Making yourself sweat by sitting in a roasting hot box may not sound exactly pleasant, or healthy, but using a sauna is actually one of the very best things you can do for your body.
Contrary to popular belief amongst those who have never experienced it, a sauna session is incredibly relaxing and offers a whole host of fantastic benefits for your body in terms of both muscle recovery and long-term health.
Athletes and professional sports teams regularly use saunas as part of their training programmes with experienced sports scientists raving about the recovery benefits they provide. This evidence isn’t only anecdotal either, with a huge number of scientific studies showing that sauna use has a genuine impact on injury healing, lactic acid removal, and muscle soothing, helping users train harder than ever before.
But what about those of us who aren’t highly trained athletes? Well, saunas don’t only provide relief from physical exertion, they also relieve stress, aid in weight loss, help with muscle growth and could even be the key to a longer and heather life by significantly reducing the risk of certain heart and cardiovascular conditions.
It is no surprise that more people than ever are choosing to harness these fabulous health benefits by having a sauna room installed in their own home or garden, giving them access to the luxury of a boutique spa in the convenience of their own property.
Today, we are going to examine some of the biggest health and performance boost offered by regular sauna usage.
Sauna type matters
Many people don’t realise that there are actually several different sauna types, each of which provides heat therapy to the user, but in very different ways.
When you think of a sauna, most people image the wood clad benches of a traditional Finnish-style sauna, a design that has been used in Scandinavia for many centuries.
A Finnish-style sauna used an electric heater (or wood in very traditional versions) to heat the room to a very high temperature, usually around the 150-200 degrees Fahrenheit mark, with a very low humidity level of between 5-15%.
An Infrared sauna Glasgow, is a more modern variation on this classic design, still keeping the humidity low, but using infrared rays to heat the body of the user directly, rather than the ambient environment around them.
This direct heat can offer increased relief from muscle exertion and offers a more penetrating, deep heat to the human body. These units are becoming more and more popular as they are more energy efficient than traditional saunas (due to the lower heat of the room) and can be custom designed to fit into pretty much any space.
Finally, steam rooms, whilst often confused or compared with saunas are quite different. Rather than the low humidity of a sauna, steam room humidity is kept as high as possible, often around the 95% mark. This is achieved by filling the space with steam from a steam generator.
Steam rooms offer many of the same health benefits as saunas, in addition to many unique ones that come from the presence of steam such as help with congestion and the moisturisation of the skin.
Why saunas could extend your life
Sauna bathing has been recognised across the globe for being a valuable part of a healthy lifestyle for centuries.
However, it is only more recently that scientific research has identified a genuine link between regular sauna use and an extended lifespan.
The reason for this is that heat treatments can significantly reduce inflammation, cardiovascular disease, and all-cause mortality.
One study found that using a sauna 4-7 times a week resulted in men being 50% less likely to die of a cardiovascular related issue.
Heat treatments can also help those dealing with high blood pressure by raising their internal body temperature, causing their blood vessels to dilate and blood flow to increase.
Why do athletes use saunas?
For the average Joe, a home sauna is a fantastic asset to supplement a healthy lifestyle and tackle some of the most common causes of early death.
Why though, do highly trained athletes who treat their body like a temple and pride themselves on the conditioning of their cardiovascular system use saunas on a regular basis?
Well, saunas are also a fantastic aid for healing and recovery helping to send oxygenated blood pumping round the body and healing damaged muscle tissue at a faster rate than would otherwise be the case. This is hugely beneficial to athletes with injuries or who are looking for a rapid recovery after a touch workout.
Saunas allow athletes to trained harder and for longer than ever before without their bodies paying the price for this extra exertion.