Dr. charles raison’s sauna therapy conversation explores a compelling possibility: thermal stress may become a serious tool in mental health care. In this conversation from SaunaTimes, the strongest thread is not novelty for its own sake. It is the disciplined question underneath the trend: what actually helps the body become more resilient?
Today we welcome back Dr. Charles Raison to this Sonot Talk podcast, episode two. I encourage you to check in with episode one where Chuck and I work from the starting block about sauna health benefits and research surrounding hyperothermia and hot cold contrast therapy. In this episode, by design, we go deeper. We unpack hot cold therapy as a novel treatment for mental health. 101. 3 isn't just the radio frequency of a hit music station in the Twin Cities. We have um foundational research surrounding the effects on the body and the mind of achieving this core body temperature based on Charles's previous work over many years. Ashley Mason's work at the University of California, San Francisco, is expanding upon the psychological and physiological effects of this level of heat stress as we reach this core body temperature physically from, for example, the starting point of blood pressure and heart rate variability. Yet, how do these physical changes affect people's moods? specifically as a possible novel treatment in the area of depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues. The Japanese have a word for that nirvana feeling we get after a few sauna rounds and cold therapy action. They call it tonanu. And there is actually a
call it tonanu. And there is actually a public published study on the neuro effects of sauna bathing in Japan. We linked to this study on the sauna research institute website as well as on the sauna times website. In the study, it is recognized that sauna is an activity that promotes relaxation and health. Three cycles of sauna cold rest, lowers your heart rate, and makes you feel more relaxed. Intense feelings of happiness have been reported shortly after enjoying a hot sauna and cold water. uh and this is what is known in Japan as the tantanu state. With this contrast therapy, we achieve a lower heart rate, changes of brain waves, and better metabolic health through the increase in brown fat production known as the good fat. And one could argue for those horizontally challenged, sauna use raises heart rate to about the state we achieve with a fast walk. So there is a weight loss association to regular sauna use, but this is not something I'd get the scale out to rely upon. We discuss a topflight sauna for Veil Health's behavioral health innovation center. Right now in development, the Chill D study of it's a cold and heat investigation to lower levels of depression. Uh, this study will explore ways to optimize the proven benefits of hyperothermia for depression, including whether adding cold to heat will improve
whether adding cold to heat will improve outcomes and whether hyperothermia can effectively combine with standard anti-dopressants, help people through this process. So, Veil Health is especially interested in thermic bathing within ancient practices. Many of us listening enjoy Nordic style sauna where we pay homage to the origins of the word sauna in Finland. And sometimes many spend a lot of effort scolding its improper pronunciation. Yet for those of us that share and know that good feeling, the definition of sauna is arguably much more important than its pronunciation. And for that matter, the definition of sauna is universal and straightforward. It's a room often lined with wood with a heat source that heats rocks to sufficient temperature to create steam when water is tossed on the rocks. So for example, teascal in Mayan culture, Native American sweat lodge, BA and Venic treatments are all ancient sauna sweatbathing practices. Chris Lindley is chief population health officer um at Veil Health and the executive director of Eagle Valley Behavioral um health executive director at Eagle Valley Behavioral Health. So, I will save his bio for what I hope to be a dedicated podcast interview. Uh but a quick note, Chris's education and passion revolve around improving uh
passion revolve around improving uh people's health uh emergency response and wellness. Chris is a decorated combat veteran receiving a bronze star and presidential citation while leading troops in Iraq in 2005. So the convergence of SA research institute Veil Health and the work happening with Charles uh through Ashley in San Francisco, Chris and his team at Veil Health as well as at Harvard are exciting examples for us all. That right now what we all know to be true is being studied and researched and that is that sauna is good for us. So soon as we continue to unpack and understand how and why and how much I will say I hope you enjoy my visit here with Dr. Charles Raison and Son. This show is brought to you by the SA Times public sauna map. The public sauna map is free for you to use and click around and hopefully give us a suggestion as you click around. If you know of a really great public sauna that is not on the map, uh, drop us a line right there on the website. You can share your favorite public sauna and we'll get it added in. Um, really awesome for me to travel around and use
awesome for me to travel around and use the map to know where to go when I'm ready for some good sauna action. So to get to the public sauna map, just go to sauna times. com and right up at the top, sauna map. See you at one of these hopefully down the road. Well, greetings everybody and I'd like to revisit here and and reintroduce Dr. Charles Ryzan. Chuck, how you doing? And happy new year. Thank you, Glenn. I'm doing good. Happy New Year to you. Yeah, it's uh it's getting cold. I think uh there's a lot of thermal action happening in Madison, Wisconsin, where you are. Are people jumping through holes in the ice? Yeah, I think so. That you know, there's a Wimhof uh group in in the college. Uh they cut holes in the lake. Although, you know, honestly, the lake hasn't frozen this year. We're not having I don't know what you're having up in Minnesota, but it's actually pretty warm down here all things considered. It's unusually same situation, but it's still plenty cold when you're trying to do some like fully let go in a in the lake. Yeah. It's cold. Yeah. I thought we would dive right in and get right to this. Uh I I um I have the blessing and the curse of having this software program that kind of runs short. I wanted to have a new software program for this call, but the danger of that is I'd be running long on your next appointment because I really enjoy our
appointment because I really enjoy our visits together. Good. Let's go. Okay. So, um I wanted to dive right back into this idea of contrast therapy and um and really kind of like put you on the spot right now. You had mentioned that like a couple of times in your career, you got out of the cold study business. Uh and and if you were to rate your interest in heat exposure, cold exposure right now on a personal level, on a professional andor personal level, like where are you? What's the temperature of your water right now, Chuck? Yeah. Good question. Well, so I, you know, I know a lot more about heat than I do about cold. And so, you know, as you, as we've discussed, I I one of the roles I carry in life is I'm the director of the behavioral health innovation center out in Vil, Colorado. um this very very uh uh just generous and visionary uh donor named Mike Shannon has provided us funding to really build something unique there and we are charged with studying novel treatments for mental illness and one of the novel treatments we're looking at is hypothermia because of course we've done studies showing that heat uh itself is an anti-depressant um so having it having been given the charge of studying hyperothermia um and given the fact that I get to direct the thing. I, you know, can indulge my sort of what I think are the key questions, right? And so, one of the key questions and the primary key question that we're going to study is
question that we're going to study is this question of whether or not adding cold to heat enhances uh the anti-depressant effect of of, you know, sauna. Now, we use these things called sauna domes or infrared sauna domes. Your head sticks out. It's different than a standard sauna, but it heats you up. You know, we we heat people up to 101. 3 Fahrenheit is our goal. Nobody So, so I've been looking around and since you and I last talked, I've been taking a bit of a deeper dive on cold. And so, there's a whole literature that cold exposure, just cold exposure itself, has physiological benefits, right? So, you know, it it reduces blood pressure, it it enhances insulin sensitivity, uh it probably causes weight loss, lowers resting heart rate, all these things that are really good for cardiovascular work. There is a little literature on cold water swimmers. That's where most of it is in terms of looking at like anti-depressant effects. And these are very small studies. Um, but they're suggestive. They're really kind of promising. It looks like yeah, people that do cold water swimming also report less depression. Right? Now, that's not the same thing though as saying, okay, let's add the cold to the hot, right? So, but that's what we want to do in veil. Um, because you know like 1 million billion sauna users cannot be wrong, right? So, what are the data on that? And and to this point, I've only found one study. It came out fairly recently. Have you heard of this thing called the tot state? T O N O U.
called the tot state? T O N O U. I've heard the name, but uh tell me what you know. Well, what I know, which is not much at this point, is it's a Japanese word, and it means sort of things being in their rightful place, and it's sort of the but what it means here is the feeling that you get after having done sauna, cold, plunge, rest, you know, that kind of that that cycle cycle, right? So it in, you know, when people enter this sort of relaxed, happy, slightly cosmic space that's got this word toenu, which I think is fantastic. I love the word too. And I I want to debate you with that because I was going to use the uh American translation and just call it nirvana. Yeah. Exactly. It's that, you know, this feeling, right? So there is a study uh where they looked at the effects of three cycles of sauna cold rest um and looked at EEG brain recordings to see what does it do to your sort of brain waves and then what does it do to your sort of emotional state and you know they found that the that that cycle of things lowered your heart rate made you happier made you more relaxed made you enter this sort likely to enter this this tot state. Uh and it changed the brain waves which is really interesting. It u it increased especially this this band of EEG signal called theta which is also increased by meditation and increased by
increased by meditation and increased by psychedelics. And uh the more it increased theta the better people felt afterwards which is pretty compelling. That's pretty interesting. Now there was no control condition. So nobody said well uh well there was a control condition. They just had people do nothing. um or sit in tep and water I think but but basically nothing but that's very encouraging right and that but that that there's another study where they looked at the effect of cold exposure on in habitual cold water swimmers on brown atapost tissue. You know what they call bat? It it it's this unique fat that basically does nothing but produce heat. Um and they mo almost all of the swimmers were also sauna users. Now they that doesn't mean they're going you know sauna swim but but they you know that combination and they found that those people generally were more relaxed but also that they they were able to generate body temperature more efficiently which you know is kind of a big interest of mine because it's linked to the to mood. Um, that's what we've got, right? So, there's a little bit of a suggestion, but what hasn't been done and what we're going to do out in Vale is one, directly compare just heat to the heat cold, right? And two, uh, look at it in folks that meet clinical criteria for depression because, you know, these other studies, they're just taking people that are just, you know, whatever, but they're not like, "Oh my
whatever, but they're not like, "Oh my god, I'm really depressed." So that's, you know, this this is the thing I'm most excited about because, you know, it's an open question. It'll be really interesting to see. Um, just to interject. So, uh, the facilities at Veil and and I I have to put my, um, you know, my hand into this conversation about the type of, um, hot and cold. And I can only speak kind of intuitively and I I know you and I have shared this, but um there is one thing about a clinical setting where there's a cold plunge tank and a sauna most likely heated by electric uh in a clinical environment, right? And then that will provide results. You know, a lot of them physical driven results to help the mental state. We know this and it'll be very exciting to lean into that. But what about a facility in nature and the ability to use wood burning sauna for example and uh you know a mountain stream and fresh air and you know bringing nature into the fold. Is is that too aggressive um at this stage or or do you think that there's a chance for that type of environment for study? So I think they're not mutually exclusive. We're doing it first in a clinical setting because we're interested in making this part of a clinical program, right? Where instead of coming in and, you know, getting your your Prozac, your paxel, you could actually come into a clinic and do this. Now though, it's interesting. I'm
Now, now though, it's interesting. I'm going to get Don't let me forget to get a gentleman named Chris Lindley on with you. Chris Lindley is the executive director of Eagle Valley Behavioral Health. So, the larger institution of which I now direct research. He's a fascinating character and he is completely committed to cold plunge. He does it every day. Um like intensely. He's an old special ops guy in the military's tough as nails. But he's built himself just such a sauna way way up against the flat tops out in the woods at at like 9 10, 000 feet out in Colorado. And he's got a coal plunge right next to it. I don't think he's got a stream running by, but it's it's what you're talking about, right? and and he's got a vision of of sort of implementing this sort of thing into uh you know perhaps larger interventions you know where you come somewhere for a few days and you get off the grid yeah and you eat healthy and you do this right so we should I I'm sure he'd be happy to talk to you and he you know because so one of the interesting things about veil is there really is this commitment to I think the in general the kind of vision you have right which is that so I can take it and do it in a clinical setting and there's reasons for doing that and if it works that is both proof of concept and it's it and it says hey we could do this you can come into you know the outpatient thing and get this right and if I could interject it's also
right and if I could interject it's also replicable to other facilities if it's in a clinical environment correct exactly that's exactly right but there may be I'm I'm quite sure you're right that there may be deeper effects that can be reached by doing exactly what you're talking about. I I'm extremely interested in the context in which things are done. Turns out increasingly context is hugely powerful. It really influences outcomes, you know. Um and so yeah, I think that this I have a real interest in in looking at that. So then of course you know somewhere down the road a a really interesting study to be done would be to take people that are depressed let's say if we wanted to focus on depression and randomize them to either get the treatment in the clinic or go up and get a similar you know treatment and of course you know then you could see now you know the people would say well yeah but when you're going out into nature that's beautiful and you're getting away from your troubles and so it's not a fair comparison to which I say well exactly But that's what we're looking at, right? It's the not fair part of it that that if there was a way to operationalize this and in any way bring it to scale, you know, why wouldn't you want to get the the kind of ultimate? Yeah. Or or what we call the cumulative effect, right? like you know sauna in nature it's it's bigger than you know it becomes compounding and again this is
becomes compounding and again this is very subjective but subjectivity in my view with sauna leads to objectivity and and where I'm going with that is when I do when I travel like when I experience really good heat and a good sauna environment in other countries and stuff it's ealitarian it's universal and there's something magical within that you know we call them microclimates or environments that is truly special. But but maybe I'm getting way ahead of myself. Maybe the the short-term wins will be the our ability through veil as as kind of maybe an epicenter is to to create this clinical environment where we're just, you know, focusing on some of the uh the facts, you know, like like the temperature variations and the durations of of protocols and stuff like that. I mean, yes. Is that That's right. And and there's another advantage which is sort of the optics of things in this right so let's say so veil is really interesting because they have gone from in the last six seven years they've gone from really basically having no mental health services to having one of the finest mental health programs in the country I think and they have all sorts of interesting things like they have a transpranial magnetic stimulation machine you know it it zaps your brain and it's very effective for people that have failed other anti-depressants but you know so imagine in a clinic where you walk into one room and it's got this fancy, you know, TMS machine and then you walk into another room and it's got the the dome sauna and the cold plunge and you say these are sort of equivalent
and you say these are sort of equivalent things, right? So that also then becomes the sort of really it what's the word? Um it I'm blocking on a word, but it basically makes the heat and cold treatment kind of more official, right? It it gives it objectify or or Yeah. It makes it Yeah. It it gives it status I guess in a way as a real medical treatment, right? And then you know you can leverage that. Yes. To say well can we can it be optimized? Because something that you talk about Glenn that frankly I hadn't thought about until you started talking to me was this idea that that there are levels of sauna or like sauna is a little bit like wine right? that you know that you can find these really fine wines and that there are they're differential experiences when you do that, right? That you that is really fascinating because we nobody in in the small group of people that are scientifically investigating heat in particular as a mental health treatment. None of us are thinking that way. Thank you for bringing that up and and humbling the u the research uh industry of where we are today because I'm very delicate about this thing because I don't want to come across as snobby when it comes to good sauna. Um but heat is not heat, right? like there's a lot of variables and and I'd like to also dive into this magic 101. 3 body temperature stuff because I've been thinking a lot
stuff because I've been thinking a lot about that uh after our conversation and and I mean if we're if our patients in our study group have have mental you know are suffering like you know emotionally or mentally or you know have this like if we can create a good environment that can get the body temperature up maybe not to that 101. 3 but do it in a an environment, a place that isn't a closet, but has great heat, steam, ventilation. I mean, intuitively, I I know that the results will be better. Um, and again, I'm I'm projecting, and maybe that's not how we should be doing research and stuff, but I did want to make a a point to that that um could it be that body temperature maybe is a little bit less significant than the quality of the heat? Don't know. Nobody's ever studied that. But that's a but these are all empirical questions, right? I mean they're all things that could be studied. I mean we know and when I say no I put it in quotes because these are small studies you know but in the largest of the studies we did which was not large but uh I if you looked at if you so we did a study in about 33 people something like that 34 people and half of them got really high heat and most of them got up around 101. 3 we had a control condition which provided just a little bit of heat it fooled them what we didn't anticipate is that depressed people, you know, depressed people don't do as good a job of cooling off. And so even though the
of cooling off. And so even though the heat was sort of modest, many of them their their temperature went up much higher than they would have wanted. So that but it allowed us to say, well, is there any correlation between how hot people got and then how undepressed they were over the subsequent six weeks. The correlation, it wasn't statistically significant, but if you looked at a graph, you could see that in general, the warmer people got, the more undepressed they got. Um, now we didn't go above 101. 3 because in the medical hyperothermia world that's sort of the upper limit of what they call fever range or mild intensity hypothermia. I laugh at mild intensity. 101. 3 is not mild. You think you're you're cooked to death. But but beyond that, you start moving into these realms where in in medical studies where they've used hypothermia for cancer, people start having more significant side effects and it's riskier, you know. So, I mean that there's that's why we kind of settled on 101. 3 or 385. It's just that we we didn't want to invoke the dangers of going higher. Um, but we don't know, you know, all we know is that within that particular very medicalized research environment, as you went up on the temperature, things got better. But we don't know. Maybe although the risks are greater, maybe if we push people a little bit more, you know, we would have seen a better result. Or maybe not, right? But the question, so your question is one that could be answered pretty straightforwardly in a study. You could take people and randomize them. Half of them would get what we're doing and we we wish to get them up to 101. 3.
we wish to get them up to 101. 3. The other half would get an experience in a topflight sauna, right? and you'd you'd agree upon something lower, I don't know, like 100. 5 or something like Mhm. And then you look and see um it's very interesting the the and then you can see how the two looked and and it may well be that the lower temperature in whether it's because there are direct physiologic effects of a better kind of sauna environment whether it's psychological but you know it's an open question and it would be an interesting thing to do though because uh 101. 3 is pretty hot. Yeah. pretty high. And I think about people who are depressed and and we we shared on this last last call, but they go to a clinical setting and then they're in a claustrophobic dome. Um that's not a great environment for well their heads stick out. That helps with the claustrophobia. So their heads are out. Um so claustrophobia, we don't find that as much. We find that um it's hot. So the real challenge for people is that um to get that hot, you know, you're in that dome with that infrared heating on average for an hour, hour and a half to hit that. Yeah. It's a lot. So, we put like we put a cold Yeah. We put a cold compress on the forehead. There's somebody with you the whole time, right? You know, we monitor your heart rate and your
your your heart rate and your body temperature. So it's really more it is more like a medical it's a it's like this very much more controlled medical setting. it you know where and there there's a background for this which is you know there is this whole literature of using uh hypothermia like higher temperature hypothermia as a cancer treatment right and uh the it's used fairly widely in Europe especially Germany for autoimmune conditions like ankylo and spondilitis and rheumatoid arthritis okay and they do it a certain way and and we're we're we owe a great deal to a gentleman named Stefan heckle who is a fascinating fellow who has a company and it's called Eckle and and the company builds these very expensive uh infrared hypothermia machines and it's a real medical device like we've had a very hard time Harvard is doing studies with it I gave them one of our hypothermia machines but you have to get approval from the FDA because it's like a badass medical device basically right and that device you know it's a tent and your head sticks out and there's these big barrel infrared lights that come down on your chest and you lay there and your head's out and and because this was how it was done and so when we and I can't remember if I told this story last time but I probably did but how we got into the business was there were these two students who were in a psychonurium immunology clinical program in Austria in Europe and I was teaching them for a week in Austria back
teaching them for a week in Austria back you know 15 years ago and they shared my interest in hypothermia and they found one of these machines in the basement of a hospital. It had been a regular hospital, converted to a psych hospital. One of the guys was an engineer and he rebuilt the machine, got it all, but this was for cancer, right? And so he ran a cancer protocol, you know, he he got to know Stefan Heckle and they said, "Well, this is how we do it." And we did it that way. And then we saw these big results, right? So you know when you've got a winning hand in research, you want to keep with your winning hand and then we replicated those findings and then you know the but the problem is that this machine is very expensive right um and it you got to jump through all these hoops use it with the FDA that's where Ashley Mason who I know you've talked to out at UCSF my colleague there had this brilliant idea of can we do the same thing with you know commercially aail available things that are not under FDA suppression basically and yes and we can and she's seeing anti-depressant effects but it copies some of that same stuff with the heads out and you're cooling the head down that let people sort of get to that temperature so that's that's where the field is in terms of what we're doing right and so there's like a legacy effect there um it does appear that works that hypothermia works that what you're talking out is an entirely it's a different procedure. It's not
it's a different procedure. It's not altogether different. Um and again it's first off there's a lot less literature on it like rigorous scientific literature but the other thing is that we don't know how it would compare and I'd be zero surprised if it worked better. you know, that's why I'm kind of interested in this, right? And I know that that out in Vale, we have this real com we have a commitment, but we also have a real interest in sort of ancient practices and sort of recapitulating things in ways that we know work, right? And so, and again, this is why we're so interested in studying the combination of heat and cold and seeing what we see. Beautiful. Yeah, this is really exciting. And um so you know my initial question to you I guess maybe I did I ask like what's your interest level one through 10 and getting back in the the contrast therapy business. Oh it's high it's eight or nine. Yeah it's great because I know you're a busy man. I mean uh psychedelics is a big part of your your focus right now. Um, and I won't put you on the spot and ask, you know, the slice of the pie and how how big uh that is relative to this this hot cold stuff, but um I I know veil is an important part of what you're doing and and your your future and your focus. Um but these converge, don't they? They do converge. Absolutely. So, you know, the psychedelic work uh spreads across University of Wisconsin. spreads across Emory Eona Institute. But at Veil, we're doing two initial studies.
Veil, we're doing two initial studies. One is a psychedelic study and one is a heat versus heat and cold study. So from the veil aspect, they're they're 5050. And I you know, it's really interesting. I I frankly think many of the folks out that we're working with in Vil are more excited about the hot cold. I Yeah. In terms of measuring excitement, if we if I had a a thermometer, I would love to hop in my car right now, pick you up in Madison, kidnap you, and we road trip down to Vale and uh and and you know, make it hang out and be there for some time to put together some of the baselines and and of the of future research. But I don't think that that extreme has to happen. But I sure am pleased with where things are right now today. um based on everything we've been talking about. Yeah, absolutely. Well, for sure. The study uh the first study even though done in a sort of clinical environment, it's going to inform a lot uh about how we think about traditional practice of sauna, right? So, I mean that's Yeah. Because it it's going to capture it's not going to capture there's all sorts of other elements all the social elements, you know, and that that part. But I those You know, those I think are it's really interesting and I know Ashley is out at UCF's interested in this. We all are. Yeah. So, I think that you know, one of the good things about something like this line of research is there's more work to do than I will have time in my lifetime,
do than I will have time in my lifetime, you know. Yeah. Really work out. But these are great um you know, stepping stones. I I think there's a clear trajectory, you know, just based on the simple this conversation and a simple outline toward, you know, adjacencies like the the first study as a foundation for the next. And I I think you've lived most of this your career, so I I don't want to try to summarize it in simple terms, but but I I for one see some real exciting directions because one of I mean, I'm just speaking on a personal level. One of my frustrations for close to 30 years now. I wouldn't even call it a frustration. I mean, I have this great joy of this authentic practice and I do it, you know, I've been doing this consistently for 30 years and I help others, you know, achieve it for themselves. And there is this intangible of of quote unquote good sauna that um I just am committed to help bring into the you know the research world um in in a way that you know is productive. Um so so I I want to lend all of my resources uh or and passion to help help in that world. But I I also recognize that there's a a step to this. There are steps involved and the the clinical aspect is certainly where we are today, right? Mhm. Yes, I think that's right. Yeah. Cool. So, I won't keep you a lot longer here. I love these short check-ins because the world is moving so fast in this this space. Um so, if we
fast in this this space. Um so, if we could check in again maybe, you know, 30 days something and and we have a little bit of followup I could do with you on on email um with some connection points. Yeah, of course. Yeah, absolutely. That'd be great. Chuck, um before we run off, I have to revisit our our first sauna talk. Um have you had any thought about in this magical world of of having a sauna with anybody in the world, past or present, alive? Uh um who's the first person that comes to mind that you'd like to sit on the bench with? Man, that is such an interesting question. Um, you know, it's odd. The first person that popped in my mind was Isaac Newton, right? And if you say why Isaac Newton because, you know, he's like one of the most brilliant men in history, but he was also kind of nutty. And I have an interest. I'd love to know like if you met a guy like that in person, you know, would he mostly seem brilliant, mostly seem nutty? But we could think about I mean there's all sorts of people that would be really you know powerful to sit with. I know the Daly Lama which is another whole long story but I there there was a Tibetan a great Tibetan master in the 20th century called Dilkini and he's huge guy. You need a big sauna but um that's the other guy that comes to mind. I'd need an interpreter.
interpreter. Uh, of course. Well, there'd be three. Yes, there' be three of you on the sauna bench. The interpreter would be maybe on the low bench sweating it out trying to get the translation. But, you know, this is it's a loaded question to ask you this speak any all of my guests to Sama talk because really there the the environment in the on the Sama bench is egalitarian, right? like there, you know, there are no hierarchies like there, you know, you don't have titles, you know, we're just humans and we're all living, you know, on on very equal terms and I think it's a wonderful environment for very casual conversations. um they can get kind of heavy if if you allow them. But you know like in the old country over in Finland and stuff there's it there's a gentle rule that you know you behave in sauna as you would in in church you know like and I don't think you talk politics much in church you know or or contentious conversation. So it's a wonderful space as as we know you know for for convergence of thought and ideas and commonalities and and you know I I can't remember if I told you this in our the first last time we talked but we've never objectively measured it exactly but we've observed that people in when we stick them in the heat machine so this isn't even a sauna this is back in the clinic they tend to become talkative and revealing and confessional people start talking about their their feelings, their internal life. In that first study
their internal life. In that first study that we did in Austria, Switzerland, uh the uh my student who he would sit with the people through the sessions and they would say things like, "Well, I never told anybody this, but you know, because they were very depressed, right? They were starting to so that confessional nature of it." When we did the first study in Arizona, um the research team that worked with me, we kept putting them in in the machine to test it and they would not let me be the person sitting there because they didn't want the boss to hear what they had to say. Right. Exactly. So, I mean, we've Yeah, it's really interesting. We've observed this a little bit that Right. The heat I think the heat is a pro-social. I I think, you know, I I have this little theory that I've never proven, but I think hyperothermia is an anti-depressant modality because it's a pro-social modality. I think what it does is it sort of opens people up to this feeling of connectivity, connectivity with other people, connectivity with the world. That was one of the things that emerged from that tow study was that people felt more sort of, you know, kind of blissfully connected. Um, and you know, I did a Sue sweat lodge one time. Now, that was unbearably hot. Oh my god. Heaven. But that's what it does. And you're talking to people and you come out of there and you feel this sort of connection with them and this sort of inspiration and you're part of something larger. And, you know, when you feel that way, it's harder to feel depressed. Absolutely. Oh, that's so well said. And what what a great nugget there. Um I I'm hoping I'm going to be able to translate
hoping I'm going to be able to translate some of this um podcast because that last couple of minutes I really feel hits hits the core of um another aspect to the health benefits of sauna and cold is this journey we take together um you know as a group uh str you know strangers become friends because of this common journey through enjoyment you know it's an hour and a half you know hot hot, cold, rest, repeat this whole thing. Um, and and when we go on a a journey together, I think there's there's a level of um trust that's earned and appreciated through the experience and and yeah, I mean that just being able to talk is healing. Um, so yeah, it's multi - multi-dimensional I think is really what is so exciting about the veil project specifically and Sona and cold research collectively. So um um so we we have great foundation I think Chuck to run from. Um so without further ado, I I want to thank you again for being a guest on Sonot Talk. Um any final thoughts or or um next steps? Um uh anything for our listeners that you wanted to bring out? Well, I very much like the idea of uh checking back in with you. You know, research takes a while. Um I I spent the back half of the Christmas holiday. I'm working on the protocol for the sauna heat cold study. Um but yeah, I encourage people Eagle Valley Behavioral
encourage people Eagle Valley Behavioral Health. If you Google that, check out the website. Um we have lectures. We have a free monthly lecture. We've had some really famous people. We've got Steve Gorgeous coming on in spring, the father of the polyagal theory. We have some really really uh interesting folks coming on. And so there's a lot of resources there. you can follow along with what we're doing because as I say, I think this is really going to be a for people that are interested in in hyperothermia, but especially traditional sauna of the research places in the world that we're building out. I think this is going to be a key place. Beautiful. Chuck, thanks so much and look forward to to our next chat and and visit as we advance this this great work. Absolutely, Glenn. Nice to talk to you, man. Right on, man.
Transcript auto-generated by YouTube. Verbatim — duplicates intentionally preserved.
Sauna raises core temperature, heart rate, circulation, and thermal stress chemistry. Those changes are not only physical. The immune system, autonomic nervous system, and brain are constantly in conversation.
That is why heat research is interesting for mood. A shift in the body can become a shift in felt experience: quieter tension, softer rumination, more room to breathe.
The Japanese word totonou describes the calm clarity that can follow sauna, cold, and rest. In plain language, the body moves through activation, cooling, and recovery. Heart rate settles. Attention changes. The nervous system finds a different rhythm.
For regular sauna users, this is familiar. For researchers, it is becoming measurable.
The most promising work is not trying to make sauna mystical. It is studying what traditional heat practices have long suggested: temperature can shape physiology, and physiology can shape mood.
That bridge matters. It gives an old ritual a modern vocabulary without stripping away its humanity.
Resilience is built when the signal is strong enough to adapt to, and measured enough to return from.
Think of sauna as a recovery signal for both body and mood.
Use contrast in rounds: heat, cool, rest, then reassess.
Respect mental health care as clinical care; thermal practice can support, not replace, professional treatment.
