Transcription
You know, I've talked about cryotherapy, which is cold therapy, taking a cold shower. But sauna bathing, I think, can give you almost as many benefits. And today, we're going to talk about what would happen if you were to do sauna on a regular basis for 14 days. I think you can create a huge change in your overall health.
Now, what happens when you go into the sauna is you have this interesting thermal therapy benefit of your body adapting to this mild stress. And the term for that is called a hormetic effect, where you're adding a stress to cause your body to then adapt and become stronger. Now, there are other things that can give you this hormetic effect, like cold showers, or the ice tubs, fasting, exercise. But let's dive into the benefits of what this sauna can give you.
Now, you have the regular sauna where you're adding heat. But then you also have another type of sauna, which is not as hot, where they're using infrared. Which is a little bit different, that can go a little bit deeper into the body because of this infrared can penetrate inside the body. And it can also increase more melatonin. But in this video, I want to primarily focus in on the benefits of a regular heated sauna situation.
So let's first talk about what it can do to your hormones. It can definitely increase growth hormone by 140 percent. It can increase noradrenaline, which is a hormone from your adrenal glands. It can significantly increase dopamine, which can actually make you calmer and affect your mood. It can increase serotonin, which can also affect your mood. And even increase your prolactin, which is another hormone.
But let's go through some of the other benefits. Number one, it can help lower your resting heart rate. Okay? Now, the more the person exercises, the more athletic they become, the lower the resting heart rate. And that can definitely decrease your risk for all sorts of cardiovascular problems and extend your life. So having a lower resting pulse rate is a good thing.
Number two, it can help your lymphatic system. And it's kind of like a backup reserve for your vascular system. And it's a place where your immune system hangs out with all the lymph nodes. And so a sauna can actually help stimulate the lymphatic system. So even though the pulse rate will increase during the sauna, like you're working out, over a period of time, your body will adapt to this and give you a lower resting pulse rate to roughly about 120 beats per minute. So you're actually getting your heart to pump, you're getting better circulation, more lymph flow. And the therapeutic effect from a sauna can actually mimic what you would get from doing moderate aerobic exercise, which is pretty, pretty interesting because you're not actually running, you're just sitting there.
It has some pretty cool effects on lowering your blood pressure. It can decrease the intensity and the risk of getting an asthmatic event. It can actually strengthen your immune system so you don't get sick as often. And this next one is quite remarkable. They have found that it decreases all-cause mortality in one study by 40% if you're doing a sauna four to seven days a week. So just that one little benefit alone kind of makes you want to go into the sauna.
Sauna therapy can actually help reduce pain, inflammation. It can actually help certain skin problems like psoriasis. It can give you something that can help you recover over stress and even exercise. Sauna therapy can give you significant cognitive benefits, which is really cool. It can actually decrease the severity of dementia too.
Another cool benefit that relates to a lot of other side benefits is it can increase insulin sensitivity. So it actually is helping you with your blood sugars. It decreases something called ROS, which has to do with oxidative stress. So it kind of has an antioxidant effect. It makes your skin look youthful. And it's probably a combination of both the hormetic effect from the heat, and as well as the circulation, as well as autophagy. Okay? So sauna therapy can stimulate autophagy, which is this recycling of old damaged proteins, which is pretty cool.
Now, you're going to be sweating in the sauna. So let me just kind of cover what happens when you sweat. You're going to be losing mostly, uh, sodium with a smaller amount of potassium. An average person consumes about 3,300 milligrams of sodium every single day. And that's about a thousand milligrams over what they should be consuming, okay, which is about 2,300. Now, this doesn't take into consideration sweating and exercise, okay? But on average, they consume a certain amount of potassium, which is usually more than they should. But a lot of that is dependent on your potassium levels because an average person consumes only about 2,600 milligrams of potassium and they need 4,700. A lot more. So sodium does not become a problem if you have enough potassium.
But here's the thing. When you go into the sauna, you're going to be sweating out mostly your sodium. And so the sodium is going to go down and down and down. And so depending on if you have too much sodium, you might feel better. Let's say, for example, you're doing this long fast, right, where you need more sodium, or you're doing the ketogenic diet where you need more sodium. And you then do this sauna treatment and you sweat it out, yet you're also not getting enough potassium. Now, you can end up with an electrolyte imbalance. So anytime you're doing the sauna, take into consideration the sweating. And so make sure you're getting enough electrolytes. You might need a little bit more potassium, you might need more sodium with that. But you want to balance those things out.
So those are some pretty cool benefits of the sauna treatment. You might want to try it. And since we're on the topic of sodium and potassium, I put this video up right here. Check it out.