The benefits of sauna | Andrew Huberman and Lex Fridman

Introduction & Context

00: 00 so there are three ways you can do sauna that i can just toss out as like brief things if you want to get a really big growth hormone release for sake of metabolism fat loss you're training really really hard in jiu jitsu and you want to recover you don't want a sauna too often because the study that um identified this massive 16-fold increase in growth hormone they had people do this it's crazy they got into okay temperatures are 80 to 100 degrees centigrade so that's 176 degrees fahrenheit to 212 degrees fahrenheit for 5 to 30 minutes is the typical ranges that people work in in these research studies for maximum growth hormone hormone release don't do sauna more than once a week but get into the sauna for 30 minutes as hot as you can safely tolerate so probably for you that'll be 210 because you're i suspect you'll be on the high end of things then get out for five to ten minutes no cold exposure get back in the sauna for 30 minutes then they had them do it

01: 00 30 minutes then they had them do it again out for five minutes back for 30 minutes out for five minutes back for three minutes they had them do two hours of sauna exposure to get that growth hormone release now for the reduction in likelihood of dying of a cardiovascular event stroke or otherwise the more often you do sauna the better so if you look at all calls all cause mortality or death due to cardiovascular events and you look at sauna use frequencies using the same parameters 80 to 100 degrees centigrade one to seven times per week basically the more often you get into the sauna for 30 minutes across the week so 30 minutes a day is better than four times a week is better than two times a week and two times a week is better than one and the reductions in mortality are really impressive 27 if you get into the sauna the way i just described not the two hours a day but 30 minutes twice a week or three times per week you reduce the likelihood of dying of a cardiovascular event by 27 if you do it four or more times per week

02: 00 if you do it four or more times per week you reduce the probability of dying by 50 of a cardiovascular event and in these studies they rule out other things that people are doing smoking they even ask them do you live in an apartment are you in a happy relationship like they evaluate other potentially confounding variables now for people that don't have access to a sauna a hot water bath or hot tub is going to be your next best bet and if you don't have access to that do like the wrestlers do which is you know put on two sets of sweats and a hoodie and a stocking cap and wrap yourself in plastics underneath all that and go for a run but don't please nobody die of hypothermia i mean you can die of warming up too much is this experience um pleasant or stressful in the way so is it as stressful as an ice bath okay great question people always ask how cold to make the ice bath or the cold water or the shower you want it to be uncomfortably cold meaning you want to feel like i really want to get out but you can safely stay in and that's going to vary by person

03: 00 in and that's going to vary by person and experience with it experience yeah with the sauna it's the same thing how hot to make it well don't kill yourself obviously be smart if you're pregnant you shouldn't be doing this anyway um but it's very clear that what you need is the release of something called dinorphin we have endorphin which makes us feel good it binds to these mu opioid receptors in the body you have dinorphin which is the terrible feeling that you get when you're in really hot temperatures it's also the terrible effect that alcoholics feel when they are in withdrawal you feel agitated you want to get out it's really unpleasant it's dinorphin binding to the so-called kappa opioid receptor is that's what you're trying to trigger when you do that a number of things happen you set off heat shock proteins that go repair broken proteins and misfolded proteins it also makes it so that later endorphin binds its receptor more strongly so when you have this uncomfortable experience in the heat you literally feel better in real life

04: 00 you literally feel better in real life when pleasurable vents come on uh when you experience them in the same way i like to say this that when you get into a cold ice bath or cold shower the increase in epinephrine and dopamine is two to three hundred percent these are huge increases and they last many hours this is shown because lately i've been getting a little bit of pushback on twitter that which is you know um interesting place um people say well that's just in mice no all the studies i just referred to are all done in humans men and women fairly broad age ranges so you want to be uncomfortable in the cold you want to be uncomfortable in the heat this is why i'm not a big fan of infrared saunas because they only go up to about 160 170 degrees infrared light and far red light of all kinds has been shown to be beneficial for wound healing acne skin eyes there are even guys now putting on their testicles because it can increase testosterone and sperm production yeah hormone release but in terms of the sauna you want that

05: 00 in terms of the sauna you want that strong heat stimulus yeah and that's when you get crawl up to the 200 mark and so on whenever i'm in new york and there's also one in san francisco although the one in san francisco is is clothing optional just to warn people there's a place called archimedes banya is there any scientific evidence that being naked is beneficial in the sauna well in certain contexts it leads to um childbirth okay i'll have to read up on that i read that song but um i suppose it's not required right for childbirth but um but in all seriousness you know in new york i'll go to a place called spa 88 and actually uh khabib's picture is on the wall he goes there and it's a there that one it's clothing it they require clothing i only just say that because it can be a little bit of a shock to people sometimes if they kind of walk in there a bunch of naked people the one in san francisco i if i go i'm clothed mostly because you know i run into co-workers or things like that you know i i sort of more uh old-fashioned in that way i suppose but um do you like to wear clothes they're on co-workers yes yeah in general yeah i mean just to me it just seems like you know that just

Key Insights & Applications

06: 00 me it just seems like you know that just be aware but but nonetheless the banjas have very hot saunas because they're russian owned and in new york there's one on the lower east side but the spy 88 place they have some saunas that the moment i get into those i have a hard time catching a full breath it burns they've got a cold dunk that's like a shock and then they've got a sauna a wet sauna steam room that's a little mellower so the nice thing about abanya is you can kind of find your place and then they do the plaza where they take the eucalyptus leaves and you can pay someone and you basically you cover your groin and then they beat you with the leaves and it's supposed to bring the vasculature to the surface i've only done it once and frankly i found it to be a little bit um unnerving i didn't really like the experience but i i'll try and get into a sauna as often as i possibly can which is you know once or three times per week and i try and do the cold exposure shower or immersion but early in the day because it really wakes you up one of my favorite things i've listened to i wish there was

07: 00 things i've listened to i wish there was a video is uh listening to a bunch of stuff with rick rubin and um he did a thing with tim ferriss like the tim ferriss podcast i don't know if you've ever heard it but he forced them to do they did the podcast in a sauna and i don't think at the time tim ferriss was adapted yeah if you're not heat adapted it can be pretty stressful and i mean obviously the whole experience is stressful as a somebody with with microphones like what what is happening but i just love that tim was vulnerable enough to kind of give himself over to whatever the hell this experience is and i i'm just so happy that rick like pushed that kind of idea and just let's let's do it that's a very rick rubin kind of thing to do and we must not we like we must do this this has to be done a podcast that was done from asana continuously would be really interesting like you could call it like the pressure cooker or something oh i mean like a regular pot yeah like yes you have to sit with your guests in the

08: 00 you have to sit with your guests in the sauna um or they have to sit in the sauna well that was one of the interesting things is um it was a sad thing because i believe there's no video of that podcast but you could tell there was a kind of there was suffering and especially it was like a degradation he he started over time not being able to put words together correctly which he's very eloquent and so you could see there's like there's a struggle heat and cold pull you down from the inside you have to i mean there's a reason why the screening process for um make you know sealed seal they call it seal training but it's really screening and training involves cold waters because you know if you're in the heat too long you'll die or damaged tissue in cold you can do it quite extensively before you die or damaged tissue but it is stressful i was going to say one thing that um i sometimes enjoy seeing these social media posts where people get into the ice bath they'll look really stoic like they're really tough

09: 00 they're really tough um but actually that's the wimpy way to go through it when you get into cold water if you stay very still you develop a thermal sheath around you that you're warming yourself the really bold way is to get in and continue to sift your arms and legs and it ends up feeling miserably colder and there's no sheath because there's you're breaking up them they're bringing up that thermal layer and then when you get out you'll notice a lot of people huddle or they'll they'll put or they'll grab the towel in general that's me i'll get back i'll get into the sauna but if you really want to stimulate the big increases in metabolism you stand out there and you dry off with arms extended in open air and as that water evaporates off you it is really cold but your body is forced to activate a number of the warming programs related to metabolism this is the beautiful work of a woman named susannah soberg who's um scandinavian she published this paper last year in cell reports medicine and so i call this the soberg principle which is if you're doing ice and heat for whatever reason it doesn't matter if

10: 00 for whatever reason it doesn't matter if you end on heat or cold but if you're using cold specifically to stimulate an increase in metabolism end with cold that's the sobering principle and with cold yeah if you're alternating and then if you want to do it the tough way you let the shivering so you just stand out and let the water evaporate yeah i mean if you ever waded into a cold ocean you know everybody's kind of like holding themselves you know if you really just if you let yourself extend your limbs and move them around a bit so you break up that thermal layer uh that's that's the tough way to do it so when i see people on social media getting in and they're like really tough and trying to look hard yeah you want to be moving around yeah smiling talking moving around is way way colder yeah yeah are you able to talk can you do so you suggest the podcast in the sauna how about this i proposed this since i got you you want to do the next podcast i'll get two so the folks from the plunge uh maybe could bring lexa a plunge he certainly uh deserves one and uh we can go side-by - side coffin style

11: 00 uh we can go side-by - side coffin style or we can face one another well we said we should do each other's podcasts and maybe next year i can't wait to have you back on i mean we only scratched the surface well let's do at least part of the next human lab podcast either in the i have a sauna and a cold plunge so we could do yeah yeah we could do in we do a sauna and a cold plunge version i wonder the recording how the recording works if there were a bit of an echo in the sauna i'm sure we can take out the reverb you

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