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Regular Sauna Users May Have Fewer Chronic Diseases (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: People who visit the sauna frequently may be less likely to develop heart and lung diseases or to get the flu than those who rarely go, a research review suggests. One study in the current analysis, for example, found that going to the sauna at least four times a week was associated with a roughly 50 percent lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease or coronary heart disease. This study included 2,315 people and also linked regular sauna use to a 40 percent lower risk of premature death from all causes. Another study in the analysis compared the effects of using the sauna for 19 minutes versus 11 minutes. In this study, longer sauna sessions were linked to a 17 percent lower risk of premature death from all causes, as well as a 36 percent lower chance of death from heart disease.
In a third study in the analysis, with 1,621 participants, using the sauna at least four times weekly was tied to a 47 percent lower risk of developing high blood pressure than going once weekly. Yet another study linked at least four weekly sauna visits with about 66 percent lower risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease than going just once a week. Two other studies found going to the sauna at least four times a week associated with a 41 percent lower risk of respiratory diseases and a 37 percent lower chance of pneumonia than going once weekly. The authors reported their findings in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
In a third study in the analysis, with 1,621 participants, using the sauna at least four times weekly was tied to a 47 percent lower risk of developing high blood pressure than going once weekly. Yet another study linked at least four weekly sauna visits with about 66 percent lower risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease than going just once a week. Two other studies found going to the sauna at least four times a week associated with a 41 percent lower risk of respiratory diseases and a 37 percent lower chance of pneumonia than going once weekly. The authors reported their findings in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
Dunno about you, but my corporate gym doesn't have a sauna. Nor do the public schools, the storefront gyms or other facilities the proles commonly use. Are you sure these findings aren't just looking at wealthy white guys somewhat interested in health vs. the great unwashed cheetoh-eating masses?
Just Google photobiomodulation. Certain wavelengths of red light are a foundation of youth.
There's some big time causation != causality going on there.
How many people who are already sick/significantly overweight go to a sauna 4 times a week? Even when I had a haelth club membership, I rarely went more than thrice a week.
Sounds like a study whose entire effects were determined by the self-selection of healthy people.
"People who regularly compete in triathlons are 95% less likely to develop diabetes." Yeah, I bet...
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Mayo clinic is highly respected and those percentages seem huge, even beating some drugs designed to prevent premature cardiac death.
I think you'll find similar results among drivers of luxury cars.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
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Finnish (and Scandinavian, Baltic and Russian) saunas are quite different from American saunas. The maximum allowed temperature in American saunas is 194F or 90C, and the common temperature is much lower than that, often in the 120F/50C range. With people wearing bathing suits.
Meanwhile a Finnish sauna is typically kept around the boiling point for water, and unless water is poured on the rocks, it can be in the 230F/110C range. And, of course, people go naked in Finnish saunas. You have to be, and not bring any towels that aren't cotton or linen.
Oh, and Americans don't whip themselves with birch twigs in the sauna, nor roll in the snow afterwards either.
I assume they're talking about the traditional steam sauna, where the moisture (convection) cleans the skin and sinuses, not the infra-red saunas, which are (radiant) heaters.
Heat kills the boys you know.
I'm not finding the article I'm thinking of at the moment, but I've read that sauna use is particularly helpful for people who may be too obese or injured to comfortably exercise in other ways (though if this applies to you, I suggest trying swimming / pool exercises) or who are sedentary and not used to more-than-brief cardiovascular challenge. At a minimum, sauna use causes short-term cardiovascular changes that the body has to adapt to, and a major way it adapts is by increasing blood vessel elasticity and blood flow to the skin like exercise does. It sounds similar to healthy stretching that many people do for their muscles but for blood vessels (which also contain muscle) instead. Side note: saunas are also a great place to do stretches or massage since muscle and connective tissue elasticity increases as well. Be a little cautious with doing those if you have an injury resulting in joint looseness though!
From another article:
"On average, the study found, sauna users' blood pressure dropped by seven points and their arteries became more "elastic" (based on non-invasive tests).
In addition, their heart rate rose from an average of 65 beats per minute before the sauna session to 81 beats afterward."
https://www.webmd.com/heart/ne...
- A Doctor of Physical Therapy
These saunas usually have temperatures of 80 to 100 degrees Celsius (176 to 212 degrees Fahrenheit) and very dry air, with relative humidity of about 10 to 20 percent. Right! so if we crank the temperature up to 180 to 200 degrees Celsius we should live forever then? Don't forget the spuds and pumpkin.
going to the sauna at least four times a week was associated with a roughly 50 percent lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease or coronary heart disease.
However, those sauna-goers still must die from some cause or other. It would be helpful to know whether not croaking from a heart attack just laid them open to dying from something worse, more painful or lingering just a little further down the line.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Wondering if they take into consideration the cold bath/shower/snow afterward and the impact on our bodies. Will have to read deeper to know!
Wealthy people who are active and spend time looking after themselves tend to be healthier!
More at 11:00.
a sauna stresses the system and is essentially a kind of exercise, a style of exercise you're going to have trouble finding elsewhere.
Or it might be the exact opposite :
Sauna stresses the system, and thus only people with a functional enough cardio-vascular system go there.
The people with bad hearths don't go there AND die younger.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It looks like the conclusion that global warming is related to piracy. In XV century there wasn't global warming and there was a lot of pirates (those with that buried treasures in islands, not software piracy) . Last pirates where Chinese and the end of XIX, when they disappeared, global warming started. Conclusion: Global warming is related to piracy.
Let's suppose that regular sauna users are also people that also have a lot of healthy habits (and I think it is a good guess). Maybe one of those healthy habits, not the sauna, is the responsible for that extra resistance to flu and heart diseases. Maybe fat people don't like sauna.
You must be careful: Statistically correlation of variables is a good hint for starting research, not a statistical evidence of a relation cause effect.
When you broil your genitals to sterility you are not nipples deep in poop monsters.
In the UK, if I went to a sauna 4 times a week I would need to be wealthy! Isn't this study just saying that rich people are healthier than poor people?
"People who regularly compete in triathlons are 95% less likely to develop diabetes." Yeah, I bet...
I got your idea, but your example is horribly wrong.
Yes, some type of diabetes (Type 1 - the one which is genetically linked to some HLA immuno types, and tends to develop at a young age and works by killing of insulin cells in the langerhans islets, so the patient still has a functioning body but is simply completely unable to produce insulin on its own and absolutely need that any required amount of insuling gets delivered through a syringe) have nothing to do with sport.
On the other hand, with correct follow-up and adaptation of A. the glucose intake, B. blood glucose measures and C. insuline administration - type 1 diabetic CAN do lots of sports. (High tech devices like continuous measuring implants, pumps, etc. can help a bit but I know people who still do it old school and still do a crazy amount of sports).
And now there's diabetes type 2 (the one which is linked to a different genetic make up and is strongly linked to obesity - the more the patient is obese, the more the patient develop insulin resistance. Their body is still producing insulin as it should, but due to various hormonal perturbation provoked by the fat tissue, the body reacts a lot less to the insuline - they either need extra bits of insulin added, or other types of drugs to help regulate).
This type of diabetes is extremely strongly linked to obesity and body fat.
Sports, specially endurance sports have strong regulating effect on body fat and obesity.
Thanks to lifestyle change, including physical activity (though you don't straigh out start having your MBI 45+ morbidly obese patient doing triathlons immediately. You go progressively. Taking the stairs instead of elevators/escalators is a good first baby step along the path) it's possible to dramatically reduce the medical needs of the patient, and increase long term outcome (Sometime to the point that the patient doen't need medication anymore) by reducing the weight.
(This might be a little bit easier to achieve on our side of the atlantic, than in countries that over rely on cars and processed foods like the US).
So eventually, running triathlon would *actually* help the diabetic type 2 patients, and is completely irrelevant to type 1 patients.
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On an unrelated note, that is why I'm a bit ambivalent on the "body positive" movement I'm seeing through the internet happening in the US.
On one hand, yes, I think body-shaming is pretty stupid thing, specially given that for some people over-eating is their (buggy) coping mechanism. By shaming them you'll increase their stress, and won't solve their problems.
Also yes, Holywood's obsession with a very specific unique body type, and the fashion's obsession with anorexic living skeleton (so clothes fall on them exactly like on a coat-hanger ?), isn't good at all. There are lots of people who don't fit these stereotypes and have different body shapes but are still perfectly healthy (even slightly overweight people) and should indeed be considered *normal*. Being a bit more curvy than the latest movie bimbo shouldn't be a sin.
On the other hand, the giant balls of fat with an extreme morbid obesity that insist to be considered just as "body diverse", that makes me cringe. Sorry boys and girls - you aren't just "diversely body shaped", you have achieved a level of obesity at which point it's correlated with tons of negative health impacts : risks of the above-mentioned type 2 obesity, risks of cholesterol-related cardio-vascular diseases, severe stress on your joints (mostly knees and hips), etc.
I can't be positive about a "walking (well almost rolling at this point) health liability".
You shouldn't be shamed, you shouldn't be arbitrarily discriminated against. But you should seriously consider contacting your family doctor, getting appointment with some nutritionist, start consider some life-style change, progressively start increasing physical activity, etc. before your so-called "body diversity" kills you in a horrible way (like e.g. by clogging your brain's arteries).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
... are more healthy!
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{...} to comfortably exercise in other ways (though if this applies to you, I suggest trying swimming / pool exercises)
This.
Thousand time this.
Due to the weightlessness-like caused by the water, you can actually swim/do pool exercies even if you're completely hopeless for any other type of physical exercises.
Even if you're weak to the point that you can't walk around, you can still swim (Though in that case don't attempt it on your own the first time without specially trained supervision). There's a reason why swimming pool is used in physical rehab: it's really that good/useful.
If you need exercice, go to the pool (and optionally consider registering for gym at the pool).
Then it's followed by biking and then a little bit further down by rowing (Either the actual out-door sport, or on devices), as your weight is distributed over more points (on a bicycle, your weight is distributed over 5 points, you don't put so much stress on single joint like when, e.g., running) and the effort is spread over more muscle groups (in case of rowing you basically extend your whole body), and you can also adapt the level of efforts (light pace on flat, instead of pedaling like a maniac trying to beat the pack uphill).
As some scale, simply walking (instead of taking the car) or climbing the stairs (instead of taking elevators/escalators) is a good light exercise.
Consider eventually introducing bike to work (consider using e-bike to pedal-assist to be less sweaty), well at least when you live on the side of the Atlantic where "going to the groceries" doesn't mean "2 hours car trip".
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
So many are wrongly commenting that this only proves that rich persons are healthier than poor. These studies were made in Finland. In Finland we have about 3 million saunas and a population of about 5 million. It means we have pretty much one sauna for each household. We in Finland are crazy about our saunas and both rich and poor go to sauna. You have to search for a very long time to find even one house without sauna or access to a sauna. All new houses do have saunas and the older houses often have a separate sauna building on the back yard.
In Finland we do not have much homeless people at all. Those very, very few we have are it by own choice because our social system makes sure everybody got a place to live. Finland it quite unique in this regard, even among the Nordic countries. If you have problems (drugs, alcohol, unemployment, depression, whatever) and you are not able to pay for own living, you get it for free. It is like the motto would be "first a place to live, then we try to fix your other problems".
In Finland sauna is nothing you happen to visit just after some exercise. Instead it is a way to relax and both fat and thin, young and old are going to sauna just because it feels so good.
This just reminds me of the gym I joined in college. They had a really nice sauna, but a bunch of baby customers. They would complain about it being too hot, and after a workout I'd wander into the sauna and find it at 98F (?!?!?!) Thankfully I realized where the thermostat was and their box around it had little vent holes. I'd just splash water into the box and keep the thermostat cool until the room reached over 125-130F+. Then I just made sure to keep putting water on the rocks or thermostat as needed.
I'd like an actual sauna rather than most of the sissy ones we have here.
I think this might be a classic case of attributing causation simply because there is a correlation.
1/ could it be that those who regularly spend time in the sauna typically have more time on their hands because they are more afffluent? Strong linkage between health and wealth.
2/ could it be that those who go the Sauna typically do so in their gym - and if they are going there regularly, they are also going to gym to exercise regularly? Strong linkage between exercise and good health.
Just saying.
Just sayin snowflake.
There are tons of correlated factors that could account for this, and probably the authors considered this but since this is slashdot I'm not going to read the paper.
But there is one direct benefit of saunas: humidified air. During colder months, the air is drier and leeches moisture from your lungs. Dry lungs means less mucus to get rid of foreign particulates. Spending time in humidified air helps combat this.
Instead of getting a sauna membership, just get a humidifier.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
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People who have time and resources to frequently visit the Sauna are less stressed and have the resources to take better care of their nutrition and health needs. It isn't necessarily the Sauna that is providing benefit though. It's just that because they have more resources and are less stressed (not imaginary, but, real life-threatening stress), they have less health issues.
"but it's far more likely that those who actually get off their ass and use a sauna are not the kind of lazy obese people that die of heart and lung diseases due to an inactive lifestyle."
How is using a sauna an active person only thing? Your assumption seems obsurd to me. To use one all you literally have to do is sit down for an extended period.
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What if you live in, say, Florida where it's hot and humid all the time like a wet sauna?
By the same token, what if you live in the desert where it's hot and dry all the time like a dry sauna?
The amount of assumptions here make it clear to me that few people read the actual Mayo Clinic study. This is how misinformation is spread, plebs!
Particularly if the Earth heats to near boiling.
Not so much on the longevity...
I was going to post some snarky comment about how the type who goes to a sauna is probably not to be the type who's going to complain about a bit of back pain, but then I read the suggestion that "regular" meant 4 times a week, I figured the only thing I could reasonably do is not say a word while I slowly backed away.
I figured you'd *really* have to like it to go to a sauna more than once a year.
Heck, I swear I know some people who don't *shower* 4 times a week.
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Maybe if you're prone to cardiovascular problems you don't use a sauna much because it feels bad. ... you use a sauna because it feels good.
Maybe if your very overweight you don't use a sauna because it's uncomfortably hot.
Maybe if your slim, fit, and healthy
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.