10 Reasons I’ll Never Live Without a Sauna (and neither should you)
00:0010 reasons that I will never live without a sauna again whether it's an inexpensive sauna blanket whether it's a full-blown Barrel sauna in my backyard whether it's a hot bath to simulate a sauna whatever I will never live without a sauna again number one it's passive okay anything passive is going to have a high degree of sustainability and adherence exercise is difficult for a lot of people because it is not passive it is active which is obviously the best thing right but to make active things sustainable for most people requires pretty solid outcome and requires kind of some level of gratification somewhat instant gratification So that obviously works people get hooked on exercise but Asana is passive and it is still an exercise mimetic so it mimics the effects of exercise while I'm literally sitting there is it as good as exercise no way no how but it's something that I can get a benefit while literally doing nothing that sounds like a win-win to me number
01:00two it improves my aerobic capacity and there is data to back this up the Journal of science and medicine and Sport took a look at Runners for three weeks had them run doing their normal stuff and then had them run for three weeks plus do 30 minutes of sauna per day they're time to exhaustion increased 32 percent and their time trial times improved 1.9 as a result their red blood cell count increased 7.1 percent their ability to carry oxygen that is strong data and then there was another study that took a look at 47 participants that were not athletes and I had them exercise or exercise plus sauna the sauna group ended up having improvements in their aerobic capacity and their aerobic fitness and decreases in blood pressure above the exercise only group so there is strong literature there and I notice a huge difference and again you don't even have to have a sauna a hot
02:00bath that's treated like a sauna close the doors get it steamy in there immerse yourself as much as you can let yourself sweat let yourself be a little bit mildly miserable even though that's kind of taboo to say these days but that does the trick number three is the growth hormone effect and I say this not because I'm trying to become Ronnie Coleman I say this because growth hormone has huge effects across the board okay it's going to be beneficial for obviously preserving muscle beneficial for brain health immune system recovery you name it there's a study that was published in experimental gerontology and the cool thing about this study is it actually teaches you sort of a protocol which is kind of cool so they had subjects do two bouts of 20-minute sauna sessions with a 30 minute break in between at 80 degrees Celsius okay and they saw this increased growth hormone 2x then they had subjects do two 15-minute bouts at 100 degrees Celsius is so higher temperature shorter time with a 30 minute Gap in between so they call that a cooling break so 15 minutes 30 minute break 15 minutes again
03:005x increase in growth hormone so seriously different right the high heat seems to have a bigger impact but then additionally they had subjects try doing one in the morning one at night so about an hour in the morning and an hour at night which is unrealistic for most people but there was a 16x increase in growth hormone after doing this for seven days so you can go through periods of time maybe when you're on vacation or you have time off where you really get super obsessed with sauna and have this nice increase that might boost your recovery a little bit number four is sleep why does Asana improve my sleep so much I couldn't begin to tell you why other than one main thing and that is called the glymphatic system and I learned this from one of the Special Forces operators that I had worked with and the literature is strong in it but basically the glymphatic system is sort of the ability for your brain to flush cerebral spinal fluid and run through your brain and kind of wash your brain and this happens at night but using a sauna
04:00particularly in the evening increases intracranial pressure so it increases the pulsing that's happening because you don't have like a pump for this cerebral spinal fluid so creating more pressure in the brain via heat creates the movement of the cerebral spinal fluid helping that glymphatic system so that improves sleep it also improves the slow wave sleep and the effectiveness of sleep on your brain okay so you improve your sleep sure when you improve how your brain repairs itself or treats itself I should say during sleep number five is anecdotal but it makes a lot of sense probably because of vasodilation when I get out of Asana my libido is usually through the roof and maybe that's TMI for a lot of people but for those of you that have I don't know a spouse or a partner might be kind of nice to know right especially as people get older maybe they're dealing with Ed and let's just be real that's a very real thing here that people don't talk about a lot but that vasodilation those endothelial dilation the the cells
05:00within the arteries within the vessels and redecreasing that arterial stiffness so the heart can actually pump the blood to those places come on that's worth something maybe it might just save your marriage a very real thing to keep track of even if it's a hot bath that you're utilizing is that if you sweat you're going to lose minerals so you don't just dehydrate you lose minerals too so then when you rehydrate you are diluting your mineral balance okay it is very important and ideal that you actually sip on electrolytes or at least salt water like maybe a teaspoon or so of salt in your water while you are in a sauna okay little sips not chugging is going to increase that absorption a little bit more I put a link down below for the electrolytes I use they have an unflavored version if you don't want anything else but it's called element lnnt I'm a fan of their Citrus salt super refreshing they have their grapefruit salt which is a
06:00delicious flavor they have their watermelon salt a bunch of different flavors it makes it kind of fun too and if you're fasting it feels like you're eating something like it's delicious it gives you a treat but that link down below gets you a free variety pack so you can try all the different flavors you get that free sample pack with any purchase so whenever you purchase something from element you get that free variety pack so that's just a cool thing you can give it to a friend you can keep it greedy and keep it all for yourself whatever but the point is even if you don't do an entire packet sip on some electrolytes during Asana you may not feel it the first one or two times that you're saunting but as you do more and more of this like a few times per week that cumulative dehydration will add up so check them out down below Top Line of the description underneath this video number six is the immune system now the interesting thing is I notice with a lot of different people that if they sauna too much it can Crush their immune system and actually have a negative impact but the literature doesn't seem to necessarily say that but in a way it sort of implies it because the
07:00literature suggests that four times per week of sauna is where you get the best benefit and this was a large scale study it was a 25 year study looking at over 1900 people they found that two to three times per week using Asana could decrease your risk of respiratory illness by 23 percent but when you bump that up to four times per week that went up significantly to a 41 decreased risk in respiratory illness and it seems as though we don't know for sure but mechanistically this probably because of heat shock proteins having an impact overall on your immune system and how this actually laser targets pathogens a little bit more number seven for me I really do find that I maintain muscle more if I use a sauna and the data is fairly strong to back that up there's a study published in Frontiers and Physiology that had subjects Go full body immersion in Asana for 60 minutes or single leg sauna where they isolated the leg and then did a muscle biopsy taking a chunk out of their muscle and analyzing it under a microscope and they found that
08:00the whole body session not the single leg session had increases in mtor phosphorylation and an akt pathway activation that sounds kind of bad and also sounds like Greek what that means is it created a better environment for building muscle and the single leg isolation didn't do that so whatever's happening is happening at the core like Happening by our whole body being immersed and this is the data to back it up but the the anecdotal experience for me is that when I'm off my sauna game a lot of things crumble and I feel like I'm not able to maintain muscle as well that's why it's a huge part maybe I'm a little bit scared to drop it but reality is like it's a huge part of my life and I don't want to drop it because I feel like it helps me maintain muscle the number eight reason is the cardiovascular benefit now it's kind of interesting because when you're in a sauna you can almost feel the cardiovascular effects like it feels like you're working out remember sitting in a sauna itself is an exercise mimetic
09:00so we exercise we get our heart rate up we decrease our blood pressure we get vasodilation very similar things are happening when we're sitting inside of a sauna if you look at the large-scale studies like the Finnish studies the Scandinavian studies what they demonstrate is that there are huge improvements in cardiovascular health but also decreases in cardiovascular disease related death which is pretty fascinating but it makes a lot of sense so in the big picture you get a lot of vasodilation which means that it's less stress on the heart because those endothelial cells that are in the layers of the actual vessels are healthier therefore the blood vessels the arteries can relax they can dilate and contract easier when they're supposed to therefore taking some of the pressure off of the heart so yes there's a huge cardiovascular benefit not just for your health but also for your performance as well number nine is mental like purely it is hard you need to do hard things
10:00and like your sauna shouldn't be this relaxing experience it should be something that is actually kind of uncomfortable and doing uncomfortable things and saving off reaction like to the discomfort the high heart rate the all these things like you don't want to just react to them you need to be with them and you need to understand and recognize and you can even meditate in Asana but the mental benefits are huge not to mention the increase in neurotransmitter activity it as a result and the last one that is huge is I can use it on my off days if I'm really really sore and still feel like I'm getting exercise because it is literally considered an exercise pneumatic like I mentioned at the beginning of this video so if I have an off day and I'm frustrated because like I'm like this was supposed to be a day where i'm training but I am flat out too sore I can still get a cardiovascular mental endorphin benefit by sitting in that sucker and feeling like I'm getting a workout as always I'll see you tomorrow