Hello there. This episode, you're about to listen, to is a recorded interview, which I was involved in as a guest with co-founder of Med cram videos, physician assistant, Kyle, all red with permission. I am sharing it with all of you here on the Family Fitness Channel, this discussion is by far, one of the most well-rounded discussions. I've had on the subject of Sanaa. It's nearly an hour and a half long and covers many different aspects while we do discuss. Many of my
Perennial favorites. When it comes to this topic such as the physiological benefits of sauna use and indeed some of the underlying mechanisms of those benefits. In addition to that. However, you'll hear a few new angles that maybe you haven't heard or haven't been circulating as widely yet. For example, my personal story on how I became interested in saunas, details of my personal sauna protocol and what I do while I'm in the sauna endorphins opiate receptors depression and sauna use
Heat increases brain. Derived neurotrophic factor bdnf, and how that may affect neuroplasticity, the emerging research suggesting saunas, might be beneficial for depression, which heavy metals and toxins are robustly excreted, through sweat, from Sanaa use how sauna use mimics moderate-intensity aerobic exercise and how people that exercise and use the sauna have a better cardiorespiratory Fitness than people that exercise alone infrared.
Sana benefits versus traditional Finnish sauna benefits, whether hot showers are hot baths, can mimics on a benefits hydration before. And after sauna bathing cold exposure, after sauna use how to tell if you're in the sauna, for too long contraindications or people who should not use the sauna, continuous glucose monitors in sauna use and so much more. A few words about Med cram. I was drawn to Med crammed during the covid-19 pandemic because
As they uniquely had an unbiased approach, they took to discussing the data and also the manner in which it was presented Kyle and dr. Roger Schwab his co-founder have a uniquely effective presentational style that should appeal to anyone. It is authoritative. But approachable. They are Master educators of Health and Medical Science. I would encourage anyone that enjoys learning about health, the body and science to subscribe to their Channel on YouTube.
Once again, that channel is med cram. I'll say a few more words about Med creme after the interview is over, but needless to say, I am an admirer of their work and if you're not familiar with what they're doing, check them out. Big. Thank you to Med cram for featuring this discussion and inviting me on to their
show.
Dr. Patrick, you are a world expert on the many potential benefits of sauna use from better. Cardiovascular fitness to a lower risk of dementia to better mood, mental health, and Immunity and you're also an expert on the specific ways that people can use saunas or hot baths. In many cases to maximize these benefits. What temperature should the sauna be? How long should we stay in it? How often should we use it? It's really excited to jump into this, but I want to
Give you a brief introduction. First. You have a PhD in biomedical science, your published in a variety of reputable journals, including an excellent recent publication on saunas. That was very comprehensive and you're the co-founder of a popular website and YouTube channel called found my fitness. Dr. Patrick. Welcome back to the show.
Thank you, Kyle. I'm really excited to be here and thank you for that. Very kind introduction.
I look forward to getting into as many details as possible.
About both the benefits and how we can effectively use saunas. But first, if you only had a couple minutes with someone who was totally new to saunas, how would you Briefly summarize the benefits?
Well, I would start with a lot of the studies that have come out of Finland, which have been larger, you know, very very large population-based studies. These are observational studies where an association has been made and there have been quite a few that have
Found that frequent sauna use is associated with a lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease. A lower risk of sudden, cardiac death, or lower risk of coronary, heart disease, a lower risk of stroke, and lower risk of dementia of Alzheimer's disease. And when I say a lower risk, it occurs in a dose-dependent manner, so what that means is, the more frequent the sauna bathing, the more robust, the the health,
Are so, for example.
People that use this on a two to three times a week are about 22 percent less likely to die from Sudden cardiac death compared to people that only use this on a one time a week, but people that use this on a 4 to 7 times a week are 63 percent less likely to die from Sudden, cardiac death compared to people that use this on a one time per week. So there's a dose-dependent effect with more frequent sauna. Bathing more robust effects on cardiovascular health. And I would say that to people that are not familiar with the sauna.
A lot of people think of it as a time to relax. It's a very, it's a time to take some space out of your day and have it to yourself. So, there is an aspect of this relaxation. Almost a meditation type of quality to Tucson a bathing, but there's also a very interesting aspect of it which is sauna use is essentially mimicking moderate aerobic cardiovascular.
Is. And so, a lot of the same physiological responses that happen. When you're exercising, for example, your heart rate, elevates, while you're exercising, you elevate, your core body temperature, you get hot, you start to sweat. These are the same things that are occurring while someone is in the sauna. So heart rate elevates, it it elevates to around, 120 beats per minute you sweat. Your core body, temperature is elevated after the sauna and after exercise, and this is actually
Been compared head-to-head comparison of these two blood pressure is lower after sauna bathing. Or after exercise. Your resting heart rate is lower than before. You did the exercise or before you started using the sauna. So I think that's also a really interesting aspect of Sanaa that most people are unfamiliar with that. It's really sort of a mimicker of moderate intense cardiovascular exercise. And then the other thing is that there's there seems to be really
Profound effects on the brain and I don't think all the mechanisms have been teased out just yet. We can certainly dive into some details but you know, there's obviously a very strong link between cardiovascular health and brain function, you know, having proper blood flow to the brain is very important for lowering dementia risk. So there's definitely that aspect there. But you know, there's been some some observational studies looking at dementia risk, and Alzheimer's risk in sauna be theirs. And again, it's a very
a dose-dependent robust effect, frequency matters. And so people that use this on a two to three times a week, you know, they have some somewhere like a 20% lower dementia risk, 20% lower Alzheimer's risk, more or less. But using this on a four to seven times a week. It's associated with between a 60 to 66 percent reduction in dementia and Alzheimer's disease compared to people that use this on a one time a week. So it seems like, you know, four times a week is the kind of The Sweet Spot and we can talk about all the details.
Of that in a little bit, but but there's a lot of interest into why sauna use seems to help prevent neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer's disease and dementia, so I certainly have some hypothesis and hypotheses. I guess they're more than one. So I'd love to dive into some of that. But I think that's a kind of a good start into the sauna. Oh, and also all-cause mortality. That's a really big one too. Because, you know, there's been these days.
Eddie's these large population studies finding that people that use this on a four to seven times a week, have a 40 percent lower risk of dying from all causes of death than people that use this on one time a week. So to me it really is, is the beginning of understanding that, you know, Sana, you seems to really be beneficial for our health and much like a lot of these
Lifestyle factors that are well-known to to modify our disease risk. So exercise, for example, so you don't want to be sedentary. Good sleep, you know, healthy diet and meditation. I think these are pretty common knowledge at this point to be beneficial for overall health. And I think that sauna you should be up there. I think it should be included in that in that sort of, you know, bag of things that are known to improve.
Prove what's called our health span. Our health span is, it's basically compressing, the diseases that we get into a shorter time, period. So it's essentially extending the useful part of our life. So you may not necessarily live, you know, X, many years longer, although you may, if you don't get cancer earlier, you'll probably end up not dying from cancer earlier. But ultimately, it's healthspan improving. Your health been is about improving the quality of your life, not getting Parkinson's.
This is, he's not getting Alzheimer's disease, not getting cancer, not getting cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and and having a better quality of life. So that you're essentially enjoying your life and living living healthier for a longer period of time. I do want to make sure to distinguish the difference between my publication on the sauna, which was a very comprehensive review article covering multiple aspects of sauna health, and someone doing primary research, where they're the rack.
Actually doing experiments and having people, you know, come into a sauna and measuring heart rate and blood pressure changes, for example, so I am not doing those experiments and a lot of the research that has been done on that. The health benefits of the sauna have actually come out of Finland from dr. Yari laocoon, in slab, in eastern Finland. And so I just wanted to give him a little shout out because his work has been invaluable in our understanding.
Have the health benefits of the sauna.
Well, let's start by dive in a little bit deeper into the cardiovascular system because you mentioned, there's some potentially excellent benefits from the sauna on the cardiovascular system. So could you review what the cardiovascular system is briefly and then what's known about the saunas impact on that? And I think this is so important because as you know, it's right there neck and neck are cardiovascular disease and cancer as a number one.
And two killers of both men and women in the United States. So what's known about the saunas impact on the cardiovascular system.
Well, what's known about? The impacts of the, I mean, I think generally speaking, when people think about cardiovascular health, they think about their cholesterol. They think about the health of their arteries. They think about not having a bunch of plaques build up inside their arteries and block, blood flow, and oxygen from getting to different tissues. It's definitely known that a lot of dietary and
Still factors can modify cardiovascular disease risk, one of the best ones being exercised. I don't know that. There's anything better for cardiovascular health and then exercise. So, you know, the fact that sauna use mimics moderate-intensity cardiovascular exercises. As I mentioned, a moment ago is it's just sort of like, this proof of principle that, you know, Sana Sana is going to be good for cardiovascular, help the same.
Art of physiological changes are happening. You know, you have an increased blood flow to the skin, also to the muscles. So that's to help facilitate sweating, plasma volume increases heart rate elevates during sauna bathing you're getting, you know, you're getting hot and sweating and you're doing the same thing that's happening. While you're exercising and changes in blood pressure, go down as well afterwards just like exercise. So I think that that is partly probably responsible for some of the cardiovascular.
Benefits, dr. Gary Locke. And his colleagues have looked at so many different aspects of cardiovascular health with respect to sauna bathing and they found time and time again, whether you're talking about sudden cardiac death, whether you're talking about death from cardiovascular disease or coronary heart disease. And even talking about stroke risk, stroke risk is also significantly lowered something. In the realm of like, 40% lower for people that use this on a four to seven times a
A week versus once a week. So there's a really large body of evidence that suggests that sauna use does mimic moderate aerobic activity and and this is potentially why it's beneficial for cardiac, you know for cardiovascular health,
excellent and does it lower cholesterol and hypertension as well? Regular sounding use
hypertension. Yes, like so there's been there's been some studies looking at
Hypertension risk. So this again. These are observational studies. And again, it's one of those dose dependent effects where you see people that use this on a two to three times a week. They have like a 24 percent lower risk of hypertension hypertension versus people that use this sauna. 47 times a week who have about a forty six percent lower risk of hypertension, but there's also been just like studies where they've looked at a single sauna, use again, where they just when a person goes into the sauna uses it for
You know, 20 minutes and they measure blood pressure before and after the sauna and want even just a single sauna use lowers blood pressure. So both systolic and diastolic blood pressure after the sauna bathing similar to what exercise does. And so I think that helps sort of establish causality because there's always a question about associations and how much Association, how much can you derive causality from these associations when it comes to observational studies?
You mentioned how, you know, sauna use mimics exercise, in many ways moderate-intensity exercise. So with regard to that, can it also just improve overall Fitness and endurance as well.
That's a great question. We cover this in my co-author Theresa Johnson and I are review article that we published last year in experimental gerontology. And I'd say so far, the evidence seems to suggest that sauna.
Was May improve endurance exercise there? There have been a variety of studies that have looked either at Runners, for example, that use the sauna and then they're able to improve their time and running distance. There have been some studies looking at people wearing a sauna suit. So this is like a type of clothing that's put on that sort of mimics the Sonic because it makes you, you know, warm-up and so people trained in that sauna suit and that's been shown to help improve endurance.
But I think there's there's a lot of evidence out there looking at, just acclimating yourself to heat. And so, you know, when you're getting in the sauna, there there's these physiological changes that start to occur where your body starts to adapt. So, like, if someone's never use the sauna before, it's really hard to stay and we haven't talked about temperature duration yet. And any of these studies that I've are referred to, with respect to cardiovascular health and all, cause mortality for example, but
You know, if you're getting in a hot sauna, that's 175 degrees Fahrenheit. You've never done that before. And certainly, if you're not someone that's Physically Active, you know, people that are Physically. Active also are sort of adapted to heat because they're elevating their core body temperature when they're physically active. And so they're a little more heat acclimated. So you take a person that's not, you know, the person that sedentary not acclimated to heat and it's going to be hard for them to stay in that sauna hot sauna for more than 5 minutes, but as
As time goes on and as people start to use this on a more and become more acclimated Than People start to sweat at a lower core body temperature. And this helps facilitate cooling down and so they're able to tolerate it more and they also there's some other adaptations that we can talk about at the molecular level that occur as well. And so I think that it all comes down to basically if you are adapted to heat, well then when you're doing your Marathon, you're
Be, you know more heat adapted because if you're used to using the sauna and you're, you know, you're sweating at a lower core body temperature and all these physiological changes are happening. Then that's going to affect you. When you're also elevating your core body temperature through another modality that modality being running or exercise, you know, fill-in-the-blank type of exercise. So, you know kind of makes sense when you think about it,
definitely will shifting gears to you mentioned, the the mental and potential.
Oh, benefits that protect against neurodegenerative diseases, like Dementia or Alzheimer's? That's really, you know, once I saw the research on that that's something that keeps me using the sauna regularly, even if I don't feel like it or if you know, I don't have time. Is that potential significant reduction in dementia risk? So could you talk a little bit more about that research? And yeah, what's known about protection from neurodegenerative diseases?
Well, the research looking at sauna use and specifically its looked at Alzheimer's disease and dementia. It's really limited to just observational data in which case Tana use is associated with a much lower risk. So like I said around sixty percent sixty to sixty six percent lower, if people are using this on a four to seven times a week. Now, why that is is a probably, you know, again, very interesting question.
Probably something coming down to cardiovascular health, right? So if you're if you're basically in better cardiovascular health, you're going to have increased blood flow to the brain. And that's, you know, known to help protect against dementia, but there's also some evidence and this kind of gets in Thomas into some of the molecular details with sauna use and something. I'm extremely interested in our heat shock proteins and heat shock proteins as their name, implies are activated.
By heat stress and sauna robustly activates them. There's been some studies looking at people that have sat in a bout 163 °F sauna for 30 minutes, they're able to activate their heat shock proteins about 50% over their Baseline levels. So what are heat shock proteins and why do we even care about them? Well, he Chuck proteins are a stress response protein. We can talk a little bit more about what that means later, but
Essentially, what they do is they help proteins inside of your cells. They help keep their three-dimensional structure. So every protein in your body has a three dimensional structure and that's important for its function. And these proteins in our body that are doing everything, all the work inside of ourselves. They don't stay around forever. They eventually, you know, they get chewed up and degraded like in a garbage can basically you can think about it. And so sometimes you know, that doesn't happen properly and as we
Age a definitely starts to go awry and so heat shock proteins kind of help prevent that from happening. So they help prevent proteins from becoming disorganized and D structured because when they become that way, they tend to Aggregate and they can form Aggregates and these Aggregates can then form plaques and these plaques can form in places like the vascular system, or they can form in places like the brain. So probably the classical example of plaques in the brain or am
Floyd beta free to plaques that are associated with Alzheimer's disease. So there's been a whole host of evidence in animal studies that have found that elevated levels of heat. Shock proteins can protect against the formation of amyloid beta plaques and they can help prevent a loss and Alzheimer's disease, like disease in in animals. So there's been a lot of evidence of that and that I think is one interesting angle.
As saunas are well known to activate heat shock proteins. And once they're activated, they stay activated for about 48 hours. I mean, they're they're elevated for a while and you know, so constant when you're talking about someone that's doing it for 27 times a week, you know, we don't have empirical evidence looking at a person and measuring their heat, shock proteins like each day, but, you know, one could imagine that you would you would see that heat shock proteins our way.
I act way elevated over what their normal Baseline levels are. And so what you're having is almost this constitutive activation of this of this family of proteins that essentially help prevent plaques from forming among other things. So so I think that's a really interesting angle as well with respect to neurodegenerative disease. And in fact, one of my first experiments when I was there an early
Archer at the Salk Institute for biological studies in the Jolla. I was doing some research on nematode worm, C, elegans, where we were injecting them with amyloid-beta 42, the peptide fragment, that's known to be associated with Alzheimer's disease, causing these plaques in the brain. We're injecting them into these worms and into their muscle tissue. And it causes the worms to become paralyzed because they have all these protein aggregates in their muscle and they can't move anymore. And it's a really
Stink phenotype, you. Look at them under a microscope and they are just there still, but they kind of just move their nose around and feed but they can't move. And so I did these experiments where I would boost up their heat shock proteins, and lick. It totally corrected that like these worms, even though they had, even though we were giving them amyloid-beta 42, it totally corrected them from the paralysis because the amyloid beta 42 wasn't forming, these Aggregates. So I I've always kind of go back to that original study that
You know, had done with my own hands and it's kind of made this this aha moment or like, wow, these heat shock proteins are doing something cool.
Is that how you actually got interested in Cana use in the first place from that? Really?
It's how I got interested in the molecular, some of the molecular aspects of Sanaa use, I would say that the real way I became interested in in the sauna and this will take us into other brain function aspects if you're okay with that. Sure. So, when I was,
In graduate school, I lived across the street from a YMCA, and I used to go use the sauna almost every day. Before, I would go into the lab and do my experiments and as any graduate student or budding, young scientist, or even senior scientist will tell you experiments, fail. They fail all the time, and it's very stressful. It's very hard. So, so, graduate school can be very hard because you're constantly being just bombarded down. It's like, you're being hit like,
Didn't work. Well, that didn't work. Well. There goes six months of work, you know, and it's very stressful time. And what I started to notice was that using the sauna before going into the lab. My my ability to handle stress was is noticeable. Like I was much more capable of handling stress. My anxiety was much lower. I mean, it was very, very noticeable for me where to the point where I was like, something's going on here. I don't know what it is, but it's something.
And so I sort of diving into the literature, you know, way back then in like 2009, you know, so that's where I kind of got into the sauna and the effects on the brain and actually in the publication, that that we published last year. I kind of Rift a little bit on some, I would say it's still still more of a hypothesis than anything in terms of the reason for that. You know, when you're, when you're in this sauna, you're you're dumping.
Much of endorphins much like exercise. So, it's sort of the same same effect. So, endorphins, are those feel-good opioids that your brain is producing the counter to that feel-good endorphins in is the, it's called Dyne orphan. The endogenous counter to it dine. Orphan. Is that chemical in your brain? That is responsible for making you feel dysphoria, not so good. So the kind of feeling you get, when you're really hot, you're sitting in a sauna and you're like, not feeling good, like this is hot.
Not, you know, or when you're going for your long distance run and it's that feeling of your just don't feel good. But you have to push past it, right and push past it. So dine orphan is something that's produced during during that period and dine orphan is actually involved in cooling, the body. So, I think that's partly why. Your body your brain is making it when you're when you're elevating your core body temperature. And the interesting thing about dying orphan. Is that, although it's responsible for the dysphoric feeling.
It binds to a receptor in our brain called the Kappa. Opioid receptor, when it binds to that receptor. It ends up doing this whole feedback loop. And this is like the beauty of biology. And the feedback loop is that those feel-good endorphins that we make bind to another type of receptor called the Mew opioid receptor. And this is the same type of receptor that morphine and opioids. Also bind to that help make people feel good. They help with pain and stuff. Well, Kappa, opioids, when you, when you bind,
Receptor that dysphoric, feeling it changes. The Mew, opioid receptor. It basically makes them more sensitive to endorphins for a longer period of time. And so, you know, I sort of have this hypothesis that like what you get in the sauna and you, you know, you push past that like, this feels terrible. It's hot. Oh, it's hard, you know, and you push past it a little bit, you get done with it and then the endorphins that you make a day later or two days later or
Five days later from laughing at a joke or for giving giving your loved one, a hug or whatever it is. That's making you release endorphins. You're going to feel them better because they're more sensitive. So there's a bit of a tangent but that's sort of what got me interested in using the sauna. And as you mentioned in alluded, to earlier, there is there's actually a lot of empirical evidence that has now come out. Since that time, looking at the effects of sauna use on mental health and specifically depression.
So dr. Ashley Mason right now, who I'm collaborating with is looking at sauna use, and people people with depression that have not enabled been able to manage it with different types of standard of care treatments. And so she's going off of work from her former Mentor. Dr. Charles raised on, who found that basically elevating a person's core body temperature about 122 degrees was
he's able to give people an antidepressant effect that lasted like up to six weeks with a singled use and this was compared to a sham control. They use this device that basically made people feel like they were getting a little bit hot, but it wasn't hot enough. So it was a really great Placebo control because people thought they were actually getting the treatment Placebo. Controls are very important particularly with depression studies because a placebo response is a very real response. So so that was
That was a really seminal study, looking at, you know, just a single session of sauna use and how it had a very robust antidepressant effect up that lasted six weeks in these depression depressed patients, compared to a placebo control. Now, Ashley Mason is, now she's following up on this and she's using an infrared sauna and she's also, she's also elevating the core body temperature, you know, 122 degrees and and she's doing now instead of one session. She's doing up to eight sessions.
And and we're looking at a variety of biomarkers to understand why that is like, is there, are there changes in the immune system? And in, there's some preliminary evidence to suggest there are, you know, there have been quite a few observational studies looking at sauna use and how sauna use is associated with lower biomarkers of like C-reactive protein. So these are markers of inflammation. Inflammation plays a major role in depression as well. Sony use also can increase I'll
And which is an anti-inflammatory. So that's also been shown in a intervention study. So people that have used the sauna had their blood drawn before and after there was some evidence that that il-10 was elevated after using the sauna. So there's some suggestive evidence that, you know, the immune changes may be going on and changing it in a positive way much like exercise. So, exercise also it increases aisle, six, which is another cytokine. That's kind of, it's called, Amaya kind. It's released from your muscle and it
It can cause inflammation, but it's also this type of cytokine that can cause a very powerful anti inflammatory response. So if there's a we can talk about what this means, hormesis, there's a bit of a hermetic aspect to it. So so that's also very interesting as well.
Yeah, and with those depression studies in the hypothesis for why sauna use, wow, does that mean it's amazing? One sauna use can have potentially a
Week benefit for patients that are having depression could part of the hypothesis, be that there because you mentioned are endorphins and our internal opiate system and how sauna use can sensitize those receptors. So the opiates, our own opiates inside of our body, work better. That one of the hypotheses to of why this can help patients who are depressed.
It is, it is and we're trying to figure out how to
Measure that like there's some tricks and stuff. And so we're trying to find some collaborators. And actually we do have some collaborators that are potentially going to help us kind of figure out how we can test whether or not that that is playing a role. It's certainly something I think is playing a role for sure. I think there's multiple things at play here. And I think that one of them is, is the the change in the opioid system in the brain, for sure, but you can't measure opioid receptors and sensitivity, and upright.
Asian like you can in an animal, right? Like in people like that's not you know, we're not we're not we're not there yet with with our technology. So that would that would be something that would be really cool. But but there are some other things that can be measured and plasma.
Interesting. So like what things are you guys currently measuring with regard
to? Oh, we're doing a whole host. I mean, just like, like every kind of inflammatory panel, you can imagine is being done, brain-derived neurotrophic.
Sure, so, that's another really interesting. We are also measuring endorphins but but the brain derived neurotrophic Factor bdnf as it's called is something that's also elevated during exercise. A lot of people think of brain-derived neurotrophic factor as something that is very protective against bring aging. And I think there's a good bit of evidence to suggest that, that that's true, you know, so their brain, derived neurotrophic factor. For those of you that are not familiar.
There with it is a growth factor that's produced in the brain that helps existing neurons survive and it also and there's some debate about this but for the most part it plays a role in certain brain regions in actually growing new neurons in adults. So there's kind of this hope that brain-derived neurotrophic, factor is a powerful anti brain aging drug and I think it is. But the other thing that it does is it plays a role in neuroplasticity and what that refers to
to like essentially what that refers to is, you know, having the connections in your brain, kind of being able to rewire themselves with a changing environment and that's something that's really hard for older people to do but it also is a very important thing to happen when their you know, their stressful environment, like for example pandemic hits, you know, everything changes. Like life is completely different like your ability to cope.
With that and your brain's ability to cope with that like, there's some neuroplasticity, like younger people. They can adapt. Like they're adapting. And that's because their brains are, you know, as people like to call them more plastic, you know, so there's a, there's a lot more neuroplasticity involved in that and there's a big there's a, there's an angle for depression in there as well. Because if you can adapt to the changing environment, then you might become depressed, you know, because you're not able to, you know, change your behaviors in a way that, you know,
Allows you to to live and, you know, do the same things that you were doing before, whatever changed it. So anyways, big tangent there, but neuroplasticity is also regulated by brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and and it plays an important role in depression. So we're also looking at b, d and f, and there's been evidence that plasma be a dnf correlates with, with actual levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor changing the brain as well.
And then we're looking at a bunch of other aging-related, telomere senescence, just all sorts of things. We're trying to we're hoping to uncover. Some some novel mechanisms
here. Very cool. In addition to heat shock proteins. Are there any other cellular repair mechanisms that sauna use can kind of unlock within the body?
Well, I think, you know, like I mentioned the aisle 10 anti inflammatory response, but also Nrf2, which is another
Major, it's a major regulator of a variety of genes that are antioxidant Walden, antioxidant involved, in detoxifying things that you're exposed to in the environment anti-inflammatory as well. But the underlying premise here is that when you're in the sauna, you're stressing, your body and Nrf2 heat, shock proteins. These are il-6. You know, these are, these are part of, you know, what's called a stress response pathway. Like
Like these are, these are genes in our body, that respond to stress. And when they, the way they respond to stress, is that they basically activate anti-stress Pathways. These are Pathways that are anti-inflammatory. These are Pathways that are antioxidant. These are Pathways that are involved in a topology. So, the cleaning out of all the gunk inside of our cells Pathways that are involved in making new stem cells, for example, repairing damage to DNA. So these are all part of the
the stress response pathway. And, you know, this this this whole stress response, pathway kind of originates from this idea of hormesis where a little bit of stress can activate these beneficial cellular response Pathways and that has just far-reaching effects. So humans evolved we evolved in environments that we have been intermittently challenged with stress, you know, people when they hear the word stress,
They usually think about psychosocial stress, psychological stress, you know, Financial stress. I'm not sure people think about sitting in a sauna or the other types of stress that are beneficial, the so-called you stress, so that would be exercise or fasting food, scarcity, you know, so people I mentioned, we, we've evolved with these intermittent challenges. Well, you know, before the Industrial Revolution before we had instacart and we could order our groceries and have them delivered to us. Like we had to go out and hunt and find
Under food, we had to go gather pick berries. We're beholdin to, you know, the, the climate and or, you know, what, what, prey were available, right or there? And so there were times when people didn't eat because they didn't, you know, they didn't have any thing, they hunted or they didn't, you know, gather any berries or whatever. So, so there was there were times of intermittent fasting, that, that occurred throughout human evolution, as well as
Movement, you know, like we didn't have people delivering our groceries to us. We didn't get in an automobile automobile and drive to the store. You know, we were out running. We were chasing things. We were walking in gathering. We were moving. So, you know, we were stressing our bodies with these aerobic, aerobics types of activities. And also, you know, eating the plants eating these berries, eating different types. Of of plants. We were exposed to a variety of compounds in these.
It's that are called xenobiotics and xenobiotics, you know, things like polyphenols, you know, flavanols, you have things like, you know, egcg and green tea, or curcumin. That's found in turmeric root. These types of compounds also activate stress response Pathways. So all these things activate genetic Pathways in our body that not only help us deal with a little bit of stress of fasting or
Size or sauna but also they help us deal with the stress of just aging and they're activated for a much longer period of time and so you. So so this idea of hormesis is that there's a little bit of stress can be so beneficial because you're having this powerful antioxidant response and anti inflammatory response and you're activating things like a tapa G, which is clearing out pieces of DNA inside your cell a little protein aggregates and you know, you're activating stem cells to lie.
Make more stem cells and replenish, you know, cells in your tissues. So the idea of this this adaptive response, the stress response Pathways is that, like, humans? We were meant to activate them. We're meant to challenge ourselves with types of stress, like exercise, you know, intermittent fasting sauna use eating plants. And and, and the reality is that in our modern world. We stop doing that, you know, we don't, we don't do that as much. And and so, you know, people are getting this
Diseases of age or getting type 2, diabetes metabolic disease and cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer's disease. So there's lots of these diseases that are happening in humans. And and so so this idea that, you know, there are these things that we can do in our lifestyle that can help prevent those from happening or at least delay them through constantly activating all these beneficial Pathways like heat shock proteins. Heat shock proteins are activated by a variety of things.
Things like they're they're activated by exercise, but they're activated by eating broccoli because broccoli has sulfur Feenin it. So you know, heat is the most potent activator of it, but the heat shock proteins themselves are part of that response pathway and we mentioned, how they're beneficial for preventing neurodegenerative diseases. There. They're beneficial preventing Aggregates and plaques from forming in Our arteries, but they've also been shown to prevent muscle atrophy and this has been shown in a couple of human studies and a variety of
In studies where humans that just have local Pete applied to one other limbs it basically prevented the atrophy of muscle. Like there's 40 percent decrease in muscle atrophy from disuse of the month of the muscle. And this has been shown again in a lot of different animal studies where it's basically helping helping you not, you know, degrade your muscle tissue and so that it has huge relevance for sarcopenia for people that
Are you know, disabled that can't go out for a run? Perhaps cannot, you know exercise they might be able to use the sauna as well.
And if the idea they're just increased blood flow to that limb will help. Decrease atrophy or
time. No, I think I think it has to do it because it at least in the animal studies. They were trying to tease out the mechanism and what was shown was that it was activation of heat?
Proteins like heat shock protein 72. That was required for the preventing of muscle atrophy. So, and that is again I think has to do with the fact of the protein folding and misfolding and how, you know, when you have that happening proteins, are, you know, it's preventing proteins from being degraded so much because they're having their proper three-dimensional structure. And so you're maintaining that muscle mass. Your maintaining it and I anecdotally, I can tell you like, over the years, over the
Many years, I've had many injuries and stuff when I'm injured and I can't do my normal workout routine. Like the sauna is like, it is such a Saving Grace for me. And I haven't actually measured, you know, empirically my muscle. But like, I can just feel like my muscles are not atrophying. I mean, like, you kind of tell, you know, when you don't work out and your muscles kind of start to get a little flabby. So I, I think it just has a lot of implications.
Shins for Circle, pinilla and just helping maintain muscle mass as well.
And you mentioned how in our modern world. We are insulated from a lot of these intermittent stressors that we may have been exposed to you know, 100 200 years ago or more. And another thing with our modern world is were exposed to more potential toxins than ever certain toxins like, you know, aluminum or lead heavy metals like that in your review.
Paper. You mentioned how sauna use can actually help excrete those heavy metals at a higher rate. You talk about that a little
bit. It does it does. And it's interesting because you know, a lot of these compounds like heavy metals or you know other other types of compounds like, you know, phthalates are BPA, they can be excreted through sweat, or they can be excreted through urine and some some are excreted more predominantly through, sweat and others are more.
Excreted through the urine for example. So the ones that are more predominantly excreted through sweat. You can imagine the robust effect that that sauna use has on them. So cadmium being one, where there's been studies looking at sweating from from, from Sanaa, use where there's like a hundred and twenty two fold increase in sweating out. Cadmium. Another one is aluminum. Aluminum is also excreted quite well from sweat and and you do excrete things like be
EPA and stuff as well. But, you know, at the major pathway that BPA is eliminated is through urine. But you know, so even just excreting some of these, these heavy metals like cadmium is in like chocolate. I mean, it's just it's like it's like one of those little Insidious types of things which is making its way into your into your body and you don't even know it, right? And if you never sweat, if you never exercise, you're not getting rid of that stuff. Well, right? So,
That is another sort of potential benefit with with using this on as well, is excreting some of that those those compounds and particularly some of those heavy metals that like aluminum and cadmium.
I want to ask you about heart rate, variability, because it's become popular to measure this on smart jewelry, you know, watches and Rings. Pretty much anything that can measure your pulse can probably measure your heart rate variability as well. So why is heart rate Village?
Variability important and how can the sauna potentially benefit?
So, you know, I think heart rate variability is important because it it's a, it's a, it's a basically, a marker of how well, your heart can handle stress. When you're talking about, like measuring the, the intervals between your heartbeats. If you have a higher heart rate variability, your heart is going to be able to handle a stressful Moment, Like a heart attack better. That's kind of how I think about
it.
In the sort of simplistic terms and and heart rate variability is improved with exercise. Like, that's pretty well-known exercises. Able to improve, heart rate, variability, and that's largely because there's an effect on the automata namik nervous system. So physical activity affects it. You have increased parasympathetic activity and lower lower sympathetic activity and the sauna has been shown to do the same thing.
NG so so sauna use also increases heart rate variability. And it it is, you know, activates the parasympathetic nervous system as well like various again, it's back to that the sauna mimics moderate aerobic, aromatic moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, and it's just the easiest way to think about it and almost everything you measure that exercise. Does you're going to see that with with the sauna as well?
Many cases
So speaking at, that's a good segue into this question, which is can sauna effectively replace exercise or is it best to get both exercise and sauna? Is there any Synergy between the two
well exercises King for sure, you know, when it comes to to the best possible thing you could do for your overall health and when I'm what I'm going to speak to you is a study that looked at car.
No, respiratory Fitness and cardiorespiratory. Fitness is essentially, it's a marker of, in my opinion. I think it's a good biomarker for biological, you know, age in a way, you know, because you can have someone who is in their 60s, and they've been physically active, and just lead a letter, really healthy and Physically Active life. And they could have a better or cardiorespiratory Fitness than someone who is, you know, 40 who is sedentary overweight.
It
just never exercises, you know, so cardiorespiratory Fitness is a really good marker of physical health and there's been some studies analyzing cardiorespiratory Fitness in people that exercise. Do aerobic, exercise and comparing it to people that do sauna and comparing them again to people that do aerobic exercise and sauna and so the ultimate outcome of what the you know, that that that analysis showed
Was that people that did exercise and used Asana had better cardiorespiratory Fitness than people that did exercise alone or did sauna alone? So you might say, you might, you might ask yourself. Well, I'm already Physically Active. I exercise. I, why do I need sauna? Well, the answer is, do you want to be better? Do you want to have a better cardiorespiratory Fitness? I know the answer that I have for myself. Yes, I do. And, and so
That those theories there does seem to be a Synergy between sauna use and aerobic exercise where people that are doing both seem to have a better cardiorespiratory Fitness. If you just compared sauna and exercise only exercise was had a mean of people that exercise had a better cardiorespiratory Fitness then people that only did sauna and didn't exercise. But if you compare Saint out of people that don't exercise people that people that do the sauna have a better cardiorespiratory Fitness than people that don't use the sauna.
So I think, I think, you know, the way I think about this is like there are people that cannot do physical activity. They're disabled in some way shape or form and they just can't do it. And so, you know, here's here they have now a potential way to get some moderate-intensity aerobic exercise and improve their cardiovascular health and improve other aspects of their brain, you know Health as well. And so I think that is really awesome, but we also
People like me and a lot of people out there who are physically active and want to do everything they can to improve, you know, every every biomarker of aging and every, you know, way, you know, they're how aspect of their health that they can. And I think that the sauna on top of that is a way to go. And, you know, you only have so much time in the day, but ultimately, you know, for people that have used the sauna, they know, like, you get in the sauna and, and I personally use it for
Variety of different ways. You know, I like to do it right after my exercise. I like to it. You know, I have a Peloton bike right next to my sauna. And I like to get on, get on my bike and then, and then hop in the sauna, but I also only have so much time in the day and it's like, well, if I can only do exercise for the sauna mostly, I'm going to choose exercise. But you know, here's the thing. I also take science papers. I take my work in the sauna and I do things, I recite presentations.
My brain. And interestingly something about the sauna also affects my memory where I remember things better after thinking about them in the sauna and have some theories as to why that is, you know, there's a lot of evidence that activating, you know that you, you get that, you know, emotional arousal and that helps kind of solidify a memory while. The sauna is kind of like, stress in your body and there's like an arousal aspect to it. So I'm sort of wondering if that has to
To do with it, but you know, people can get in that sauna and meditate as well. They can, they can listen to a podcast. Listen to music you can you can get your creative juices flowing us, another way way I use this on a use, it kind of like I use my runs where I get in the sauna and I hash through ideas I think about them and I you know, I it really works. So I think that the saunas is great. Not only for you know, your physical your physical health and cardiorespiratory Fitness.
But you can also you can also be efficient with it and you can use it, you know, to not only improve your physical health, but also help you with your work, you know, like there's there's there's things about it. I think that that are beneficial that aren't well known. Well understood
and I think it's a beautiful thing that phones don't work in a sauna, you know, it gets too hot for us to work. So it's a, it's a built-in break for me to take a break from my phone,
which I love. Totally so important, like,
And people like have such a hard time doing that, you know, it makes a difference.
Well, before we get into more specifics about how we can potentially optimize our own sauna use or hot bath use, could you briefly mention some of the countries or cultures, or Native Americans in this country? For example, that have used saunas, or hot therapy for many, many years and maybe some of the lessons that we can learn from them.
Well, certainly, I talked about Finland. I mean, I visited Finland and I've used their saunas there and almost everyone has a sauna in their home. It's very ubiquitous. So it's certainly a big cultural thing in Finland Russian banyas. But as you mentioned Native Americans, they had their sweat lodges. I think that anyone that's any culture that's used. It has like tapped into something and realized there's something here. There's something beneficial here, and
It's kind of stayed in United States, you know, saunas are like thought about like, oh, yeah, my gym has a sauna like that's kind of the way it is and United States. I think things are starting to change. There are, there are a lot of saunas that are affordable now, and you know that even people can just plug into our regular normal outlet. And then again, there's, there's other modalities to, to raise your core body temperature? Like you mentioned the hot baths, so,
I think I think things are changing United States. And as more people are becoming aware of the benefits of using a sauna. We're going to start to see it to it, become more and more accessible where people are going to start having them in their houses. You know, I used to live. I used to live in a really small apartment, and I had a sauna that was like four by four feet and it was in the bedroom. And, you know, this was like a one-bedroom apartment.
And it was fine. You know, it was right there in the bedroom next to the bed. You know, this was a queen size bed and a small room. And so, you know, I think you kind of just you kind of just make you make room for it when it comes to your health. So I mean what else do we have
on a traditional sauna or was it infrared? It was a traditional
sauna? Yeah. So for people listening, you know, there's there a lot most all of the studies that I've been talking about up until this point have come out of Finland.
The most part and if used traditional saunas, so these are saunas. That are that have a heater in them, that heats the ambient air around you and that in turn, then sort Heats you up and elevates your core body. Temperature in Finland. They also have hot rocks in the heater and, and they pour water over these Hot Rocks. So they create humidity, a lot of a lot of
The studies that I referred to, also had a humidity between 10 to 20%, So, which also makes it feel hotter than it is. And so, so that's so that's a conventional or regular sauna. Then there's infrared saunas and then you can get the far or near infrared saunas, but the biggest difference between the infrared saunas and the, the traditional saunas is that the infrared saunas are using thermal radiation to heat you up directly, basically.
So those types of saunas, only get to around 140 or so degrees Fahrenheit, whereas the traditional saunas. I was just talking about most of them ones that people get in, their home, can go up to like almost 200 degrees, some, some can go higher but mostly around 200 degrees Fahrenheit. So so that's the major difference between the infrared and the traditional sauna. A lot of traditional saunas. Typically, you have to have an electrician come out and special things, you know, have to be done.
Yeah, but now there are some there are traditional sound is coming out where you can just plug it into any outlet.
And do you think that the infrared saunas are likely as beneficial as the traditional saunas?
Well, they're certainly not as much evidence to say with confidence whether or not they are. I think a lot of studies that have come out of Japan, they call it way on therapy. They're they're using infrared saunas. They have a very specific protocol. These people are heated up to about,
40 degrees Fahrenheit and there in that saw infrared sauna for a duration of time. That's anywhere between 15 to 30 minutes and then they're heated it. They're, I mean, they're wrapped in a hot blanket and then they're kept in the hot blanket for an additional 15 to 30 minutes. And there's been some, some evidence using that type of infrared. Sauna the way on therapy protocol show, you know, showing that it helps treat certain heart conditions. So it seems to be beneficial for for cardiovascular health.
As well, you know, to some degree, you know, I mentioned heat shock proteins were activated, you know, 50% over Baseline, but this was at 163 degree Fahrenheit for 30 minutes. So perhaps, you know, my like my in-laws have an infrared sauna and I've used it many many times when I've gone to visit them. And for me, I have to stay in the sauna in the infrared, sauna for like an hour and it has to be like totally maxed out before I can get in it, it just because I'm Sookie.
Adopted to. So there might be some changes and we can talk a little bit about the protocols that were used in the studies by comparison there. But so I do think there are some benefits. I personally think traditional traditional thought traditional saunas are are really great. But, you know, again, maybe we'll just get more evidence coming out that infrared saunas are, you know, quite quite beneficial as well.
And The Infrareds tend to be less expensive.
From what I've seen two little bit more affordable. Have you seen any downsides to the infrared as far as I don't know, I mean infrared sounds. It's kind of like a scary word to some people like what's going on with this. There's radiation right? Have you heard of any potential downsides to
skin or now? Now I
haven't.
Well, if you're comfortable sharing, I would love to get into details, about your specifics on a protocol that you've adapted in your life. How often do you use the sauna? What temperature, what humidity, you know, how long you staying there? So let's get into some of those details and I'll preface this by saying, this is not medical advice. Anyone that is considering using the sauna, good idea to check it out with your medical professional. First, in case you have a health condition that may make sauna use dangerous.
But with that said, yeah, let's hear about what you've incorporated into your
life. Sure. Well, let's start with the studies and the data that I referred to, and what the temperature, duration, Etc. I talked a lot about frequency for 27 times a week, but I didn't talk much about temperature, how long people were in the sauna. So in almost all of those studies, the temperature of the sauna, these were these were saunas and Finn.
And they were 174 degrees Fahrenheit around, and the humidity was between between 10 to 20 percent humidity. I think like that. And so, what was very interesting to me when I was looking at the data, a coming out of dr. Gary Lockwood and slab, is that the duration in the sauna seem to matter, with respect, to robustness of of the results. So I mentioned, for example, you know
People that use this on and 427 times a week were 50%, less likely to to die from like, you know, cardiovascular disease related, death.
Well, that number was referring to people that stayed in the sauna greater than 19 minutes. So this was about 20 minutes. So 20 minutes is this is The Sweet Spot at about a hundred and seventy-four degrees Fahrenheit, you know humidity. 10 to 20% people that sat in the sauna for like 11 minutes on average. There there reduction in cardiovascular disease related death from cardiovascular disease was like 8 percent.
Sent.
Eight percent versus 50% big difference there. So, duration, definitely matters with respect to the sauna. So that's kind of where I started out with my, my sort of, okay. What am I, what am I going to do? And then I also mentioned earlier about heat shock proteins. I'm also very interested in activating my heat shock proteins. And so the 163 degree Fahrenheit for 30 minutes activated them by 50% over Baseline levels, and so typically
Ali. What I do my protocol is I do typically when I go for my long runs, I don't, I don't do sauna after, but I'll but I do do a Jacuzzi at night. So when I'm doing my Peloton bike, I do a lot of high intensity interval training, you know, peloton's and I cranked the Hassan up, you know, about an hour, an hour and a half before I'm going to get on that Peloton and again on the Peloton and then I go into the sauna immediately after
I'm in this sauna for at the sauna, is typically around 1 86 degrees Fahrenheit for me when I get in there and I stay in there. Anywhere between 20 and 30 minutes, depending on mostly depending on how intense my workout was because I'm already elevated. My core body temperature from my my high intensity workout. And then there are times when I don't work out. I just get in this on. I end up saying they're longer for sure. I'm in there for 30 minutes, about 186 Fahrenheit, but
I am heat adapted. Like I can't tell you, like, when I first started doing this I certainly did not start out doing that. So so definitely keep that in mind. I also like to put hot water. So I have, I have my little bucket and I do. I do put some hot water on the rocks. My hygrometer like broke when I when I was measuring it.
I was getting about 20 to 30 percent humidity. And then once I got 30%, I was, like, I couldn't handle it. So, I went back down to 10 to 20 percent. Humidity is just feel so hot. So that's typically, those are my settings that I do and I like it frequency. How often I do. It. It really depends on what I have going on. So, there are times when I'm like, you know, I'm doing it five days a week, but then there's other times when I'm like, twice a week, you know.
So, I do try to my my, you know, my Baseline. I try to keep his for. I try to do about four times a week, but I have been doing a lot of jacuzzi. So I've been doing jacuzzi at night time. It's like, the only time my husband and I have to ourselves, you know, once once our son goes to bed. And so we like to go out in the jacuzzi. Look at the stars and it's very relaxing, and time spent together, but our jacuzzi is about 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
And there have been a lot of people have asked me, you know, can you get the same benefits from the sauna as you do from a hot bath and we don't have all the empirical evidence to say that, yes for sure. But we have quite a bit that seems to be accumulating. So a lot of the, you know, heat shock proteins have been shown to be elevated with hot baths. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor is increased with hop. As there's been some effects on depression as well and cardiovascular health. And so, you know,
I might be going out on a limb here, but I would say, I really think that hot baths and jacuzzis can have a similar effect. Now staying in there, saying the jacuzzi for 20 minutes. With your shoulders, submerged down is kind of key and some of the hot bath studies were the same. The hot bath studies used 104, °F water, and they were, people were submerged from their shoulders down as well. But that's kind of my protocol that I have that I follow.
So you're typically using it to extend your workout. You're getting your heart rate up on the
A bike or going for a run and then your heart rate remains elevated. Once you get into the sauna,
I do. Yeah. That is that's, that's kind of my jam. I do. But there are times when I get in there without without working out but like, yeah, that's so, you know, sometimes it's like, okay, if I'm going to get in the sauna for 20 or 30 minutes like I can, I can hop on my Peloton and just push it for 10 minutes. Do a 10-minute high intensity workout and and just and take, you know, so basically what I'm doing is I'm taking my workout.
To the next level, you know, that's, that's what I feel. Like, the sauna is doing where it's like. All right, I did my workout. And boom. I'm going to go to the next level. So, and I always go back to that cardiorespiratory Fitness study, or it's like better, you know, better better than exercise alone.
Yeah, and you mentioned the hot bath could potentially be a replacement for the sauna. How about just a long extended hot shower for people that don't have a bath?
Yeah, that's interesting question. You do. I mean, you get a lot of steam from showers as well. So, you know, I do think steam showers can have some beneficial effects. I don't think it's going to be nearly anywhere near like the data that I mentioned, you know, just because you're just not getting as hot when you're taking a hot shower. Like even like when you're in a hot bath like you can get really hot. You just not getting quite as hot with with a hot shower, but I do think there can
You some some, some benefits, perhaps, I would I would tend to go for the hot bath though. If you have most people do have a bathtub. I know not, everyone does. But if you do have a bathtub, I would go for the hot bath over the hot shower.
Got it. And how about hydration? How do you what? Your kind of hydration protocol before and after the sauna?
Yeah, that's a good point. You know, you do lose a lot of sweat in the sauna and with sweat. You also can lose a lot of sodium.
And sodium is the main web, but you can also lose, you know, some other electrolytes, like, magnesium potassium. So I definitely try. Definitely stay hydrated. And I switch between sometimes I'll have like a green, a green juice that I make with like some kale, a little bit of lemon, some cucumber or so. I'm, you know, getting some of the magnesium and potassium and stuff, or I'll do the noon that electrolyte supplement nutrition.
They have like a sugar-free version of it, or sometimes, I do some keto. It's a, it's a ketone salt, and it's called keto start, and it has a lot of it has like magnesium. It has potassium and has a lot of electrolytes in it. And so, I'll use that. In fact, I'm drinking that right now. But so, that's, that's typically what I do cool after after the sauna, not
forgot it. And speaking of after the sauna and know this is a whole nother discussion, but
Cold therapy, you know. Do you ever get in the cold shower or do a cold plunge? Jump in a frozen lake after the sauna.
Definitely don't jump on a frozen lake unless I'm visiting another country like Finland. But yeah, I do so I do have a cold plunge and I also do like cold showers as well. I don't do it as frequently as I should, you know, there's a lot of benefits to to the cold as well. And and in fact, a lot of these cultures that we talked about
Earlier like Finland and Russia like they a large percentage of them go from hot and then into cold. I don't go immediately into it. I because when you're when you're under when you're in this in the heat, in this like a sauna or a hot bath vasodilation is occurring, you're increasing your blood flow, you know, you're getting vasodilation and then the complete opposite happens when you go into a cold plunge or cold water.
Water immersion to in some shape or form, you're getting you, vasoconstriction is happening. And so, I've had, I've had some scary incidents. We're going from one extreme directly into the other without waiting, like five minutes or a few minutes, you know, where my blood pressure or something, just goes really low. And I just like, I get super dizzy and it's a little scary. Hmm. So-so. I do think that exercising caution when going from extremes like that is
And so, but I do especially in the summertime. I like to run a run out into the cold plunge, like, you know, a couple minutes after I do the sauna. After I like rest for a few minutes to 25 minutes.
You mentioned that you're really well. He adapted to the sauna because of all your regular use for someone that's kind of building their heat tolerance up. Is there a way that they can kind of tell how long is too long in the sauna? Are there any kind of signs? They should be looking for?
Or like, ooh, I should probably take a break and not push it.
Yeah, I think, you know, your heart starts to really your heart rate starts to get elevated and, you know, you definitely want to to push past that point once your heat adapted. But, you know, and you start to feel uncomfortable, but you reach a point where your hearts going really fast and you just feel you just feel really, really uncomfortable. And I think that's, that's, that's the time I usually like to get out, I think people,
People should definitely listen to their bodies. I mean, getting out when you just experienced the most slight bit of uncomfortableness. Maybe not the way to go. But like, you know, when you're in there, you know, like you're feeling like this, is, I've, I'm getting really hot. And again, like once you hit the 20-minute Mark, that's really all that's needed, you know, 20 minutes, 174 degrees Fahrenheit. That's what all these Studies have shown have been beneficial for reducing cardiovascular disease, mortality and all cause mortality and
Ask Summers and dementia risk. So so that's I think a pretty good rule of thumb as well, you know, 20 minutes and you can also have a timer outside of your sauna. I used to do that. I used to have a timer clock and it's like, okay, I reached my time. So that's also another option.
I think it's good to have an alarm because sometimes, you know, you can fall asleep in there. It's it can be pretty comfortable especially after your heat adapted. So, I'm a big fan of the alarm to let me know that. Like, 25 minutes are up.
Yeah, if you're prone to falling,
Asleep in the sauna. You should always have someone with you in the sauna for sure. I would that because that could be dangerous. Yeah. There, you know, and I know you wanted to cover this Kyle, the contraindications of
Sony's. Now let's talk about that.
I mean as you mentioned like this is not medical advice and people absolutely should talk to their physician before doing any sort of type of extreme thermal stress, but the sauna has generally, it's generally speaking. It's safe for most people. It's well, tolerated, most
See people even people that have stable cardiac disease can be and if you have cardiac disease, you have to talk to your physician, but I'm just I'm speaking to the literature here. You know. Again, it's easier for people that can't perform physical activity. I found it easier for like my mom who is sort of been a sedentary person, most of her life. I can more easily get her in the sauna than I can on the Peloton. So I think there's a, you know, I used for that but there are people there are some
Them things and people that should not get into the sauna or should definitely run everything by, their physician alcohol should never be used in the sauna, or before going in the sauna. And, you know, that that can lead to like that can be deadly. Can be very, very dangerous. So so alcohol is a big No-No. People that are elderly that are prone to like really low blood pressure. It could be dangerous for them to get in the sauna as well. People that have had a recent heart attack or have.
Have some cardiac diseases like unstable angina pectoris or severe aortic stenosis that can be contraindicated. So that sauna would not be good for them. Now, people that have had a heart attack that have, it's been, you know, a while. And I've been stable, like, talk to your physician because they're there have been studies showing that sauna use can help with that. But again, it's like after time has passed, so that would be something to talk about with your primary care physician.
How about kids or pregnant
people? Oh, great question. Yeah, and I think we also cover this a little bit in our in our review article kit. Children children don't have the same type of thermal regulation mechanisms in play that adults do. So like kids aren't sweating to cool themselves. Like adults do like the same. I'm not seeing kids don't ever sweat. They just they're not profusely sweating to cool themselves down. And so
Sana Sana. Can you know that anything that's more than five minutes can be can be dangerous for a child. So and certainly like really young children. You know, I like, I think that's that's in P places like Finland. I know like some children are using the sauna but you know, they have these cultural sort of guidelines there where you know that a certain age and it's like only a couple of minutes, you know, so I am not putting Emma.
Not getting my son in the sauna. I'd rather have him go for a hike with me or you know, get get exercise another way. Just just because I don't want to take any risk and then pregnant women again. I certainly stayed out of the sauna the entire time that I was pregnant and I think it's probably best because, you know, there's been a lot of studies that have come out over the last few decades with jacuzzi bathing, you know, women that are doing jacuzzi beta bathing that are pregnant.
And it and it can lead to fetal abnormalities. So I think it's I think that's a high risk thing for pregnant women. And you know, I'm sure you'll find pregnant women in sin. Finland who said they use the sauna, but why take the risk, you know, just just take take that nine months off.
At what age will you allow your son to go in the sauna?
That's a good question. You know, he's 4 years old right now and you know, maybe maybe maybe I could think about it and another four years.
About, you know, eight or nine. And at that point, it's still going to just be a little exposure.
Build It Up slow. Yeah, what about continuous? Glucose monitors? These are really popular with some people right now, and I've talked to a few people that say that when they use the sauna, their glucose levels will rise. Sometimes significantly in the sauna. Have you noticed this as well? And what do you think's going on here?
I have noticed it. I do. I also wear continuous glucose monitor a lot of the time. I think I think there's a few possibilities here. So for one, it like, goes back to normal, you know, shortly after cooling down, you know, I think because you're sweating so much, you could possibly be changing, you know, you're basically changing the concentration of the
Or in your blood could just be sort of temporary transiently. Seems like it's higher because you're sweating, you're sweating out more water from your plasma. That's one one possibility. You know, the other possibility is I've seen some studies where that seems to only happen when you go into the sauna and a Fed State rather than fasted state. So and I don't exactly know, you know, because because it
Long-term sauna use is associated with improved fasting glucose and improved insulin sensitivity to me at the end of the day. That's what's important. And and so I think there may just be some kind of funny thing going on. Honestly. I had I might have a lot to do with the sweating when you're in there, but it's just it's not something I'm really concerned about. It is something I've noticed though.
Yeah, that makes sense that if you're sweating out volume that the concentration of sugar is going to
Hot and burn, right? But that's not. It's not a real thing. It's just concentration.
Yeah, what are some limit? You've already talked about some, but what are some of the limitations of the current sauna research that's available. And what research, do you hope is completed in the coming years about sauna
use
I think so, with any observational study, you know, there's the delimitation of you can never really establish causality. I will say this, you know, all of all of the work coming out of dr. Gary Locke and slab, they, they correct for so many confounding factors. I mean, we're talking, they're looking at cholesterol levels. They're looking at exercise cardio, you know, exercise and physical activity. They're looking at all The Usual Suspects, you know, where you have.
Economic status education, they're looking at gender. They look at heart disease. Pre-existing heart disease. They look, I mean, hypertension all those things. So after all those things are corrected for Sony uses still associated with a lower, you know, cardiovascular death, you know, mortality Associated cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality Etc. And again, the dose-dependent nature of it. Also, really, I think speaks to
To it being more causal because you're seeing the more frequent. It happens, the more robust the effect and even at the level of the amount of time in the sauna, and that's what really convinced me when I when I saw that data, I like look through one of the graphs and was like, oh, so not only is it 47 times a week, but the people that did it for 27 times a week and only stayed in their 11 minutes, only had a fraction of the robust effects that people that did it for 27 times a week and stayed in there, 20 minutes, so,
The limitations are what they are with any observational study. However, I feel like this data with the dose-dependent nature of the frequency and duration, really strengthen the data, in my opinion, in addition, to correcting for some very important confounding factors. I would like to see more research on saunas. I'd like to see like, you know, randomized, controlled trials, with more people, where they're doing more sauna research, not only in Finland, but in the United
States, you know, I'm so excited that dr. Ashley Mason is doing this study with sauna use and depression, but we need more of it. We need more people looking at that. Like imagine if we have an alternative treatment for depression in many cases. These people have major depressive disorder that, you know, they're basically not able to be treated by, you know, ssris or other pharmacological treatments there. It's not working for them. So you can imagine a world where
People can have saunas in their home or they can go to some kind of Center where they can use the sauna and it helps treat their depression. And the side effects are like reduced death from cardiovascular disease and reduced Alzheimer's disease risk. I mean, we're talking beneficial side effects, right? So I just I really want to see this this area of research explode. Like it's really been, you know, there's been more
More and more research coming out but there's, you know, NIH is in funding. This research. Mostly I think I think Ashley is now just landed one of her and at first NIH, grants for the sauna, but she had to do a whole pilot study to get there. And so I'd like to see, I'd like to see you, no more research done and more randomized, controlled trials. And and I think that totally can be done. It just it just hasn't been.
And of course there's tons of
Patients with what I'm about to say, because it's a population-based effect, but it's interesting. I just saw an article that Finland was rated as the happiest country overall. And I know there's almost as many saunas is people in Finland. So interesting Association there, that may or may not be related to saunas. There's a lot of other factors at play, but I think I think the fins have some good things going on with their their sauna use
definitely. Yeah
anything this has been so informative and
Any other things that we didn't cover that you want to cover or speak about?
You know, I think I think we covered most of it, you know, the the awesomeness of the heat shock proteins as well. You know, he Chuck proteins. Also people that have a genetic what's called a polymorphism. So this is like a mutation that happens in a certain percentage of the population. That's like more than one percent in their heat shock protein 70, that makes them have a more active heat, shock protein. There. Are they on average live?
One year longer if they have one copy of that, they live one year longer than people that don't have any copies. And if people have two copies, in other words, they got one from their mom and one from their dad, making it even more robust. They live on average, two years longer than people that don't have an overactive heat shock protein 70. So I just think it's, I like understanding the molecular mechanisms. And, you know, I know that sauna robustly activates heat shock proteins.
So, I think we covered a lot of really important stuff in there. As far as I could about.
That was, that was great. I learned a ton and for people that want to hear more from you, where can they find you, besides your YouTube channel and website found my fitness.
Yeah. We have a podcast on Apple podcasts and Spotify as well for people that like to listen to podcasts. We interview experts in the field of Aging.
Going or sauna research or you know nutrition. So we put those podcast on Apple podcasts on iTunes and also on YouTube. We have a lot of slides and Graphics much like you guys do it in Med cram where we try to cite information and put extra information on there. So it's found my fitness all one word. And that's our YouTube channel. So that's this, probably our main, our main one. Is that YouTube channel. I also do short videos. I just put one out on the
Metabolic and brain effects and benefits of cold exposure, so I know we didn't get into that today. We sort of touched on it, but there's also a lot of metabolic and brain benefits of cold exposure as well. So we just we just put out a video on that like yesterday I think or two days ago, so that's where you can find me.
Well, dr. Patrick. Thanks so much for all the information really appreciate it and hope to chat again, sometime soon.
Absolutely. My pleasure. Kyle. Thank you so much for having me on.
Thank you again to Med cram for having me on their show and thank you all for listening. One of the things Med creme and found my fitness share in common. I believe is a deep commitment to empowering people with factual and scientifically authoritative information to better themselves, and potentially their communities. If that's something that aligns with you, one of the best ways that you can support content creators, like Med, crammed and found my fitness is actually just by being present and engaged as a listener.
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