A sauna a day helps keep the medicines away
It all begins with an idea.
More and more evidence suggests using a sauna, also known as sauna bathing, is a relatively safe and effective complementary therapy for people living with certain chronic medical conditions such as:
1. High Blood Pressure
2. Heart Failure
3. Peripheral Arterial (or Vascular) Disease
4. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
5. Mild Depression
6. Tension Headaches
7. Low Back Pain
Sauna bathing refers to a form of heat therapy that typically takes place in a timber-lined room heated by burning wood, electricity, gas or infrared energy waves.
Sauna temperatures typically range between 40 to 100 degrees Celsius (104 - 212 degrees Fahrenheit) and generally involve dry heat, with the relative humidity in the sauna staying below 10% to 20%.
Dry sauna use has been demonstrated in both men and women to have similar whole-body effects as engaging in moderate-intensity exercise such as brisk treadmill walking or riding a stationary bicycle, but without having to breathe so fast. In a way, saunas enable us to gain many of the health benefits of exercise, but without the potentially uncomfortable exertion. This can be life-changing for those who have breathing difficulties with exercise (chronic lung disease sufferers) or have mobility issues (elders with debilitating arthritis pain) or even those who just profoundly dislike exercising, who I honestly encounter almost daily in my clinic.
It’s a form of medical heresy to highlight exercise-averse individuals, but they exist in sizeable numbers, and I think it’s time they deserve to not be so harshly judged by the medical establishment. Instead, I propose we meet them wherever they are on the exercising spectrum and acknowledge many paths exist to attaining healthy longevity. At least a few of these paths do not involve training for a triathlon every other day. Maybe even some of these alternative paths can involve the sauna. Finnish research certainly seems to back this idea. People who sauna regularly describe getting ‘sauna-fit’, akin to exercise fitness, and this has been linked to improved cardiorespiratory fitness in research studies.
Like exercise, your heart rate and blood pressure increase while you’re in the sauna, but afterward, your blood pressure drops and there’s an increase in heart rate variability - a marker of good health and readiness to respond to different stressors. These beneficial changes have been shown to last 30 minutes or more after a single session of sauna, and persist even longer if using the sauna regularly, again a lot like exercise. We all know if we could bottle the health effects of exercise in a pill, it’s the pill almost all of us would be taking! We may soon be saying the same about sauna. It’s already the case in Finland, where there’s nearly a sauna in every household.
Yet you or your doctor are likely not aware of these findings since almost all sauna research is deemed inconclusive, with sauna being a notoriously difficult intervention to fully evaluate with the double-blind, placebo-controlled study format, as mandated by our evidence-based medical systems. What many don’t realize is this ideal study format was specifically developed to evaluate the risks and benefits of taking medications, and is more problematic when studying lifestyle interventions like the sauna. Very few, if any, of the studies investigating a therapeutic sauna protocol are reproduced by more than one research group, which is a necessity to develop validated medical therapy. As well, these studies are very expensive to conduct and sourcing unbiased funds to study sauna is yet another major obstacle. On a more upbeat note, you don’t need to wait for sauna to be officially endorsed before self-experimenting with a sauna as potential therapy for your condition.
So, if you’ve been diagnosed with any of these 7 health conditions and warned you may need to start medications for treatment, consider having the conversation with your doctor about giving sauna a go first. To help you with that conversation, follow the links detailing recent sauna studies/protocols involving each of the medical conditions. However, starting a sauna regime should not be a replacement for seeking or obtaining appropriate medical care for these conditions.
1. High Blood Pressure
2. Heart Failure
3. Peripheral Arterial (or Vascular) Disease
4. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
5. Mild Depression
6. Tension Headaches
7. Low Back Pain
If you’re worried about safely using the sauna at your age or in your medical condition, keep in mind a commonsense guidepost – if you’ve been medically cleared to start exercising at moderate intensity, then you’re likely safe to start one of the sauna regimes discussed above, keeping in mind these additional precautions:
• Avoid using a sauna alone or unsupervised until you know you can tolerate it well and repeatedly.
• If you’ve never used a sauna before, start with shorter 5 -10 minute sessions, slowly working up to longer 15-20 minute sessions, once or twice a week as tolerated. Listen to your body!
• Ensure adequate hydration while sauna bathing. Drink plenty of water - or other hydrating beverages - before, during and after the sauna, to avoid the unpleasant effects of dehydration such as nausea, vomiting, headache, dizziness or muscle cramps.
• Avoid drinking alcohol before or during sauna bathing because it increases your risk for dehydration.
• Avoid the sauna if you have troubles with frequent falls and/or maintaining adequate blood pressure (diagnosed with low blood pressure, orthostatic hypotension, aortic stenosis, etc.) or please discuss with your GP or medical practitioner first.
• Limit sauna exposure if you are recovering from a recent sunburn or other skin condition involving significant reduction in skin integrity (skin cancer treatments, etc.).
• Avoid the sauna if you are suffering from an eye infection (conjunctivitis) or ongoing eye irritation/inflammation (such as iritis or ocular rosacea).
