Mark Bell's Power Project is not where you typically go for nuanced longevity science. These are people who lift very heavy things and have strong opinions about protein. Which is exactly why it's interesting when they land on sauna as their consensus "most underrated" health practice — not by a little, but unanimously and emphatically. This is not the biohacker crowd discovering sauna. These are strength athletes saying: this thing works, and we've been sleeping on it.
The core argument the panel makes is deceptively simple: sauna produces cardiovascular stress comparable to Zone 2 training. Heart rate climbs. Blood vessels dilate. Cardiac output increases. The body is working — just without the mechanical load on joints and tendons. For a population of strength athletes dealing with cumulative wear and tear, this is meaningful. A rest day doesn't have to mean zero cardiovascular stimulus. A 20-minute sauna session at genuine temperature (not a mild warm room) delivers real cardiovascular training while the musculoskeletal system recovers.
This framing resonates strongly with what we see across our broader database. The Finnish Sauna Cohort — the epidemiological study that keeps appearing in every serious sauna conversation — shows a clear dose-response relationship between sauna frequency and all-cause mortality. Four to seven sessions per week versus one session per week correlates with roughly a 40% reduction in cardiovascular mortality. These are striking numbers. They don't mean sauna is a substitute for exercise, but they do confirm that it's operating on the same underlying systems.
The supplement discussion is a useful frame for the sauna conversation. The panel rates roughly 80% of common supplements as overrated — they work marginally, situationally, or not at all beyond placebo. The one supplement that survives the review is creatine, which the research genuinely supports across decades of data. The parallel to sauna is exact: most wellness products are supplements dressed up as interventions. Sauna is an actual intervention with an actual physiological mechanism and an actual epidemiological track record.
What the panel underemphasises — and what I'd add from our knowledge base — is the heat shock protein dimension. When heat stress activates HSPs, these proteins act as cellular chaperones: they help refold damaged proteins, reduce oxidative stress, and support mitochondrial function. Dr. Rhonda Patrick has covered this extensively in her work, and we have several pieces in our database on HSP activation from sauna use. For strength athletes, this is particularly relevant because resistance training itself generates significant oxidative stress and protein damage — and sauna HSP activation appears to accelerate the cellular repair that follows.
Practical recommendation: if you're a strength athlete and not using sauna, start with two to three 20-minute sessions per week on non-training days or after your training sessions (not before, if hypertrophy is a goal). Progress toward four sessions per week over several months. You don't need a fancy infrared setup — a traditional Finnish sauna at 80 to 90°C is what the research is based on. The investment in access is probably the biggest barrier, and it's worth solving.