Have you been stressed out? Having a rough week at work or with a relationship? It may sound corny, but you should go hit the sauna if this is the case. There are a multitude of sauna relaxation benefits that you can attain by simply hanging out and getting a good sweat going.
Sauna relaxation benefits
The moment you step into the sauna and have a seat you’ll instantly start to feel relaxed. As your body beings to warm up the millions of sweat follicles on your body become active and begin to secrete sweat in response to the high temperature. While people that haven’t’ frequented a sauna may think it gross, this heavy sweating feels absolutely amazing. Not only does it help to clean your skin up and rid you of some heavy toxic metals, but just the feeling of having all of your body’s sweat glands activate is quite alluring.
Another one of my favorite sauna relaxation benefits is that simply the sauna is usually a very peaceful and quiet place. While it’s also a great place to chat with friends, being alone in the sauna is very therapeutic and can allow you to meditate and let the days worries fade away. As you sit or lie in the sauna, you’re free from the hustle and bustle of the modern world is blocked out. You can be one with yourself and this to me is the most prominent of the sauna relaxation benefits.
Sauna relaxation benefits can also be achieved for your muscles. When we are stressed, people tend to get tight and stiff muscles which only serve to exacerbate the problem. Sauna works to get your muscles warmed up and loose, and many people opt to do their pre-workout stretches in the sauna. Stretching in the sauna feels great because the heat will add to the burn you feel in your stress, and can help to limber you up after a good session.
So, definitely consider using a sauna the next time you’re in the middle of a stressful event. It will allow you to get your mind off things in a very healthy way, while simultaneously cleaning your skin, helping your circulation and muscles. Better yet, buy a sauna kit so you can have these relaxation benefits at home! Give it a try and feel the relaxation!
Hitting the gym can be intense. Lifting weights, while obviously great for your muscles and shaping your physique, can be exhausting and make your body tense andhttps://www.livestrong.com/article/268288-a-sauna-muscle-recovery/ sore. Running or any kind of cardio can also have a similar effect. What can you use immediately after you finish your workout to help with recovery? The sauna of course! The benefits of sauna after workout are many, and I’ll explain them below.
benefits of sauna after workout
When you lift weights, you are essentially creating micro tears in your muscles. These tears are then repaired by the body which in essence is what makes your muscles grow. Anyone who’s ever worked out though will be familiar with DOMS, or delayed onset muscle soreness. Particularly after doing heavy lifts like squats, you can become extremely sore. Sauna can aid in lessening the soreness in your muscles. Sitting in the sauna can help your circulatory system move nutrients into these torn muscles faster, and the heat is great for loosening up and stretching yourself out as well.
Another one of the benefits of sauna after workout is that you can get some metabolic waste moving out of your body. Because the hot air makes you begin to sweat in an attempt to keep your body at a stable temperature, your lymphatic and circulatory systems get moving too. This can help move things like lactic acid through your system faster, and increase the elimination processes in your body.
Sauna benefits after workout – greater endurance and heart rate training
If you frequently use the sauna for a period of time more than a few minutes, you’ll notice that one of the effects is that your heart rate will rise. In a way, it’s almost a second cardio workout but you can just sit and relax rather than have to jog or swim. Your heart rate can rise up to 60% while sitting in a sauna, and there are studies that show regular sauna use can actually increase your cardiovascular endurance.
Spike your growth hormone
For all you gym rats out there, you will really love this- it is my favorite of the benefits of sauna after workout. The heat of a hot sauna places your body into a mild thermic stress. During this process the body creates heat shock proteins, and there are some studies that suggest you can double your growth hormone production with regular use of the sauna. More growth hormone means more muscle, so make sure to hit up the sauna after you finish with your weight lifting.
saunas help you sleep better
One of the biggest keys in getting in shape is proper rest. Our bodies do most of the recovering and rebuilding of muscle during sleep. Now if you’re like me, you love getting a good sleep and the sauna is a perfect way to facilitate that. In addition to just feeling mentally better when you exit the sauna after being heated up for a while, the natural process of rising and falling body temperature will make you feel a little tired and sleepy. The sauna basically primes you for a good night’s sleep and can help to increase your REM (rapid eye movement) and deep sleep. From personal experience, I know for a fact that the nights I sleep the best, I was visiting the sauna earlier in the day.
This article just touches on some of the main benefits of sauna after workout – there are many more! To experience the full benefits of sauna in your life, consider adding one to your home. If you are curious there are lots of ways to buy a sauna online.
So, you’ve decided to learn about sauna health benefits. What exactly do these hot rooms do for you when you sit inside of them? Although it may seem that just sitting there sweating isn’t all that interesting or profound, there are actually a multitude of health benefits that a sauna can give you – both physiological and psychological. Let’s dig into the many sauna health benefits to see exactly what’s going on.
When you enter into a sauna room, your body temperature will immediately begin to rise as the environment you have surrounded yourself will be much hotter than the air outside. For example, the sauna in my gym in my hometown usually is stable at a temperature of 160°F ( 71°C). Obviously this is a great deal hotter than even being outside on a hot summer day of 100° F. Naturally, your body will begin to perspire and create sweat. The human body contains roughly between two to five million sweat glands, and all of these glands become active when you jump into the sauna. I will get more into the wet science of sweat in another article, but suffice it to say that you will start to get pretty damp pretty fast inside the sauna. And this is where the sauna health benefits really start to kick in.
The main function of our perspiration of course is to keep the body’s core temperature stable. If you’ve ever read outdoorsman and survivalist Cody Lundin’s book 98.6°, The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive, you’ll be well aware that our body’s internal temperature homeostasis is right around 98.6° F. So, what we are essentially doing when we have a sauna session is creating an artificial fever in our bodies. When we’re sick and have a fever, our body will raise its internal temperature in order to kill off the particular pathogen that is plaguing it. The artificial fever brought on by a trip to the sauna provides a few different benefits for our health.
Sauna health benefits – skin cleaning
As our millions of tiny sweat glands start to kick into motion, you will become covered in small droplets of sweat. The action occurring on our skin is that the sweat glands open up to release the sweat, thereby opening our pores and pushing out dirt and other chemicals that may be resting on the skin. Traditionally, saunas were an alternative method of bathing that use our own ‘internal water’ to come out from within and cleanse the skin. You’ll notice after a good sweat in the sauna that your skin will feel rather smooth and soft. Once you have finished using the sauna, you will probably want to take a hot shower to clear the skin off of the sweat that has accumulated, and it feels awesome to rub yourself down with a skin brush to enhance exfoliation afterwards.
Sauna health benefits – Hyperthermic conditioning
Now we will get into some more science heavy stuff concerning the health benefits of the sauna. In recent years more study and research have been dedicated to looking into what the sauna can provide for our bodies. One of the main voices explaining this research to the general public is Dr. Rhonda Patrick, whom I became familiar with after watching her appearances on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. The studies that she presents are fascinating, and while I won’t get into the full details here, I will link to an excellent report that she created on her site.
Just a few of the physiological adaptations that occur subsequent to acclimation to
heat include:
● Improved cardiovascular mechanisms and lower heart rate.
● Lower core body temperature during workload (surprise!)
● Higher sweat rate and sweat sensitivity as a function of increased
thermoregulatory control.
● Increased blood flow to skeletal muscle (known as muscle perfusion) and
other tissues.
● Reduced rate of glycogen depletion due to improved muscle perfusion.
● Increased red blood cell count (likely via erythropoietin).
● Increased efficiency of oxygen transport to muscles.
Essentially, these studies show that using a sauna a few times a week can actually increase your cardiovascular abilities, making you able to run longer before exhaustion! That’s pretty awesome right? Sauna also promotes the creation of heat shock proteins, which when activated can help reduce oxidation cell damage and speed up muscle regrowth and recovery. Along side this, the stress caused by the high temperatures of a sauna will also spur more growth hormone, which is one of the key factors in building more muscle. Be sure to read all of Dr. Patrick’s report here to get the full details!
Sauna health benefits – remove heavy metals
A lot of more new age type health sites will promote saunas because they state that the sauna will cleanse the body of ‘toxins’ . A lot of people get skeptical when they hear the word toxin, because it is somewhat vague. However, in truth we do all carry some toxic load on our body, through the interactions we have, the items we touch, foods we consume and even the air we breath! Some of the more recongnizable toxins that get into our bodies are in the form of heavy metals. While I’m as much of an Iron Maiden fan as anyone else, heavy metals are not great to have in your body. There is evidence that using a sauna can help your body to expel various heavy metals via the skin. Nasty metal compounds such as lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury can be sweated out via your skin pores, leaving you with a lighter toxic load on your body.
sauna health benefits: Relaxation and meditation
There’s no doubt about it – we live in a chaotic modern world, which is always hustling and bustling. We’re always sitting in front of our computers and phone screens, and a quick trip into the sauna is a great way to take a break from it all. While some people will bring their phones into the sauna, I don’t recommend it as it’s not great for the phones battery and I personally use the sauna to be a space specifically used to “unplug” from the world. Generally the sauna is a quiet place and you can sit or lie down in total silence and relaxation – great for meditating and providing a respite from the busy world.
Alternatively, something I love to do in the sauna is get in my reading. I often opt to use a newspaper because I don’t worry about ruining them. Books can sometimes lose their binding due to the intense heat of the sauna, so you may not want to bring in a cherished or old book. But, the sauna is an excellent space to do reading which is mental exercise in itself.
When you exit from a good sauna session, you will feel a general great feeling, with worries lifted. It’s an excellent mental pick me up and a great way to take a break from the busy outside world.
So, what is your favorite sauna health benefit? Let me know!
Welcome to Saunalover.com. I have been a fan of using the sauna for many years now, and I thought it would be a fun project to start exploring my thoughts on these ancient, but awesome inventions. So I wanted to start with a Sauna 101 primer for those of you who aren’t familiar with what a sauna is, how it’s used, etc.
sauna 101
So, what exactly is a sauna? What does the word sauna even mean? The word sauna is Finnish in origin, although the actual birthplace of the sauna is up for debate.
Definition of Sauna
sau·na
/ˈsônə,ˈsounə/
noun
noun: sauna; plural noun: saunas
a small room used as a hot-air or steam bath for cleaning and refreshing the body.
a session in a sauna.
used in reference to a very hot, humid place.
“by 10 a.m., the city is a sauna”
The concept of sauna or sweat baths goes back many thousands of years, with many cultures having their own unique version of the sauna. In their native Finland, nearly every home constructed has its own sauna and oftentimes the sauna is constructed prior to the actual house! A sauna can be heated in a multitude of ways, via fire and burning wood, but most commonly you’ll see them today using electric heaters that take the place of a wood burning stove. Rocks are placed on the heater and heated to high temperatures, and water can be added to them to create a steam inside of the sauna. Temperatures in a sauna can often reach 160° F, and sometimes even hotter depending on the type of sauna you are visiting.
Generally it will take about 30 minutes to heat up a sauna room, and many users will enjoy a shower or hot bath before they enter into to start their sauna session. The most important part of Sauna 101 is that you are in the sauna to relax, and unwind – so enjoy it! I learning the benefits of sauna after I began to sit in one at my local gymnasium. It’s now become an every day routine for me, to the point that I purchased my own sauna for home use! With time and understanding of the multitude of health & mental benefits of these small wooden rooms, you’ll become a sauna lover too!
One of the biggest keys in getting in shape is proper rest. Our bodies do most of the recovering and rebuilding of muscle during sleep. Now if you’re like me, you love getting a good sleep and the sauna is a perfect way to facilitate that. In addition to just feeling mentally better when you exit the sauna after being heated up for a while, the natural process of rising and falling body temperature will make you feel a little tired and sleepy. The sauna basically primes you for a good night’s sleep and can help to increase your REM (rapid eye movement) and deep sleep. From personal experience, I know for a fact that the nights I sleep the best, I was visiting the sauna earlier in the day.
When you enter into a sauna room, your body temperature will immediately begin to rise as the environment you have surrounded yourself will be much hotter than the air outside. For example, the sauna in my gym in my hometown usually is stable at a temperature of 160°F ( 71°C). Obviously this is a great deal hotter than even being outside on a hot summer day of 100° F. Naturally, your body will begin to perspire and create sweat. The human body contains roughly between two to five million sweat glands, and all of these glands become active when you jump into the sauna. I will get more into the wet science of sweat in another article, but suffice it to say that you will start to get pretty damp pretty fast inside the sauna. And this is where the sauna health benefits really start to kick in.
