A sauna is a small room or building typically made of wood and intended for recreational or therapeutic heat sessions, using either dry or wet heat. Temperatures can get as high as 185 degrees Fahrenheit, which can make you sweat a pint of liquid while also increasing the pulse rate and circulation in your body. Saunas are generally considered safe for most people, although many of the health claims made for them have not been verified in studies. There are some benefits, however, that have been documented by scientific research.
Arthritis and Pain Relief
There is some evidence that sauna bathing can alleviate chronic pain. A study at Japan's Nishi Kyusyu University in 2005 treated patients with chronic pain using dry sauna therapy once a day for four weeks during hospitalization. The patients showed a decrease in the visual analog pain score, number of pain behavior, self-rating depression scale and anger score. Two years after treatment, 77 percent of patients receiving sauna treatments returned to work compared with 50 percent of patients in a different therapy protocol.
Asthma and Bronchitis
The heat from saunas has been shown to provide a temporary improvement in pulmonary function that may benefit patients with asthma and chronic bronchitis. Research published in the Russian journal Terapevticheskii Arkhiv in 1985 documented sauna use on patients with asthma and chronic bronchitis had a bronchodilatory effect and helped return the heart's pumping of blood to normal levels. A later study at the Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt studied sauna use in children with bronchial asthma and found that it appeared to help with resistance against infections.
Colds
Volunteers in Vienna took part in an experiment where they were divided into two groups, one that used saunas over a period of six months and a control group that did not. The study, published in the Annals of Medicine in 1990, reported there were significantly fewer colds in the sauna group, particularly during the last three months of the study where the incidence of colds was half that of the control participants.
Depression
A study published in Psychosomatic Medicine in 2005 studied patients with mild symptoms of depression, including general fatigue, appetite loss and physical and mental complaints. Half of the patients were given sauna treatment daily for four weeks, while the others were treated bed rest. The sauna group showed improvements in all symptom areas and started eating more than the bed-rest group.
Endurance
A study in New Zealand has shown that sauna use can benefit endurance athletes. The report, in August 2007's Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, treated male distance runners with either post-exercise saunas or control training. The runners were then given a treadmill test that found significantly improved exercise tolerance in the sauna group, as well as increased respiratory oxygen uptake. The effects appeared to be due to increases in plasma volume and total blood cell volume.
Heart Conditions
Preliminary studies have indicated long-term sauna use may help lower blood pressure in hypertensive patients. Japanese researchers set out to test the safety and effectiveness of saunas on people with chronic systolic heart failure, having them use a sauna once a day for four weeks. The results, published in 2005 in the Journal of Cardiac Failure, found that sauna bathing decreased systolic blood pressure without affecting heart rate, as well as improving exercise tolerance and oxygen levels. The researchers concluded saunas may be an effective adjunctive therapy for people with chronic systolic congestive heart failure. A cautionary separate study in Helsinki, however, showed that the risk of hypotension increases when sauna bathing is combined with alcohol consumption.
References
- Journal of Cardiac Failure: Safety and Efficacy of Repeated Sauna Bathing in Patients with Chronic Systolic Heart Failure
- Journal of Internal Medicine: Alcohol and Sauna Bathing
- Annals of Medicine: Regular Sauna Bathing and the Incidence of Common Colds
- American Journal of Medicine: Benefits and Risks of Sauna Bathing
- Pneumologie: The Effect of the Finnish Dry Sauna on Bronchial Asthma in Childhood
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