.png)
The Wellness Blueprint: With Dr. Caleb Davis
Welcome to The Wellness Blueprint with Dr. Caleb Davis, where we uncover the secrets to living a long, active, and pain-free life. Hosted by Dr. Caleb Davis, an orthopedic surgeon and fitness enthusiast, this podcast is your ultimate guide to musculoskeletal health, injury prevention, and wellness.
Dr. Davis combines his expertise as a shoulder and elbow specialist with a passion for empowering people to take charge of their health. From deep dives into cutting-edge restorative medicine to practical tips on avoiding surgery and optimizing recovery, The Wellness Blueprint offers valuable insights for anyone seeking to preserve their body and thrive at every stage of life.
Join us each week for professional guidance, fascinating medical discussions, and actionable strategies that help you move better, feel stronger, and stay functional for years to come. Whether you're an athlete, a weekend warrior, or someone looking to age gracefully, The Wellness Blueprint provides the tools to design a healthier you.
The Wellness Blueprint: With Dr. Caleb Davis
Episode 24: Sauna Secrets: The Heat Hack for Heart Health & Recovery
Sweating it out in the sauna goes far beyond relaxation – Dr. Caleb and Nicole Davis unpack the surprising science behind sauna therapy and its remarkable impact on human health.
The cardiovascular benefits alone are striking. Research from Finland following 2,300 participants over two decades found those using saunas 4-7 times weekly had 50% lower risk of dying from heart disease compared to once-weekly users. The physiological mechanisms make perfect sense: heart rates increase to 130-140 BPM (similar to brisk walking), blood vessels dilate, and vascular flexibility improves dramatically over time.
But the most fascinating aspect might be heat shock proteins – specialized cellular protectors your body produces when exposed to high temperatures. These proteins prevent cell damage and potentially reduce Alzheimer's risk by up to 60%. For athletes, post-workout sauna sessions have been shown to improve recovery time, increase blood volume, and enhance performance metrics like jump height and endurance capacity.
We share our personal journey from sauna skeptics to enthusiasts, break down the different types (traditional Finnish, infrared, steam), discuss realistic costs, and provide practical guidelines for temperature, session length, and frequency. Perfect for wellness-minded individuals who appreciate evidence-based approaches to health optimization.
Ready to experience the "butter baby" phenomenon? Listen now to discover if sauna therapy deserves a place in your wellness routine.
Instagram @WellnessblueprintPodcast
X @CalebDavisMD
TikTok @WellnessblueprintPodcast
Hey everybody and welcome back to the Wellness Blueprint. I'm your host, Dr Caleb Davis, and I'm joined by our regular co-host, Nicole Davis. Nicole, thanks for being here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course, and happy Easter all.
Speaker 1:Happy Easter. We are recording on Easter, although the episode won't come out on Easter. It'll be probably a day or two after Nicole. It feels like we haven't recorded an episode in a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it does. It's been pretty crazy.
Speaker 1:I've been kind of antsy to get back to it. I decided to pick a topic that you and I both really like, and that is sauna therapy, oh yes, or as some sophisticated Scandinavians would call it, sauna bathing.
Speaker 2:Oh really, yeah, yeah, it's a little bit of a different.
Speaker 1:I don't know that people in the United States refer to it as that as much.
Speaker 2:Is that why everybody assumes that we're naked when we sauna together?
Speaker 1:I, everybody assumes that we're naked when we sauna together. I don't know, it's weird, Just full disclosure. Nicole and I do own a sauna and I never thought I'd be a sauna person growing up. I thought of saunas as things for Wall Street bros to sit in after they play golf in their little towels and talk about Wall Street and finances, and it was just for the studio elites. Did you feel that way when you were a kid?
Speaker 2:I can't say that I ever really thought about sauna as much as a kid. I think the closest thing I got was watching television shows and movies where people were in the steam room in their towels.
Speaker 1:Kind of a country club thing, though, right yeah.
Speaker 2:Although I didn't really necessarily associate it with the snooty elite, although some people might say that we are said snooty elite. Now who would say that? Your sister?
Speaker 1:You'll have to narrow it down. I've got four sisters, but all right. All that aside, I have come to love the sauna, not just for its relaxation benefits and just that it's nice to get a good sweat. We'll actually talk about some of the health benefits that are associated with it too, and over the last decade it has become very, very popular and there's been a lot of data to show that this actually can have objective health benefits. It's not just for relaxation and talking with your rich finance bros. So some of the impacts that sauna has been purported to affect positively would be cardiovascular health, so heart disease, blood pressure. There's another factor that's widely talked about in sauna bathing, called heat shock proteins. It's a specific type of protein that is expressed in your body when you're exposed to high heat. We'll delve into that into a little bit more detail as we go on the episode.
Speaker 2:I'm excited to delve into that. You know why.
Speaker 1:Why.
Speaker 2:Because I'm going to want to bring up hot yoga.
Speaker 1:We are going to do a hot yoga episode, I promise, but I want your help writing the episode. Excellent so we'll get there. I have a spoiler alert, though Heat shock, proteins need a certain temperature to start expressing themselves. I'm not sure hot yoga gets there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what I was wondering.
Speaker 1:But I'll have to delve into that a little bit more because I don't have that exact answer. We'll also talk about how it may impact your hormones there's some people who have posited that it may help increase testosterone or growth hormone and we'll also talk about muscle recovery and increasing athletic performance when using saunas.
Speaker 2:This is interesting because I've been seeing several articles floating around on the internet regarding cold therapy and how that prevents your muscles from growing.
Speaker 1:Yes, that could be a whole episode as well, but it depends on the timing of cold therapy. There is reduced blood flow to muscles and slower muscle growth and recovery after cold therapy immediately after intense exercise. But there's been some studies that have indicated that if you start your morning with cold therapy and exercise later, it can actually have the opposite effect and have benefits for exercise and strength training. We're going to talk about, specifically, heat therapy. We're not going to get into cold today.
Speaker 2:That's fine, I like it hot. Yeah, that's why I married you, he's blushing.
Speaker 1:Yes, I feel very flushed right now, like I'm sitting in a sauna.
Speaker 2:We should do this episode while we're sitting in the sauna. I don't think our microphones can handle the heat, though I don't think the mics could take it.
Speaker 1:Our sauna we do up to 180 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm not sure the microphones could handle that. We'll have to settle for a regular room. Let's delve into the histories of sauna just a little bit. Okay, so I already mentioned Finland, which is where most people think that saunas were invented. There's some people that believe that this goes back up to 10,000 years in history of Finnish people using saunas for health benefits.
Speaker 1:Early Finnish people dug pits in the ground and filled them with heated stones and used them for warmth during brutal winters. Obviously they have pretty bad winters up in Finland, although eventually they started moving above ground and were built from wooden logs and they started using fire without a chimney and this was a cultural staple and the room would fill with smoke. Now that obviously has some probably pretty bad health side effects from inhaling all that smoke. Things have moved on from there. By the 1500s saunas started becoming very popular throughout Europe. Bathhouses started becoming popular. Then you had all sorts of variations. The Russians had their banyas. People would be struck on the back with birch wood to help with blood circulation. That's a Russian bathhouse tradition. And then the Turkish bathhouses focused more on steam rather than just the dry saunas from Finland, and then Native Americans also used sweat lodges in a similar function, but these were often associated with spiritual ceremonies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like I've heard of people going to find themselves and doing ayahuasca or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all sorts of different psychoactive compounds and sweating in a hot box Sounds like a good time. I'd like to find myself in a spa instead of a hut in the forest.
Speaker 1:We were just there, yeah, so in the 1950s we started to see the rise of electric saunas, so you had these stoves that you could actually just heat up with the coils rather than having to do wood burning saunas. This made it much more accessible, and then Finnish immigrants started to bring them to the United States, where they started to become more mainstream, and you started to now see a huge increase in home saunas because of all the research that's being done on their health benefits. Let's break down a little bit of the different types of saunas. Nicole, I know you've heard me talk about this. Do you know what kind of different types of saunas there are?
Speaker 2:I know that there are infrared saunas and there are what I think of as classic saunas, and then there are the ability for those classic saunas to have steam coming out if you pour water over the rocks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that would be considered a traditional dry sauna. So it's a wood or electric heated. It heats rocks and then it creates dry heat, usually between 150 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, and then, if you want to add a little bit of water to it, you can create some steam, but it's pretty temporary.
Speaker 2:It's not the same thing as a steam room. A steam room, that's correct.
Speaker 1:So most of the research is focused around traditional saunas, in terms of cardiovascular health and blood pressure and relaxation, but then, as you mentioned, there's infrared saunas, in terms of cardiovascular health and blood pressure and relaxation. But then, as you mentioned, there's infrared saunas. They're traditionally not quite as hot, the ambient air around you is not getting quite as hot, but they are infrared heat emitters that the heat, the light, goes directly on the body, heating it directly, usually to about 140 degrees, although they make models that get hotter.
Speaker 2:Well, just the infrared heat. Does that have anything to do with the red light therapy you talked about in your last episode?
Speaker 1:It's a little bit different. It is because red light therapy is in the visible light spectrum, where infrared heat is not in the visible light spectrum. They're close but they're not the same.
Speaker 2:And maybe I've seen these infrared saunas that also have visible red light. That's very common, okay.
Speaker 1:That's very common. Okay, that's very common, so it's like a two for one Correct, I've seen that as well. So you feel hotter, despite the air and the sauna not being as hot. Because of these emitters heating your skin directly, and they tend to be a little bit less expensive and maybe not quite use as much energy as the stoves do. Some studies have indicated that these heat penetrates deeper into your skin and might aid muscle recovery and pain relief and skin health more than a traditional sauna.
Speaker 2:So why did we opt for traditional sauna?
Speaker 1:I opted for a traditional sauna because it was more of the cardiovascular and blood pressure heart mortality related studies were talked about traditional saunas and so really, with my family history of cardiovascular problems, that's what I was looking for.
Speaker 2:Gotcha.
Speaker 1:Then there's steam saunas, so there's not nearly as much study surrounding steam saunas. Steam is generated constantly throughout the process through a number of different processes. Depending on the style of steam room you have, it creates humid heat around 100 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, which is much, much lower. It's good for respiratory health Breathing in that steam, it's good for skin hydration and a lot of people find it very relaxing and a little bit less intense than the other types of saunas. The less intense heat can be effective for your lung and skin and maybe you can tolerate it longer than you would a traditional sauna or an infrared sauna, although most of the protective effects that we're going to talk about are not associated with steam rooms.
Speaker 2:Okay, so just so, I know these steam rooms that you're talking about. That's like what I've seen in the movies, in the country clubs, and it's what we experience when we go to Cancun, to our favorite resort.
Speaker 1:You walk into a room filled with steam.
Speaker 2:It's just filled with steam, like you can't even see another person in there.
Speaker 1:Basically, yeah, you'll notice that the temperature is much, much lower than what we have in our sauna.
Speaker 2:But they typically have like eucalyptus and mint.
Speaker 1:They'll put oils and things in there for you fancy people.
Speaker 2:It does feel harder to breathe.
Speaker 1:That's because you're inhaling all that moisture into your lungs. Yeah, it makes you want to cough.
Speaker 2:Interesting. Yeah, I remember when we were.
Speaker 1:It's like a nebulizer, though, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then, eventually, you get to the steam.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll tell that story about Iceland too.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, sorry, I'm jumping again, that's okay.
Speaker 1:We can tell the story about Iceland now. I had heard we first went to Iceland back in about 2017, I believe that sounds about right.
Speaker 1:We went to Iceland, 2017. I had never been in a sauna before, I'd never thought about this, and we went to this hot springs and they had this cold plunge get in the sauna, get back into the cold, then get in a steam room and rub salt all over your body and I fell in love with it right away. I had this big endorphin release and felt fantastic afterwards and felt loose and relaxed and just felt on top of the world, and that's where my love for saunas really took off was in Iceland, which is appropriate because it's a Scandinavian country.
Speaker 2:That was a really cool process and of course I'm always eager when Caleb gets into something wellness related, because then it means I can go and buy things.
Speaker 1:Like a sauna Exactly Now. The idea of getting a sauna may be very daunting and it should be, and we'll get into the price breakdown as well. They can be very expensive, especially a large sauna that can fit multiple people. There's a number of different things on the market now and they're getting more affordable. But to combat this, because they're becoming popular, people are now making portable saunas.
Speaker 1:I've seen ones that are tents, so basically they're just a micro frame like you would see in a tent. I've even seen blankets. You just lay down and suit yourself up like in a sleeping, and they're doing saunas that way, and they can use steam or infrared or there's multiple ways to do it, and that makes it a little bit more affordable and portable and something you can take on the road if you want to, if you're really into that, and it's much better for small spaces and budget conscious consumers. The problem with that would be more of do you have to have your whole body in it? Is it as effective as a normal sauna? Not much data to back that up. I'm going to go through the prices just real quick. A traditional sauna can run you anywhere from between $2,000 to $15,000. $2,000 would be a pretty low end. $15,000 would be on the very high end.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, that factor will change with the type of wood they use and the size. If it comes partially assembled fully assembled, I imagine it would also the kind of stove that's used, like it's output for energy. But what's not factored into that cost, though, is you have to get an electrician to come to your house and install the appropriate cable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can tell you from experience there's a lot of unknowns. That went into that. We just said, hey, let's buy a sauna, and I built it. We had a kit, and that went into that. We just said, hey, let's buy a sauna, and I built it. We had a kit, and that was great. But then we had the stove with no cord to plug in. I was like, all right now what? It wasn't really clear that you didn't have a cord. You had to have an electrician come and extend a specific type of cord from your breaker to get it, which that's just my naivete, I guess my ignorance on that matter.
Speaker 2:Well, but that can add an additional several hundred to a thousand or so, depending on where you live, where your outlet is if they add another breaker, et cetera.
Speaker 1:Exactly. I think it's pretty realistic to say if you want a traditional sauna, it's going to be anywhere between probably starting around $3,000 when all is said and done.
Speaker 2:At least. Yeah, that would be on the low end, and that's not to count the actual electricity costs when you use it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now infrared saunas tend to be a little bit more affordable. They tend to use a little bit less energy as well and sometimes can just be plugged into a wall outlet, depending on their requirements. I've seen the portable tents as low as $500, but if you're looking for more of a traditional, this is made of wood, it's a large standing structure that can fit two or three people. You're probably again still looking around between $, around between two and $6,000, for a larger infrared sauna. The steam rooms I've never looked into personally. I saw quotes as low as 3000, as high as 15,000. Now I think there's a lot more that goes into this, with plumbing and drainage and sealing to make sure the moisture is not getting out anywhere else. So I think those are quite a bit more expensive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I worry about the moisture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would too. So I wouldn't even consider putting a steam room in my house personally, just because it's probably prohibitively expensive.
Speaker 2:Unless. Just hear me out in the future, just dream me big. What if we just completely redid our basement and turned it into a spa?
Speaker 1:Yeah, All right, Miss Country Club, You're sounding like the bourgeoisie now. Maybe once this podcast gets a sponsor. Now I have seen sauna blankets as low as $200. So we're talking about getting to a little bit more of an affordable price range for people now something that's a little bit more reasonable. That's the question. There's not much data.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, if the price is too good to be true, that just means it's an internet knockoff made in China, and they're trying to tell you oh, it's as good as this other product, that's four times the price, and really it's crap.
Speaker 1:And there's really not much of a way to validate whether or not you're going to get the same cardio protective effects from a sauna blanket that you are from a real sauna. You're absolutely right and I can't really say in one way or the other. I have my doubts.
Speaker 2:Now I will say that a lot of gym facilities seem to have saunas that you can go in and use.
Speaker 1:They do A lot of crunch fitness have saunas. I know that from personal experience. A lot of the just even LA Fitness or Esporta or things like that have a sauna in the locker room for men and women separate. Usually YMCAs often have saunas. That's not uncommon. The problem sometimes there is cleanliness, because it's hard, lots of people using it. They do make sauna clubs in some cities. They make places where you can have memberships and go use their saunas and just have a monthly fee.
Speaker 2:Wasn't it called Perspire or something? Do you remember the name of that place?
Speaker 1:That was one place in Florida. I think even our town might be opening up a sauna club.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And a lot of those places have nice music and a TV screen, a projector, in front of the sauna so you can watch movies or relaxation videos. Some people like to do yoga in the sauna, so it's a whole thing. If you don't want to buy your own, there are ways to get access to saunas without having to install it yourself. I'm glad you brought that up. Let's dive into some of the health benefits, since we've talked so much about the particulars of having a sauna. So why might you want to consider getting a sauna? Now, I don't know about you, nicole, but when I think about saunas and I think about someone with heart disease, I think, oh, that person should not get in a sauna. Have you thought about that?
Speaker 2:yeah, I guess I would think oh no, I'm concerned about elevating their heart too much and causing it to implode. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Implode. What's it going to do? Just squeeze them into a little ball?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess it depends on the size of your sauna right.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I guess if you're trying to squeeze into a little one. So there have been studies that have showed actually there's a pretty large study. So there have been studies that have showed actually there's a pretty large study a study from Finland, as you might expect, looking at 2,300 people over a 20-year span. So we're talking about a long observational period and a very large cohort of people. So that's the hallmark of a good study. Most likely they looked at people who used the sauna four to seven times per week and a 50% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. So big data, big numbers of participants, large amount of time and huge benefits from that, just of reduced cardiovascular death. That's a pretty powerful study and they showed that you, if you had longer sessions of over longer than 19 minutes that you have an even larger improvement of cardiovascular health.
Speaker 2:But was there a time at which spending too much time in there was no longer more beneficial? Like you said, at least 19 minutes, but at what point does it stretch up to 19 to 40 minutes? Is it 19 to 25 minutes?
Speaker 1:Most people don't recommend you stay in a sauna at those types of temperatures we're talking 160 to 180 degrees Fahrenheit for longer than 30 minutes and for most people it becomes intolerable. Even for those who are sauna trained and use them all the time, it's hard to stay in longer than 30 minutes.
Speaker 2:Okay, so it could theoretically be a very dangerous thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just like most things, If you use it too much, it's bad for you. We talked about red light therapy. Also. There's a dose-dependent curve, where you have a benefit and then you start seeing a negative afterwards. Right, and we'll dive into the risks of saunas as well and what you need to watch out for. Now we're not just talking about your heart's not going to implode, as you said. This can actually help your heart health in some instances. Another study in 2022 looked at 47 adults, so smaller study size, maybe not as applicable on a wide range, but it showed that combining exercise with a 15-minute session in the sauna afterwards boosted cardiorespiratory fitness and lowered blood pressure. And they compared it to people doing exercise alone and showed that the group that was doing combined groups of exercise and sauna had improvement over the exercise alone group. There's also been studies in the early 2000s in Japan that showed that patients who were in heart failure actually had improved heart ejection fraction meaning how much volume your heart's able to pump by doing sauna therapy sessions, demonstrating that saunas can actually improve your cardiac output, which would be a sign of better cardiac health.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about the physiology of saunas real quick. How does it work? So you sit in your sauna. You're between 160 degrees to, we'll say, 185 degrees Fahrenheit. Your heart, gary, can rise up to 130 to 140 beats per minute. Have you experienced this? Yeah, your heart starts to race a little bit just by sitting there. This would be similar to taking a pretty brisk or pretty fast paced walk. Your blood vessels dilate. This improves the health of the lining of your blood cells called the endothelium. It releases nitric oxide which dilates your blood vessels even further and keeps them nice and flexible and, over time, regular sauna use improves your cardiovascular system in general, all your arteries, your heart. It reduces stiffness and supports good heart health. So this is a drug-free, enjoyable way to lower your heart disease risk. Now, I think it's enjoyable.
Speaker 1:Some people don't but, I, think the sauna is great and it might even make you be able to have better cardio respiratory fitness even without exercise. Some people have said that you may be able to improve it just passively sitting there. Now, obviously those benefits are only going to take you so far without having any exercise.
Speaker 1:But right it's something to consider. Now I will say if you're actively having chest pains or if you had a recent heart attack or you're prone to low blood pressure, I would definitely consult your doctor before trying sauna therapy. I can't stress that enough. If you have risks or active cardiac disease, this is something you should definitely talk to your cardiologist first before doing. However, it may help you prevent cardiac disease in the future or may even help you treat it if you have a mild to moderate case of heart disease.
Speaker 2:Now, people who are breast cancer survivors and now have lymphedema, something like that, is this kind of thing, something that they can't really do, because I have heard that from somebody who is in that situation that they can't handle extreme heat or extreme cold because of the lymphedema. But I don't know if there's any science to back that up or not.
Speaker 1:There's not a lot of study on lymphedema and saunas. I believe that the general guidelines for lymphedema are to avoid excessive changes in heat and cold, as some people have a reported exacerbation of their symptoms. In theory, a sauna could help you improve blood flow and improve drainage from your affected extremity, but I would not recommend that people do it for that, because I don't have any evidence to back that up. So I would do so with caution and start off on much, much lower temperatures starting off with While talking with your doctor, while talking with your doctor first before trying that, because I can't recommend that since I don't have any data to back it up.
Speaker 1:Sure, and I would really recommend anyone who's new to saunas to start off at a much lower temperature and build up their tolerance before heading straight to 180 degrees.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's intense. You either have to regulate the temperature or regulate the amount of time you're in, maybe both.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would do both personally and work my way up because it's intense the first couple of times. Now I touched on blood pressure a little bit, on some of the studies, but we're going to dive into that a little bit more now. Touched on blood pressure a little bit on some of the studies, but we're going to dive into that a little bit more now. There was a study in 2024, a meta-analysis of multiple randomized controlled trials that showed that sauna bathing does reduce blood pressure in healthy adults. A single 30 minute session lowers systolic blood pressure by seven millimeters of mercury, and that's systolic blood pressure and five millimeters of mercury of diastolic, so systolic being the top number, the diastolic being the lower number, when you think about blood pressure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, whenever the nurse takes my blood pressure and tells me the number and I'm always like is that good, cause I never know. They just tell me the number and I'm like cool, is that good.
Speaker 1:It's not their job to interpret that.
Speaker 2:They're just there to take the data, yeah.
Speaker 1:Now that's a study just showing that when you have a sauna session for 30 minutes that's a little bit long, honestly Then it lowers your blood pressure Okay, great. Does that help us? Every time we have a blood pressure spike, do we have to get in a sauna? There was a study in 2012 that demonstrated single sauna sessions reduced 24-hour blood pressure readings. And then there was a long-term Finnish study again the Finns very popular. This was looking over a 25-year period that people using the sauna four to seven times per week had a 47% lower risk of developing high blood pressure compared to once-weekly users. So the immediate effects of sauna use lowering your blood pressure are clearly seen over and over again. But some of these studies have suggested that you may be reducing your overall blood pressure problems if you use saunas regularly, so it has a long term effect as well.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's exciting.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's talk about heat shock proteins. So heat shock proteins are what I think about when I use the sauna and one of the reasons that I think sauna research is so interesting.
Speaker 2:Can I just say real quick.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:When I think of heat shock proteins, I think of a bunch of cartoon animated proteins and somebody shocks them and they're like woo yeah, I don't know, I don't know why, but I just imagine them being in a heated environment, somebody shocks them and they get really excited.
Speaker 1:I think that's a pretty apt analogy. Okay, your body is generating these proteins in a specific environment, and that is when it's being superheated, or I should say, heated much higher than it normally would be. So heat shock proteins are a family of protein that your body expresses in hot environments for prolonged exposure to extreme heat, not a heat that you would normally experience regularly on Earth.
Speaker 2:Unless you're a volcanologist.
Speaker 1:Sure, if you're going swimming in a volcano, sure?
Speaker 2:Not to be confused with Vulcans.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I thought you were going to Star Trek real quick there and I realized you were talking about volcanoes.
Speaker 2:Hopefully I said that right Vulcanologist.
Speaker 1:I think you did Okay yeah.
Speaker 2:But I also was like making the Star Trek symbol in my head.
Speaker 1:So what do heat shock proteins do? There's a number of things, and we don't even fully understand what they do yet. There's a lot of different studies that are looking at them and their exact and what they achieve. But they can prevent protein damage in cells, they help cellular health in general, they help refold misfolded proteins and they reduce cellular stress in general. A study in 2012 showed that 30 minutes of sauna therapy at 163 degrees Fahrenheit increased levels of heat shock protein by 49% in young adults, indicating a large systemic response. And repeated sauna sessions over days can elevate baseline heat shock protein levels just that you express without being in the sauna. So you're elevating your constant level if you use saunas regularly, and there's people who have posited that they may be neuroprotective in terms of reducing Alzheimer's and dementia risk by up to 60% in some studies.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, we should tell your mom that Actually she'll listen to this episode because she's very supportive.
Speaker 1:I'm sure she will.
Speaker 2:She'll probably want to come over and use the sauna all the time.
Speaker 1:Hi mom, come on over, use the sauna. By the way, I have to say, there's a young lady who listens to our podcast pretty religiously, named Melissa. I'm going to start calling her Superfan Melissa, because she's very dedicated. Thank you for listening, melissa.
Speaker 2:You're like the heat shock protein of our podcast.
Speaker 1:Well, she came up to me the other day and she works with me and she said when are you coming on with another podcast? I've got nothing to listen to, so I felt the stress to get this episode out.
Speaker 2:He cracked the whip on me today, yeah.
Speaker 1:Nicole didn't want to record it's Easter.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The family went home. I said we're going to record.
Speaker 2:We got to get this out.
Speaker 1:Think of Melissa, think of our super fan. So heat shock proteins protect blood vessels from oxidative damage. They can help enhance immune function and they may even reduce systemic inflammation as well. Enhance immune function and they may even reduce systemic inflammation as well. This might be one of the reasons that we see all these benefits from saunas because of the heat shock proteins. There's a theme that you'll see in the body and in science in general that by putting your body in controlled bursts of stress, you can have improved health. Think about lifting weights or impact exercise increasing bone density. Think about running a mile, increasing your cardiorespiratory fitness. The same thing holds true for sauna therapy. Exposing your body to large amounts of heat and stress in a short burst of time increases cellular resilience and would potentially extend your health span.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, just speaking philosophically, that statement holds true for all factions of the human experience. We're talking emotionally, mentally, spiritually and physically that if you try to stay in stasis you're actually going to degenerate.
Speaker 1:We start to degrade. Yeah, we see it through everything. We talked about bone density. If you don't use your mind, your mind becomes dull.
Speaker 1:If you don't tear your muscles and break them down in the gym, they become atrophied. If you don't move your joints, your cartilage dies. It's a common theme in life, and so the heat and cold exposure follows the same pattern. Let's talk about hormones and sauna. So a lot of people think that using the sauna will increase their testosterone levels. Obviously, a lot of men are looking at this. They want to have increased testosterone, get stronger, more muscular. Unfortunately, I can't tell you that the sauna increases your testosterone. I wish I could, but there's multiple studies that have showed that regular sauna use does not increase testosterone or luteinizing hormone or most of the other hormones involved in the pituitary axis, meaning the axis between your brain and your gonads. That would increase testosterone. Nicole, can you tell me what's so funny?
Speaker 2:He just said gonads.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the medical term for your reproductive organs.
Speaker 2:He said it was a link between your brain and your gonads.
Speaker 1:That's correct.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right, you just snuck that in that episode just to make me laugh.
Speaker 1:I promise I didn't, but I love the result. No, gonadal refers to either the ovaries or the testes and how the pituitary gland communicates with your gonads to tell them how to produce their respective hormones. Follicle-stimulating hormone or luteinizing hormone may talk to your ovaries to make progesterone or estrogen, and the same hormones can talk to the men in terms of making testosterone.
Speaker 2:Follicle-stimulating hormone. That's when it makes your hair grow.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Oh man, I did not.
Speaker 1:The follicle refers to the ovary, in this instance of follicles developing into ovum.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Boy, I feel real dumb.
Speaker 1:You're not real dumb, that's okay. Why would you know that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's true. I wasn't homeschooled. I'm sure your sisters are going to judge me for that.
Speaker 1:I didn't learn about follicle-stimulating hormone in homeschool, it's okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right. But yeah, when you say follicle, I think hair.
Speaker 1:I get that.
Speaker 2:I just assume I go through my monthly cycle and there's always this one hair that grows on my chin that I got to watch out for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Now you're making my doubt myself. Maybe follicle-stimulating hormone does go after the hair too. Tell me more about this hair, Nicole. So unfortunately not big rise in testosterone. I don't know that's going to make you hairy either, but we'll dive into that one. I'm going to conduct a study to see how much hair I get while using the sauna. Now there are increases in growth hormone. Actually, Some studies have shown that sauna can increase growth hormone concentrations up to 16 times after repeated session, and this can theoretically aid in muscle repair and fat metabolism. Now remember the stress hormone cortisol. We've talked about that a number of times on the podcast. So getting into a sauna one time will actually raise your cortisol and your adrenaline, or your epinephrine as we would call it in the United States. But regular use of the sauna will lower your baseline cortisol by up to 30% in some studies, which may indicate that you're going to have a reduced chronic stress reaction to things in general.
Speaker 2:Does it just mean that your body is getting used to the stress?
Speaker 1:It seems to me like we're talking about it's hormesis. The concept of small bursts of stress over repetitive times can decrease stress.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know when I go to the grocery store and it stresses me out because there's a lot of people there I'm trying to get stuff done and then I got to check myself out what's this nonsense? But the more often I do it, the easier it gets.
Speaker 1:But when I hire my Walmart Plus person to go shopping for me, then you know we're going to have the proletariat come to our home and drag us out into the street and behead us. It's like we own a sauna. You go to Country Club. You have to have some personal shopper. Go get stuff for you, man.
Speaker 2:Talking about Iceland and Mexico.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're a capitalist pig, aren't you?
Speaker 2:Oink.
Speaker 1:Saunas have also been shown to have a huge increase in trigger of endorphin release after sessions, which can cause the sauna high, or what Nicole and I like to call the butter baby phenomenon. Nicole, tell us about the butter baby.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's just the state that you're in when you're so relaxed and you feel so especially pampered that your body feels like butter in a good way.
Speaker 1:You're just a little baby, yeah, and you're like a little and you're melting like butter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're just a little baby. You have happiness and you know you're a happy baby, and so then you're just a butter baby. Yeah, I feel like every time we say that to someone they look at us real funny Well it's weird.
Speaker 1:And then they don't talk to us anymore Because after this episode I'm not sure anyone's going to talk to us anymore. Yeah, that's true, I got to tell you when we first got the sauna, Nicole was inviting people over. Hey, you guys want to come use our sauna? No one ever really took us up on that.
Speaker 2:People thought it was a weird invitation, like we were more open than they previously thought, and I was like, oh no, that's not what I mean. I think they assumed this was like a naked sauna.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Let's be naked together in a sauna, Like a Roman bathhouse or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah and I was like no, no, no, we have bathrobes and underwear and such yeah. It's just so that we can get a sweat on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's pretty funny though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was. It was pretty great.
Speaker 1:What I've learned from this is it can reduce stress, it can reduce my cortisol, it can make my heart healthy.
Speaker 2:It can also reduce our friendship levels.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was getting there. You beat me to it, you beat me to it. So you'll be very healthy, but you'll be alone in your sauna.
Speaker 2:You always have me baby, but you don't like it if I touch you in the sauna.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's for sure. If anyone's been in a sauna, it is not a romantic place. When it gets to 180 degrees and you're sweating and it's minute 15 and Nicole tries to come over and cuddle, I'm like, uh-uh, get away from me, woman. Yeah, just don't even touch me. I, yeah, just don't even touch me. I'm soaking wet with sweat here.
Speaker 1:Anyway, back to the topic on hand. Let's talk about muscle recovery and athletic performance. So we're looking mostly at young athletes. There was a study in 2022 that looked at 16 male basketball players and they found that 20 minutes in the infrared sauna sessions after resistance training so lifting weights improved neuromuscular performance. They looked at jump height specifically, so they were able to jump higher, and it reduced muscle soreness the following days after exercise. There was also a study done in 2007 that looked at male track athletes runners that showed that a 30 minute post workout sauna so they were getting in the sauna right after exercise four times per week for three weeks total improved their time to exhaustion by 32%, meaning they were able to run for longer without being exhausted, and it increased their blood volume by 7%. It also boosts erythropoietin, which is a hormone released by your kidneys that tells your body to start making more red blood cells, so that's how it increases your blood volume.
Speaker 2:Question. So is it best to use the sauna right after you do like a challenging aerobic or weight lifting exercise?
Speaker 1:That's what most of these studies would indicate. If you want to do it for muscle soreness and recovery and athletic performance, focusing mostly on blood pressure and cardiovascular health, I don't think the timing matters so much.
Speaker 2:Okay, but if you want the optimal time to, do it after you work out and it hits all the things.
Speaker 1:I would think so. Yeah, I think so. I think a lot of people go to the gym and then hit the sauna right afterwards exactly for that reason. So this is where the heat shock proteins come in. These heat shock proteins aid in muscle repair and help flush out all of these waste products in your muscles from breakdown and help deliver nutrients to the muscles and cells. The increased blood flow also plays a very large role in that as well.
Speaker 1:That covers most of the topics that I want to talk about saunas, so I'd love to give it a quick recap and breakdown and maybe some practical takeaway tips for people if they want to consider using it themselves. So saunas can help your cardiovascular health, decrease your risk of dying from heart disease. It can drop your blood pressure if you're having high blood pressure and it can even decrease your chances of developing high blood pressure even if you don't have high blood pressure now. Heat shock proteins can help optimize cellular repair and repair misfolded or damaged proteins, increase your growth hormone and help reduce cortisol and help with the little butter baby endorphin release. And it can also help with your muscle recovery, increase athletic performance, endurance and neuromuscular adaptations like jump, height and explosive movements.
Speaker 2:However, the things that you'll want to mention is how often you recommend people use a sauna, what's the time range and time limit.
Speaker 1:The general recommendation is that your sauna will exceed 160 degrees Fahrenheit. For a traditional sauna, You'll be there between 20 to 30 minutes and you'll do it about four times a week would be optimal. That's the range that you're looking for.
Speaker 2:And that's what shocks your happy heat proteins.
Speaker 1:In these studies that looked at different time periods and frequencies. That's where people saw the most benefit.
Speaker 2:Was that 160 degrees Fahrenheit to 180-ish.
Speaker 1:Between that range and about four times a week. Okay, yeah, the frequency is very important. If you're using it once a week, you may still get some benefits, but not nearly as much as if you're using it four times a week.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So if you go to the gym four times a week and you go sit in the sauna for 20 minutes after you're done, you've done it. If you have it in your home, it's also much more accessible to you. I like to do it before bed and I'll get into that too Now. Saunas are generally safe for most people, but there are precautions that you have to keep in mind. So I would definitely consult your health care provider, especially if you have a known heart condition, low blood pressure or if you're pregnant. For sure You'll want to make sure you stay very hydrated, because you are going to be losing a lot of fluid while you're there.
Speaker 1:You're going to be losing sweat, which has electrolytes in it, so don't replace it just with water necessarily. You may want to consider taking an electrolyte supplementation with it as well if you're drinking a lot of water before, during and after the sauna session. Avoid alcohol consumption with the use of saunas and start slowly. Don't go straight to 20 to 30 minutes. Maybe try 10 minutes at first and get your way up to 30 minutes, and consider starting at a lower temperature, maybe 120, 130 degrees, rather than going straight to 160 to 180.
Speaker 2:Also, I have yet to accessorize in this way, but for people who maybe don't have as much hair on the top of their head or maybe people do and just like to protect their hair you might want to consider getting a sauna hat. And this is my plug to anybody who manufactures or creates wool sauna caps Please send me one. Please send me one and I will take a picture of me wearing it in my sauna, and the more ridiculous it looks, the better. I love the idea of having a sauna hat that has, like, the Norwegian horns on it or whatever, like I'm a Viking, like it could be a cat hat, I don't even care. I would love a sauna hat.
Speaker 1:Do they make sauna hats with Viking horns?
Speaker 2:on them. Oh yeah, I've seen them.
Speaker 1:Okay, to any company out there who listens to this podcast who makes sauna hats please send Nicole a sauna hat, because she's been begging me to buy her one for a while now. It's true, it's not going to happen. See if your Walmart Plus Deliverer people can buy that for you, they can, they're excellent.
Speaker 1:I did want to say one more thing. We didn't touch base on this that much during the episode, but I do like to use my sauna at night, maybe an hour or two before bedtime. The reason that is we discussed this in previous episodes but ideally your body's core temperature will start to drop at night, which helps induce sleep. Now you may think okay, core body temperature dropping, that's the opposite of what a sauna is going to do. There's actually a compensatory mechanism where, when you get in the sauna, your body will try very hard to drop its core temperature, so once you get out of the sauna it'll continue to drop. It can actually aid significantly in sleep, which everybody who listens to the show knows that I'm a big fan of good quality sleep. So I find that the sauna helps me go to sleep at night, and so that's why I do it at night like that. Nicole, please feel free to cover any other personal anecdotes, thoughts, feelings about the sauna. I'd love to hear them before we wrap up.
Speaker 2:We've already talked about butter, babies and Iceland.
Speaker 1:Will you get in the sauna with me right now?
Speaker 2:Yes, I would love it, but we have to let it preheat for half an hour, don't we?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can be butter babies together.
Speaker 2:I would love that, because if you won't, let me touch you sir.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We'll be segregated bubble butter babies.
Speaker 1:Well, I love my sauna. I hope that everyone here listening gets a chance to use one, after taking proper precautions and talking to your doctor first, of course, and I hope you join us for the next podcast in a couple weeks. I haven't decided the topic yet, maybe it'll be hot yoga. We'll see what Nicole wants to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or it could be cold plungers, since we have to do the alternating hot cold.
Speaker 1:That could be a good one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that would be good. And then we go back to the hot with hot yoga.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like where your head's at girl.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, boy.
Speaker 1:And remember try to be a heat shock protein in your life. When you get shocked, just go yippee Words of wisdom to live by. That will be signing off. Remember be humble, be happy, be healthy. We'll see you in a couple weeks.
