14 Noteable Benefits Of Sauna Use For Smarter Recovery, Sleep And More
Besides feeling sensational, it will blow your mind the other benefits you get from regular steam and infrared sauna sessions
Benefits of sauna
Is it worth buying a sauna let alone stepping foot into one? “Sauna bathing is a form of whole-body thermotherapy that has been used in various forms for thousands of years in many parts of the world for hygiene, health, social, and spiritual purposes.” What are the benefits of sauna use for recovery? The studies on this fantastic piece of recovery gold, being heat exposure, are endless and the ones we reference in this list are by no means exhaustive.
I know a thing or two about saunas and have dropped many a sweat drop in all sorts of saunas, most notably the two most popular western style sweat boxes being infrared sauna and traditional sauna. What’s the difference? We’ve also covered more on Infrared saunas specifically here.
14 Amazing Health Benefits Of Saunas
Hoards of people are now not only using saunas at gyms and wellness spaces, but many are buying them for their homes and for good reason. RG will give you 14 compelling, science based reasons you should be considering doing the same.
Guys, you might be particularly interested in #4 AND #6…Ladies, you might also benefit from #6 and agree with #12?
Sauna Increases Detoxification
There are multiple bodily functions that affect removal of toxins and heavy metals from the body. The skin, being the largest organ, has multiple roles for the day-to-day running of our miracle machines. One of these is to assist in detox through sweat, as mentioned in a study
“an often overlooked route of excretion of toxicants is via the process of sweating”.
With an increasing prevalence and use of chemicals in so many facets of life, heavy metals like lead, mercury and arsenic are found in our sweat, meaning it provides one of the removal mechanisms for such unwanted bad stuff.
2. Muscle Endurance Recovery
Got the leg day DOMS? No better time to spend a stint in the sauna to shorten the prevalence of your delayed onset muscle soreness after bouts of endurance training. Interestingly, the studies on the benefits for maximum lifts and heavy lifting followed by sauna are not as favourable as they are for endurance type sessions but we do still need to consider the benefits outlined in number 5 to weigh up the pros and cons.
A shout out to the runners and triathletes, this study ticks the box for positive physiological adaptations in post-session sauna increases run time to exhaustion by over 30%.
3. Heat Shock Proteins
Sauna use also ticks the bulk box and has been shown to help increase muscle size. In animals, hyperthermia from sauna use elevated heat shock protein expression and increased muscle regrowth in injured muscle tissue. It is worth noting that muscle tissue is essentially injured/torn every time we exercise whether you feel a specific injury or not.
Check out this short video of Dr. Rhonda Patrick on sauna benefits
4. Increase Growth Hormones
On her website FoundMyFitness, Dr. Rhonda Patrick spills the beans on growth hormone relationship with sauna use. Sauna use promotes growth hormone release, which varies according to time, temperature, and frequency. For example, two 20-minute sauna sessions at 80°C (176°F) separated by a 30-minute cooling period elevated growth hormone levels two-fold over baseline, but two 15-minute sauna sessions at 100°C (212°F) dry heat separated by a 30-minute cooling period resulted in a five-fold increase in growth hormone. Amazing stuff!
5. Improve Insulin Sensitivity
To be blunt, poor insulin sensitivity contributes to weight gain, inflammation and diabetes. Becoming hyperthermic, or really hot as in a sauna, is shown to improve insulin resistance. The ‘so what?’ of that is, sauna has good metabolic effects particularly for those with diabetes and insulin resistance issues that may be contributing to weight issues. We want to aim for good insulin sensitivity to be metabolically healthy and it appears sauna helps us out in that area too.
6. Increases Nitric Oxide Bioavailability
Men take note of this one. There are multiple important functions of Nitric Oxide (NO) including being a vasodilator, meaning it increases blood flow to the muscles. Of note, Nitric Oxide bioavailability can also play a big role in a male erection, so it's safe to say it's beneficial for both guys and girls to have enough NO floating around. This research confirms the benefit that sauna use does indeed bump up our NO. Another 3 week study with a series of 10 saunas also concurs to this benefit so don’t ignore it gents.
7. Heat Acclimation
Heat what? A small study had nine female athletes sit in sauna suit in a hot environment (to replicate a sauna) for 5 days in a row for 20 mins a day, showed that the women experienced improvements in thermoregulatory, cardiovascular, and perceived strain compared to a control group. This essentially shows that exposing oneself to heat stressors like that of a sauna effectively upgrades our ability to handle hot environments, this is a big deal for those trying to compete in hot, humid conditions. Check out the Luxo 2 Person Infra Red Sauna from Amazon to start some heat acclimation.
8. Weight Loss Through Sweat
Calories burnt are an inevitable effect of the thermogenic (heating) properties associated with sauna use. Put simply, when we sweat, we are attempting to cool the body of the excess heat exposure in the sauna and churning through calories to do so. Let it be known, the weight dropped post sauna is not necessarily good weight, most of which would be fluid, so it is uber important to keep on top of hydration pre, during and post sauna.
*PRO TIP*
We have experimented with combining Niacin and sauna protocols with some unmistakable results on dropping some weight in a healthy way confirmed in this study.
This is the Niacin we are set on is well priced, in handy capsule form and available below.
9. Saunas Help Reduce Pain
Beta-endorphins are pain relieving compounds produced naturally in the body. At times when we would naturally experience increased pain levels, the brain pumps out beta-endorphins as a natural way to manage pain. Not surprisingly, since the heat from a sauna produces a stress response of sorts, research points to the fact that sauna use, like exercise, gives us a nice bump of the betas and reduces pain. This applies to headaches too, a study concluding that “regular sauna bathing is a simple, self-directed treatment that is effective for reducing headache pain intensity”.
10. Saunas Induce Deeper Sleep
This topic we touch on in another sleep article of ours about the Chilipad. By raising your body temperature in the sauna just before it is time to go to bed, your heated body will automatically work to readjust its temperature afterwards. It is this cooling-down and normalising after the sauna bath that will lull you off to sleep, leaving you calm and relaxed enough to sleep soundly through the night.
We like to track the effect of sauna on sleep with a sleep tracking ring like the Go2Sleep by SleepOn which we have reviewed in our other article reviewing the Go2Sleep Ring from Australia.
11. Sauna Improves Brain Health
Three very noteworthy points on how saunas help brain health came out of this Study. They concluded that regular sauna bathing is suggested to be protective of fatal cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality; there is a decreased risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in those who maintain a regular sauna habit; and sauna bathing, an activity that promotes relaxation and well-being, may be a recommendable intervention to pre- vent or delay the development of memory diseases in healthy adults.
12. Social Benefit of Sauna
Not so sciency on this one, but seriously, we have solved a long list of the worlds (and our own) problems over the space of a couple of 40 minute sauna sessions. Having been in a sauna in multiple countries with anywhere from 1 to 20 other people, sauna can be an amazing opportunity for some epic topics of conversation. You would be surprised what comes up with some steam, sweat and stress.
13. Saunas Extend Your Lifespan
If you weren’t yet convinced, this one might help. As we aim to increase quality and quantity in life years, consider that increased frequency of sauna bathing is associated with a reduced risk…of all-cause mortality. Basically, science says yes to sauna. Another study that Dr. Rhonda Patrick mentions here says that “findings showed that men who used the sauna two to three times per week were 27 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular-related causes than men who didn't use the sauna
14. Saunas Increase Sense of Wellbeing
Endorphins are the ‘feel good’ hormone. Ever noticed the feeling that you get after an epic workout? Well, the same thing goes for sauna. A recent study in 2016 concluded that “Whole-body hyperthermia holds promise as a safe, rapid-acting, antidepressant modality with a prolonged therapeutic benefit.” In addition, other studies have effectively shown that sauna use can lower the stress hormone, cortisol, contributing to overall mood.
So go have some feel-good sweat time, what are you waiting for?
Smarter recovery for humans…
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