I have been going to the sauna of the nearby gym everyday for about 2 years now, rarely skipping it.
It is honestly hard to express how much I love the effects of it and how much I attribute to it. I can not live without it anymore.
If I wake up after a bad nights sleep and feel extremely groggy, sauna fixes it.
If I am overworked to the point where my head is pulsating, sauna fixes it, and I get another 2 hours of extremely focussed work done afterwards.
Bad mood, a cold, sore muscles, even certain types of headache, a sauna can fix.
I should mention that a sauna for me includes a cold shower immediately after leaving it, as cold as the shower will go. This is the key, the shock will make all the difference. Then you lay down, at least 10 minutes.
I do 2 rounds most days, it’s about 80C, I manage between 12-15 minutes in the first sitting, then 8-10 in the second.
I can not recommend it enough, it has changed my life.
So 12-15 mins + 10 laying down. Twice. ~ 40 mins or so per day you’re taking to sit/lay and do nothing (I assume you aren’t on the phone or reading/listening).
I wonder how much of this is simply the meditation effect / you’re just taking true mental breaks.
Yes that’s about right, no phone or anything, I just close my eyes. Sometimes I fall asleep.
It is very possible, that this is simply what it takes to sent my mind into a mental break.
I have tried Headspace and all that stuff and I see the benefits, it is just much easier to send your mind into relax mode after above mentioned schedule.
There also is a steam room adjacent to the sauna and from time to time I use it as well, but I feel like the heat does not penetrate as “deep”. What’s nicer is how the steam soothes the airways in comparison to a Finnish sauna.
Similar to Japan's snow monkeys, it was originally thought they go to hot springs to warm up. When observed, one of the primary benefits that was found is stress reduction. The monkeys have enough fur to stay warm in the cold and don't often need to go to the springs for food from tourists either. Not only does it reduce their stress, it helps with reproduction rates and extends their survival rates at the same time that was found.
> Whereas the risk for sudden cardiac death was 22% lower for men using the sauna 2–3 times per week, the risk was 63% lower for men who used the sauna 4–7 times per week (…)
Aren’t patients with cardiac problems generally discouraged from using sauna? Wouldn’t that be a significant factor in this correlation?
It’s from a prospective study [1] so the hope is No, as long as the study follows people and their habits for long enough.
Edit: the first men in this study were enrolled in the mid 80s. I always have lots of respect for scientists starting such very long run initiatives. I would imagine it to be boring at times, but hard work begets hard data.
> heart rate increases up to 100 beats/min during sauna sessions at moderate temperatures and up to 150 beats/min during hotter saunas. Although not an issue for healthy individuals, such a cardiac challenge may feel uncomfortable for participants with poor cardiorespiratory fitness and pre-existing disease. Simple adjustment for disease
vs no disease may not entirely solve this problem since reverse causation bias (ie, health status affects the likelihood of a sauna session) operates within disease groups; the more severe the disease, the greater the fear of cardiac challenge... A more robust finding at reduced risk of reverse causation bias would be a graded association between number of sauna sessions and mortality in an initially healthy, cardiorespiratory fit population, but this was not observed.
Laukkanen responded with
> ...we did observe graded inverse associations with sudden cardiac death (SCD), fatal coronary heart disease (CHD), and cardiovascular disease (CVD) events, which are the characteristics of a true inverse association between sauna bathing and outcomes. Furthermore, results were carefully adjusted for socioeconomic status (SES), physical activity, and
cardiorespiratory fitness...
Notably Laukkanen didn't say that the graded association was in an "initially healthy" population, as the first reply specified.
> Aren’t patients with cardiac problems generally discouraged from using sauna?
If so, I've never heard about it. In Finland, sauna is usually promoted as something that improves cardiovascular health. Associated activities like rolling in the snow or winter bathing is a completely different matter, but it's perfectly possible to enjoy sauna without those.
I'm not a health professional, though, so check with your doctor first if you have heart problems.
In US they basically discourage or warn people not to use sauna if they have any kind of condition, including being pregnant or have been consuming alcohol.
In Finland most pregnant women have always gone to sauna and they haven’t observed any kind of birth defects any more than elsewhere.
Common sense applies and usually expected from adults in Finland. If you start to feel light headed or otherwise bad, you should leave the sauna and drink water or cool off.
This was also my experience in Finland. There were warning signs in some rented sauna’s for jumping into the snow or water after a sauna for people suffering from cardiac problems.
Not generally, as far as I know. But of course, you have to be way more careful and conscious if you have a condition.
So maybe not use the hottest sauna and push your limits and maybe no more sauna competitions. (Who can stay the longest, there used to be a world championship in this, but not anymore after one of the finalists - died).
Lari and Tanjaniina Laukkanen do interesting research on this, notably the 2015 paper that shows up to 40% reduction in all cause mortality with 4-7 sauna sessions per week vs 1 (in 2315 middle-aged men over about 20 years):
If you have a sauna in your home (which most Finns do), then you can afford to use it 4-7 times a week even if you're not rich. Though maybe not with the current electricity prices, but earlier it was no problem. I'd say 7 times is a bit excessive though, but I know people for whom 4 times a week would be normal.
I once had a gym membership which included a sauna, and would often take some time in the sauna after a workout. It really just depends how you want to spend your time
I've been doing 5 sauna sessions a week for about 25 minutes at 200F for about a year now. Once I've been sufficiently dehydrated from the sauna I take a multivitamin and chug some water. My thought is that your cells are more receptive to water soluble vitamins after being dehydrated and you won't just pee out the vitamins. I've seen a lot of health benefits such as clearer skin, good sleep, and no illnesses for the past year. That's my N or 1 study.
I mean, not to disagree with you, but I have seen those exact same benefits just staying locked up for a year at home because of the pandemic. Turns out not having a bullshit commute, eating more healthy and not interacting with other people does miracles for skin, sleep quality and the number of illnesses you catch :-)
You are not wrong I think, I can never go back to commuting every day, and I love cooking my own healthy food... but after 2+ years of lockdown my entire household seems to have lost all immunity to everything pathological. The amount of shit the kids seem to catch at school is staggering.
N=1 and highly subjective of course, but I don't remember A) our kids falling ill with random fevers so often, pre-pandemic and B) my wife and me being infected by them in turn so easily
I’m not sure that “not interacting with other people” is likely to be conductive to long-term health? The other things all sound pretty positive, however.
Try to restrict the stay in the hot to around 10 minutes followed by 2 minutes immersed in cold water, repeating that 4-5x in a row with multivitamin/multimineral water in-between. That resets my brain and I feel like a newborn.
Yep I do this too. I have an outdoor shower that cools me off pretty fast. I gotta wait another couple months before there is snow on the ground to roll around in.
If you just pop vitamins in water without any fat ingested, the most critical ones solluble in fat will swipe through your body regardless. Its hard to give any conclusion just some limited experience, although I have no doubt that the procedure you describe benefits you overall.
I was doing before sauna quite often after workouts in the gym (well after weight lifting and not cardio, and not during summer) and it felt great. But it could have been 90% or even 100% the workouts. Its true that I often feel very tired after sauna, like a baby that just wants to sleep. Which may be great sometimes, but otherwise it isn't (ie coming back to work, or driving back for 1h from mountains).
Now during/after covid and after having 2 kids its a distant dream and I feel like shit.
> Research into the effects of saunas on people largely comes from Finland. It is generally of low quality and insufficient to make health recommendations.
Note: this list is not exhaustive, I just plucked a few out. I'd like to see slightly larger sample sizes in a few of them, but otherwise they seem structurally reasonable, and many are in Japan, not Finland.
These are all looking at various surrogate endpoints, and seem to be short term interventions. At best you could say they show saunas are safe for populations with heart disease. Cardiac and overall mortality would be the key endpoint to test in a large RCT. Even so, there won’t be a placebo. The control group would have to do something for it to be a fair comparison… perhaps something sauna-like but with less physiological impact (Massage? A cooler sauna?).
Most likely. He has his own podcast as well. In regions of Japan and Korea and Nordic countries where Sauna and Spas are a normal part of life are. Japan and Korea both have similar diets to America in recent years and similar health issues because of their dining out cultures yet both have high life expectancies. As do normal wealthy nations without them. It's safe to say life expectancy has more to do with advancements in technology rather than a fun and relaxing experience. One of the things I dislike the most about it all is that saunas are just meant to be relaxing but the involvement of psuedo science in it has been concerning but is also due to it's association with chiropracty and the Chinese Alternative Medicine movement that has been adapted over into Korea and Japan. Unironically through religion and shamanism. Chiropracty is a dangerous pseudoscience though massages at certain levels may be harmless and fun but have no real medicinal value.
The author of this paper has an excellent podcast about all-around fitness, including but not limited to sauna use. Lots of talk about sleep, nutrition, lifestyle, etc.
Readit News
It is honestly hard to express how much I love the effects of it and how much I attribute to it. I can not live without it anymore.
If I wake up after a bad nights sleep and feel extremely groggy, sauna fixes it.
If I am overworked to the point where my head is pulsating, sauna fixes it, and I get another 2 hours of extremely focussed work done afterwards.
Bad mood, a cold, sore muscles, even certain types of headache, a sauna can fix.
I should mention that a sauna for me includes a cold shower immediately after leaving it, as cold as the shower will go. This is the key, the shock will make all the difference. Then you lay down, at least 10 minutes.
I do 2 rounds most days, it’s about 80C, I manage between 12-15 minutes in the first sitting, then 8-10 in the second.
I can not recommend it enough, it has changed my life.
I wonder how much of this is simply the meditation effect / you’re just taking true mental breaks.
It is very possible, that this is simply what it takes to sent my mind into a mental break.
I have tried Headspace and all that stuff and I see the benefits, it is just much easier to send your mind into relax mode after above mentioned schedule.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_macaque
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/japanese-...
Aren’t patients with cardiac problems generally discouraged from using sauna? Wouldn’t that be a significant factor in this correlation?
Edit: the first men in this study were enrolled in the mid 80s. I always have lots of respect for scientists starting such very long run initiatives. I would imagine it to be boring at times, but hard work begets hard data.
[1] https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03221127#:~:text=STUD....
Extrapolating further, going to the sauna 10-14 times a week would make you immortal.
> heart rate increases up to 100 beats/min during sauna sessions at moderate temperatures and up to 150 beats/min during hotter saunas. Although not an issue for healthy individuals, such a cardiac challenge may feel uncomfortable for participants with poor cardiorespiratory fitness and pre-existing disease. Simple adjustment for disease vs no disease may not entirely solve this problem since reverse causation bias (ie, health status affects the likelihood of a sauna session) operates within disease groups; the more severe the disease, the greater the fear of cardiac challenge... A more robust finding at reduced risk of reverse causation bias would be a graded association between number of sauna sessions and mortality in an initially healthy, cardiorespiratory fit population, but this was not observed.
Laukkanen responded with
> ...we did observe graded inverse associations with sudden cardiac death (SCD), fatal coronary heart disease (CHD), and cardiovascular disease (CVD) events, which are the characteristics of a true inverse association between sauna bathing and outcomes. Furthermore, results were carefully adjusted for socioeconomic status (SES), physical activity, and cardiorespiratory fitness...
Notably Laukkanen didn't say that the graded association was in an "initially healthy" population, as the first reply specified.
If so, I've never heard about it. In Finland, sauna is usually promoted as something that improves cardiovascular health. Associated activities like rolling in the snow or winter bathing is a completely different matter, but it's perfectly possible to enjoy sauna without those.
I'm not a health professional, though, so check with your doctor first if you have heart problems.
In Finland most pregnant women have always gone to sauna and they haven’t observed any kind of birth defects any more than elsewhere.
Common sense applies and usually expected from adults in Finland. If you start to feel light headed or otherwise bad, you should leave the sauna and drink water or cool off.
No note about sauna use in general.
Deleted Comment
So maybe not use the hottest sauna and push your limits and maybe no more sauna competitions. (Who can stay the longest, there used to be a world championship in this, but not anymore after one of the finalists - died).
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/articl...
N=1 and highly subjective of course, but I don't remember A) our kids falling ill with random fevers so often, pre-pandemic and B) my wife and me being infected by them in turn so easily
I rather would go with cold water shower/bath after the sauna and healthy food for vitamins in general.
Seems like it’s been more or less confirmed by other studies as well.
Eat some fruit and a carrot!
I was doing before sauna quite often after workouts in the gym (well after weight lifting and not cardio, and not during summer) and it felt great. But it could have been 90% or even 100% the workouts. Its true that I often feel very tired after sauna, like a baby that just wants to sleep. Which may be great sometimes, but otherwise it isn't (ie coming back to work, or driving back for 1h from mountains).
Now during/after covid and after having 2 kids its a distant dream and I feel like shit.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauna#Health_effects
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/circj/68/12/68_12_1146/...
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/circj/80/4/80_CJ-16-005...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01675...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41371-017-0008-z (this one isn't an RCT, it's just a pre/post design, but is still experimental)
Note: this list is not exhaustive, I just plucked a few out. I'd like to see slightly larger sample sizes in a few of them, but otherwise they seem structurally reasonable, and many are in Japan, not Finland.
(edit: did so myself)
second author’s affiliation is … a ghost company?
https://open.spotify.com/show/5QjpaU0o1Q2MkVZwwG3y7d?si=2845...