Sauna Bathing As A “Blood Doping” Body Hack

March 23, 2011

Good news for people who like to run! A little use of the sauna could go a long way towards enhancing your running endurance. The physiological adaptations to sauna bathing could enhance endurance performance. We have therefore performed a cross-over study in which six male distance runners completed 3 wk of post-training sauna bathing and [...]

Read the full article →

Sauna Use Induces an Endorphin Rush

March 16, 2011

Have you ever noticed how relaxed you feel after you get done with an intense workout? It feels good, doesn’t it? This is a consequence of the rush of endorphins you get. Endorphins interact with the opioid system in a way similar to drugs of abuse like heroine (which are ultimately hijacking a system that [...]

Read the full article →

Sauna Use Reduced Brain Natriuretic Peptide in Chronic Heart Failure Patients

March 9, 2011

Brain Natriuretic Peptide, or BNP for short, is a hormone that is produced by the heart and is often used as a marker for determining how well the heart is functioning. Thus, improvements in BNP is often seen as a sign that a patient’s condition is improving, especially when relief of other symptoms is present. [...]

Read the full article →

Sauna Therapy May Help Improve Insulin Sensitivity

March 2, 2011

Regular thermal therapy, using saunas or hot baths, has the potential to improve impaired insulin sensitivity and boost endothelial expression of the “constitutive” isoform of nitric oxide synthase–effects, analogous to those of aerobic training that should promote vascular health. Previous clinical reports suggest that hot tubs may be beneficial for diabetic control, and that sauna [...]

Read the full article →

Hormonal Responses to Sauna Bathing

March 1, 2011

Sauna bathing in healthy individuals results is various endocrine changes that have many positive health benefits. Studies have shown that bathing in a sauna for a longer duration will increase heart rate and blood flow. Noradrenaline increases by about 100%-160%, prolactin levels can increase between 2- and 7-fold, beta-endorphin immunoreactivity at 100 D, adrenocorticotropic hormone [...]

Read the full article →

Sauna Use and Thyroid Hormones TSH & rT3

February 26, 2011

Ran across this abstract regarding thyroid stimulating hormone, and sauna use in pubmed: A 30-minute stay in sauna resulted in an increase in plasma TSH; the response was exaggerated if glycemia had been increased by oral glucose intake at the beginning of the experiment. Plasma rT3 also increased in sauna, this response was, however, blunted [...]

Read the full article →

Hypersensitivity to Heat Pain Perception in Migraineurs

February 23, 2011

Ran across this, and while I’m not sure what it means in the context of sauna bathing, for example, I found it interesting nonetheless and wanted to save it down somewhere. Thermal and mechanical pain thresholds in 20 episodic migraineurs, 20 chronic migraineurs, and 20 non-migraine control subjects were compared. Quantitative sensory testing was conducted [...]

Read the full article →

Anorexia Nervosa and Sauna Therapy

February 16, 2011

I couldn’t find the full text for this anywhere, and the abstract was rather vague, but you don’t hear a whole lot about sauna use and eating disorders. Pretty obscure. The paper presents the results of heat treatment in three cases of anorexia nervosa (AN), in which marked overactivity and/or strenuous exercising were prominent clinical [...]

Read the full article →

Cold baths (or showers), locus coeruleus, and depression

February 8, 2011

Sauna use has been shown to affect noradrenaline levels previously. Interestingly enough, so does cold showers! … which is significant, because noradrenaline has been shown to play a role in depression previously. Cold showers have been shown to active the locus coeruleus which synthesizes noradrenaline. As many of you likely already know, cold showers or [...]

Read the full article →

Sauna eliminates chlorinated and aromatic hydrocarbons from the bloodstream

February 4, 2011

Up until recently I hadn’t found a whole lot of credible evidence for sauna therapy’s detoxifying effects. However, recently it appears the sauna Wikipedia page went through a serious overhaul. This study (pmid: 9553837) is cited on the updated page suggesting sauna use helps eliminate chlorinated and aromatic hydrocarbons from the blood stream. Unfortunately, this [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →