Is Sauna ACTUALLY Doing Anything (Research Based Discussion

00:00gotcha so you mentioned Ronda Patrick uh who is at least to me kind of known as like a big uh SAA person you know she had a a really great review review she wrote um about just covering kind of all things sauna um which I highly recommend uh people go and read I'm curious what your thoughts are in terms of sauna in general for like Health uh but also for performance um maybe there are some people who who regular endurance training isn't kind of feasible for but they could go sit in the sauna um and then also even for people who are kind of more competitive endurance athletes from what I looked through there isn't a ton of research um but I saw some kind of decently ecologically valid uh research particularly one study by I think scoon at all where they had subjects run running uh you know throughout the week and I think three times per week they would go in the sauna for 30 minutes after their running

01:00session and they um I think they were pretty you know High performing Runners at least for the late public I think they were running like 16 or 17 minute uh 5Ks which you know isn't anything crazy but for like the lay person that's pretty darn fast you know they weren't you know novices and they saw some you know pretty meaningful increases uh in you know race time and stuff or maybe they didn't measure race time maybe it was just like time to fatigue type tests um but yeah I'm curious what your thoughts are in terms of uh how sauna kind of interplays with endurance training in general or maybe independent benefits from sauna yeah we can talk about maybe just the independent benefits and then because there are some uh studies on the sauna in endurance training which are pretty cool and they've actually informed a lot of kind of the protocols that I actually use for myself I've tried some of these out so um in general so I think an interesting way to think about the sauna is almost as an exercise

02:00mimetic so what I mean by that is that getting in the sauna will elicit several many of the same physiological effects as exercise so when you get in the sauna and independent of like muscle contraction which is kind of interesting which is why one the sauna isn't an exercise replacement but it can almost be a either an adjunct to or you know a the next best thing to exercise like you said if people are unable to to exercise um so when you get in the sauna you know it's hot enough and if you stay in there for for long enough um you'll begin to sweat something that also happens during exercise because your body temperature is increasing your core body temperature is increasing um your heart rate starts to elevate and you know it can get as high as 100 beats per minute to you know anywhere near 150 160 again depending on how hydrated you are and how long you stay in the sauna um and one of the other things that happens is your blood

03:00vessels begin to dilate again that's to increase blood flow to the skin to you know cause you to sweat and also to dissipate heat to try to core uh cool down your your core body temperature and so all of the same things you know happen during exercise and for that reason you can get some of the same adaptations with regular Sonic exposure that you do with exercise you know it's kind of an emerging area of research uh and at least the randomized controlled studies on the Sonic use but you know there have been several studies showing sauna acutely reduces blood pressure and improves endothelial function um and then chronically so repeated sauna use over six to eight weeks or you know similar durations can improve your endothelial function and reduce kind of your resting blood pressure and so to some of the similar degrees as as exercise would so there's definitely good not only randomized control trials but just I mean mechanistic evidence I mean if something acutely like the sauna

04:00is going to lower blood pressure and it shares some some of the same physiological mechanisms like exercise we can reasonably you know infer that it's going to have some of these same chronic long-term health benefits um I think that's supported by some of these observational Studies by I'm forgetting the first author's name but a group out of Sweden or Finland I think and they've published just a ton of kind of observational research on sauna users versus non sauna users and their risks for dementia all cause mortality cardiovascular mortality always lower in the sauna users and dose dependently too which is kind of interesting and actually would almost impli that there is a you know a lot of people with auna research like to claim well if you have access to a sauna you're likely have a higher socioeconomic status you're maybe just it's a healthy user bias you know you engage in other healthier lifestyle behaviors but one of the unique things about the sauna research is kind of like most people in Finland and these Nordic countries have access to a sauna so that

05:00kind of levels the playing field and then if you show a dose dependent response well the more you use the sauna the the lower your risk for all cause mortality that seems to indicate a direct like a causal effect on sauna exposure in these Health outcomes which which is pretty interesting um so again if I think it can be very useful for say somebody who may not have may not want to do another exercise session during the week or something like that but they have 20 to 30 minutes to go to a sauna it could kind of be this extra add-on to improve your cardiovascular health um for those maybe even unable to exercise so say like there have been several times where I'm like injured I can't run I can't really work out that much man I'll use the sauna almost as like my daily exercise session and sitting there for you know an hour or something like that just to get like the same feeling as I would with exercise um but if you're injured or unable to exercise and trying to maintain some of your cardiac and cardiovascular adaptation I think

06:00the sauna can be good for that maybe elderly individuals and people like that you know noting the the safety issues and you have to be able to tolerate the sauna for an extended period of time obviously um and then to the use of sauna as a sort of adjunct to endurance training and strength training so both there I think with endurance training it seems to be a way to enhance the adaptations to endurance training so you mentioned one study in Runners and I've seen I think two or three studies in Runners and maybe even one study in cardiac Rehabilitation patients or or someone like that but they typically uh typically Implement post exercise sauna three times per week for like 20 to 30 minutes after exercise so the participants will complete the exercise maybe that's a aerobic exercise training session maybe it's just a body weight training session if it's like cardiac rehab patients or or someone like that and then they'll do the sauna for 20 to 30 minutes afterwards and they show that compared to exercise alone you can get

07:00benefits for VO2 max so it'll increase more than sauna Alone um and then I think most of the studies they maybe don't use a um they use like a time to exhaustion or they'll look at exercise in the heat so if you do sauna plus exercise it tends to improve exercise performance in the heat so that could be of particular relevance for athletes before the summer I mean I know you know it's about to be J June July August here in Texas so I'm like ramp up my sa of use to try to get those adaptations before the heat comes um but it seems that doing that just two to three times a week after your exercise session can be good and what I like to do you don't have to do this I think the time in between may be of minor importance but it could be of significant importance so I try to limit that time between when I finish my exercise session my aerobic exercise session and so my run in this case and the sauna so oftentimes what I've been doing is doing my run from the gym I'll finish I'll kind of just get in

08:00the locker room change my clothes hop right in the sauna barely enough time for my heart rate to even come down that much like I'm still sweating as I enter the sauna so it almost is just like extending you know say I did a 80-minute run it's almost extending that to a 140 150 minute run in terms of the heart rate response that I get um I find that kind of fun it's very stressful um so you don't want to do it too much again I think two to three times a week you don't want to do it after every single run uh during the week I mean if you're running two to three times week then you're doing it every time but because it is a stress you know you feel pretty pretty depleted after that and you literally are you know you're dehydrated but um it's kind of a fun way to add on to the exercise session and I'm not aware of a ton of studies regarding strength training but I do believe that there's one um showing enhanced strength gains if they combined you know sauna with strength training and so I love to do that as well typically if I'm doing a run I'll maybe do my strength training and then go down into the Sonic it's just a great way to kind of end your

09:00session but I think it can also promote gains and strength um the mechanisms for that kind of are speculative but you know it could involve an increase in growth hormone induced by the sauna um heat shock proteins things like that you know you're just adding on that additional stress um to your strength training session and I think that's a good way to probably add on to your games as well yeah I think in terms of the strength stuff or at least uh from a muscle mass perspective haven't read maybe I missed it uh something about specifically combining the two but I am familiar from a mus muscle atrophy perspective there's one study that didn't use sauna but they Ed kind of localized heat therapy I think it was like dimy or something um not even entirely sure what that is but localized heat therapy um to the quad and they had subjects I think casted for like a week or two weeks or whatever and they had still some muscle atrophy from not using the leg but significantly less than the

10:00control group um which was a placebo control group they were still getting the device put on them and it was heated to some degree but I forget exactly how they tracked but they had controlled it to make sure it was kind of a true sham um so yeah I think that's pretty interesting I think there also might be some stuff in like rodents which you know of course isn't maybe directly uh transferable but good kind of hypothesis generating type stuff

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