so cold it was, which is also good because not as many people within this area study cold.
They'll study extreme heat or they'll study high elevation populations. But cold is pretty much lacking in our field as well.
So I'm curious of how our bodies have adapted over millennia. And by our, I mean people who have lived in extreme cold for generation after generation. But then also, how people like you and I, once we go to extreme cold, what are our bodies doing in those first initial days and weeks to help us maintain our body temperature, and you know, stay healthy and keep living.
Jenna Liberto:
Now I think it's cold right here in South Bend, Indiana, but when you're talking about your research, you are going far beyond the Midwest. A lot of your research is happening right now, in fact, right in Finland.
Cara Ocobock:
Right now, yeah, so the research in Finland takes place about 300 to 350 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle in Finland. So we work with the reindeer herders, and these are people who herd reindeer for a living.
And then we also have a group of folks who are just indoor workers, like you and I, but do live in that region, so we can compare how they respond to the cold. An occupation that's outside all the time, versus, you know, those who have an occupation where they're indoors all the time.
And so we're interested to see how they respond to cold exposure. And so one of the things that we do, if I can get up for a moment, I can show you at least a little bit of it, is we have our participants ... This is just the bottom half, these are the pants. And you can see that it's like a sweatsuit with tubing running through it. So we connect this to a pump, which is connected to a bucket of ice water, basically, or a bottle of ice water. And we have them lay down on a bed similar to that, and we control “cold-expose” them by flushing this suit with cold water.
And during this process, we're measuring their metabolic rate. And so they're wearing this mask that measures how much oxygen they consume and carbon dioxide they produce, which we pretty much can get calories from that.
And then we're also taking thermal images of them at the same time. And we're looking particularly up here by the shoulder, where there's a special kind of fat, called brown fat, which burns only to keep you warm. So we see changes in how they're burning fat, how they're burning carbohydrates, what their blood pressure is. And we're also incorporating some hormone analysis too.
Jenna Liberto:
There's a lot of hype, and probably always has been, around weight-loss trends.
Cara Ocobock:
Yeah, yeah.
Jenna Liberto:
Cold plunging, cold exposure. What that does for, I mean all the health benefits, maybe weight loss, just being one of them. Tell me truth to some of that, or what context can you give?
Cara Ocobock:
It's always, yeah, that's the thing, the context is always important.
Jenna Liberto:
I'm sure you get asked that a lot.
Cara Ocobock:
So let me start with the cold gym idea. The moment you start exercising, your body's already producing a lot of heat. So you're not gonna be burning extra calories in a cold gym because the gym is cold. It turns out our muscles are really inefficient, and we lose a lot of the energy when contracting our muscles, just to heat. Which is great in the cold, and which is why, if you were to ever get stuck out in the cold, you should not sit still. You should keep moving to keep generating heat.
As for the cold plunge, we are seeing some benefits. Especially if you're doing something like the cold plunge to going into a sauna or a hot tub, and then back into a cold plunge. Because you are making your body shift rapidly between conditions and it is actually giving you some cardio, respiratory, cardiac stress in a way that, say, running might do.
And there is some evidence, although it's not fully there, that it might increase how much fat you're burning, versus other things like carbohydrates, as well as possibly helping your body to properly deal with blood sugar or glucose. So in the case of diabetes, that would be really important.
But anyone thinking of doing a cold plunge should talk to their doctor first. Don't just go jump in the lake today. Please, please, please consult a doctor so you know you're healthy enough to do it, so ... PSA done!
Jenna Liberto:
That was a really safe thing, right there. That was a really good disclaimer. I want to talk more about, what are the actual temperatures we're talking about?
Cara Ocobock:
I think I sent you all the picture of, you know-
Jenna Liberto:
Yes, you had icicles on your eyelashes.
Cara Ocobock:
Eyelashes and snot-cicles and everything else coming out of me. So that was -25 degrees Fahrenheit.
Cara Ocobock:
Air temperature.
Jenna Liberto:
Air temperature. We’re not talking wind chill.
Cara Ocobock:
Not talking wind chill. And, I mean, there were a couple of days where it hit -33 as well. We even lost power in the house we were staying in on one of those days, so that was fun to deal with at like, eight o'clock at night, trying to find someone to fix the electrical in a very, very sparsely populated town.
So that's the most extreme cold I have felt, and I love it. I'm not gonna lie. I find it really exhilarating and refreshing.
Jenna Liberto:
As we record this, the Winter Olympics will be happening next month, not in Finland, but in Italy, where there's some variation in their cold climates as well. Can you talk about just how a cold-weather athlete, what they have to do to prepare?
Cara Ocobock:
Yeah, so it's one of those interesting things that when I saw those questions, I'm like, I'm actually more worried about the spectators than I am the athletes when it comes down to it.
Jenna Liberto:
Oh sure, sure. They haven't prepared.
Cara Ocobock:
They haven't prepared, and it's ... They're also standing still. And that's a big problem when you're a spectator, at least for the outdoor events. When you're standing still, that's when the cold really gets to you. The athletes, I don't worry about quite as much, except for the ones where it's bouts of activity followed by bouts of rest.
So you could think of like bobsledding runs or skeleton and luge, where they go and do their thing, and then they have to sit and wait for their next run. They have to make sure that they are really, really good about maintaining a core body temperature and warmth in the rest periods as well as the active periods.
And then in the cold, everyone gets more hungry. That's just part of it. And so making sure they are fueling to their demands and not ignoring it.
Jenna Liberto:
I know you work with athletes or do data collection with athletes. Who else are you, and we talked about the reindeer herders, anyone else of interest, or groups or populations?
Cara Ocobock:
Yeah so, I mean, I've worked with athletes here at Notre Dame, and I've done some consulting with the NFL as well. And just got back from a trip out to Lake Tahoe, which was at the Mountain Warfare Training Center for the Navy and Marines as they undergo their hypothermia training exercises.
Jenna Liberto:
Oh, fascinating.
Cara Ocobock:
Yeah, it was absolutely fascinating.
And so, this is one of the cool things about anthropology, as well, is, who would've thought an anthropologist is going to be going to Finland working with reindeer herders, hanging out with professional football players, and then go consulting with the military?
And so, I feel like people looking for an awesome major or minor should look to anthropology. I'm shameless. I know, it's fine.
Jenna Liberto:
Because of the range! I mean, everything you're talking about is this range of human experiences, and things we maybe know very little about that we need to understand.
Cara Ocobock:
It is! It's things we know very little about. And the one thing I love about anthropology, and I wanna talk about Notre Dame's part in this as well, is that, I think what separates us from other kind of fields that do look at humans, like exercise physiology for example, or even medicine, is we are very much looking at the whole person, and then the whole person's context.
So who they are in their environment, as well as their own family history, and even ancestral history, all of these different things. We look to how that has informed who you are today, culturally, biologically, all of it together. And so that's why I really like the field, because it gives you this big holistic approach to what it means to be human and how we survive in this highly-variable world that's always changing.
Notre Dame has opened up a lot of doors for me that I never saw myself, you know, going through those doors, but I'm so glad I have.
Jenna Liberto:
And even beyond the connections, why is it important that a global Catholic research university, like Notre Dame, be part of this conversation that you're having?
Cara Ocobock:
Yeah, I mean, one of the biggest things is being, you know, excellent citizens of the world. And part of being an excellent citizen of the world is really understanding what it means to be a human in different parts of those worlds, this world, that we need to understand all experiences are different, but they are also all meaningful in different ways.
And I think the approach that Notre Dame takes, to not only being an exceptional research and educational institution, but understanding that we are a small part of something very, very large, is incredibly important.
Jenna Liberto:
Would you do a lightning round with me?
Cara Ocobock:
Lightning round—bring it on!
Jenna Liberto:
First question, Cara, what do you think is the most interesting and amazing aspect of the human body and its abilities? Just one!
Cara Ocobock:
It is its inefficiency. No, no, no, this is the thing. It is its inefficiency!
Jenna Liberto:
Really?
Cara Ocobock:
There are so many weird inefficiencies in our body that end up being really helpful or beneficial in different ways. Like I said, our muscle. We waste so much energy to heat when we exercise. It's not actually helping us to run. But that can help keep us warm in the cold. That's really cool.
Or like the vessels, the coronary vessels that feed your heart. Your heart relies on your heart not fully pumping all of the blood through your main vessels. And the stuff that drips back down is what actually feeds your heart. So your heart is fueled by inefficiency. That's really cool.
Jenna Liberto:
I don't know what metaphor therein lies.
Cara Ocobock:
So yeah, I think it is the inefficiency and that wide range of it that we see. Like, it's not always a useless thing. And if you think it is, you're not looking hard enough.
Jenna Liberto:
Oh, I love that. Alright, question two of three, favorite winter Olympic sport?
Cara Ocobock:
So this isn't gonna be, this is a two, one here. Like, one, hockey, I’m an avid fan of the sport. I love watching hockey, so I always enjoy it. And, you know, there's really great history with Olympic hockey. So huge fan of that. Grew up a Detroit Red Wings fan.
But I also will admit that I love watching the skeleton, luge, and bobsled, because that's just wild.
Jenna Liberto:
It's wild.
Cara Ocobock:
Like, why would you choose to barrel down an ice shoot headfirst? Like, it's insane to me, and I respect it so much, and love watching it.
Jenna Liberto:
Well, I will be watching that as well. OK, last lightning round question: What's your go-to cold-weather accessory? Or what did you have to have with you when you were in Finland?
Cara Ocobock:
This is gonna be so boring. Chapstick.
Jenna Liberto:
Oh, that is the most perfect example.
Cara Ocobock:
It's just Chapstick because it's so dry. It's like, the winter dryness is actually a bigger issue, I feel, than the winter cold in Finland for me. I would have like three tubes on me at all times.
Jenna Liberto:
Right.
Cara Ocobock:
So yeah, it became a bit of a joke amongst my grad students, postdocs. There's always Chapstick everywhere.
Jenna Liberto:
Oh, I appreciate that answer. I have one more request because there's one more tool that's in your lab, can you show me how it works?
Cara Ocobock:
Yeah! What do you wanna know? We can show you lots of things.
Jenna Liberto:
Well, tell me what it is, first of all.
Cara Ocobock:
Alright, so we've got two things here. One is kind of your traditional wooden bow and arrow. This is called the atlatl, and it's a spear thrower, or a dart thrower. And so this is one of the darts. You can launch it really far. But yeah, so they use these and they hunt, and maybe four or five times, over the course of maybe four or five times I've done this, has it been hit. Usually, it's once per class, a student hits it.
Jenna Liberto:
Do students say it's harder than it looks? Or that they would imagine it being.
Cara Ocobock:
Oh yeah, yeah. And it's always fun when you get like the athletes who throw things and think they're gonna be great at it. They're not so great at it. It's humbling. It's really good.
Jenna Liberto:
Thank you so much for this conversation.
Cara Ocobock:
Thank you.
Jenna Liberto:
I'm gonna look at the cold in a whole different light, I'll try not-
Cara Ocobock:
You're still not gonna like it.
Jenna Liberto:
I won't, but I'll try to.
Cara Ocobock:
But you'll have Chapstick with you.
Jenna Liberto:
[I’ll] keep my Chapstick close. Thanks so much, Cara.
Cara Ocobock:
Thank you.
