SAUNAS & SKIN BENEFITS INFRARED, FINNISH, STEAM DR DRAY
00:00why hey guys happy Friday I hope your week is going well today is the Q&A where I address a topic that you guys ask me a lot of questions about last week I talked about dry brushing and you guys really seemed to enjoy that I answered your questions about dry brushing and kind of in continuation of the theme of the spa related q and A's today I'm going to do a QA all about saunas and my thoughts on them you guys asked me a fair amount our infrared sauna is good for the skin how about traditional Finnish saunas or steam saunas so the practice of going into a sauna for relaxation purposes potential health benefits that is something that has been pursued by people all over the world for many many many years it is a long-standing cultural tradition in areas like Finland in Turkey there are Turkish bath houses so this is something that people all over the world are interested in in the most basic sense a sauna is a form of whole body thermal therapy or heating
01:00the body the source of that heat is going to vary it with a different type of sauna traditional Finnish saunas involve short exposures to dry heat usually in the temperature range of anywhere from 80 degrees to 108 degrees Celsius and there's dry heat however that is also intermittently interspersed with bursts of steam by the practice of taking water and scattering it over heated dry rocks there are also saunas that are steam heat that are very common amongst us gyms will have steam saunas a steam room infrared relies on infrared radiation to heat to heat the body infrared radiation allows for heating heating a heating source at a lower temperature so in the range of 45 to 60 degrees Celsius but the emission of infrared allows for heating of the heating of the body
02:00without water without dry heat and a much lower temperature of 45 to 60 degrees sasame's claim all sorts of purported benefits from detoxification through the act of sweating increased circulation they claim improved cardiovascular outcomes they also claim that doing a sauna can increase your metabolism help with weight loss and they also report improved immune function improved sleep by and large whichever type of sauna you elect to pursue I think we can all agree that most people pursue them and find benefit in using them by and large because they are relaxing okay merely relaxing and self-care I will just you know start out this video by emphasizing have profound outcomes on your overall health your overall well-being stress reduction in stress management help in terms of our stress
03:00responses and with time you know that that allows our immune system to function more optimally we get sick less when we're under a lot of stress we are we are more we're more at risk for colds flus skin infections so anything that you pursue that you find relaxing is is going to likely benefit benefit you I you know I say that tongue-in-cheek they're they're probably you know illicit drugs that would be relaxing that aren't beneficial but by and large you know these self-care practices they do have major impact on our overall quality of life so that's my positive commentary on on saunas and in seeking saunas and why I understand and appreciate that yeah they are nice and there are there something relaxing to do and I definitely can see why why people who pursue them find them to be beneficial I definitely can relate to that but what is the evidence to support
04:00the claims so you'll find small studies out there that do show that for example finished saunas people who pursue a Finnish traditional Finnish sauna do you have improved cardiovascular outcomes those studies are small and have certain limitations associated with them if you look at large made analyses of all studies looking at the benefits of saunas maybe steam saunas dry saunas infrared saunas which pool together all of these smaller studies and kind of break break them down and look at the overall evidence and critique it made analyses conclude that at this time there's really insufficient evidence to go recommending sauna for any any medical condition so to say it's not gonna be beneficial or couldn't be helpful but not going to be something that is incorporated as a standard of care recommendation for things like cardiovascular disease pulmonary health
05:00and immune in you know immune immunodeficiency conditions etc as far as potential benefit to the skin you know with with exposure to a sauna you have increased blood flow to the skin and whenever you have a little bit of increased blood flow you know it can definitely make your skin appear more glowy more radiant it can help with just kind of skin turnover for sure it also can lead to some problems which I'll address in a little bit but then this idea that increased sweat and just the act of sweating somehow is detoxifying the skin I don't agree with that and I think most dermatologists out there don't agree with that sweat it's true sweat eccrine sweat you can you can affect excrete certain toxins in equine sweat however that is not the primary function of a production of Ekron sweat
06:00your liver is the organ not your skin that is tasked with the act of detoxification your liver has a very complicated enzyme network that helps to break down potential toxins into things that you can then excrete in your urine and feces sweat is that is not the primary function of sweat things that that are excreted and sweat and flu things like sodium you know salt by large which isn't toxic you know it's part of how our blood pressure is controlled and as far as toxins things that can come out in the sweat are things like amphetamines methadone morphine it can be excreted in the sweat certain environmental toxins like dioxins can be excreted in the sweat but your your liver your kidney those organ systems are primarily are what are what are responsible for breaking down these toxins and subsequent excretion of them
07:00out of the body so that is that is how that is handled not through sweat sweat functions to cool the body through evaporative water losses in fact people who have people who have suffered from diseases just to illustrate this point there are diseases out there where people do not produce eccrine sweat okay they do not sweat and the danger and what what hurts those people is that they get overheated they don't die or or have problems because they because they became too toxic they have problems because they may go out running or exercising or be in a hot environment and they can't cool the body like people with eccrine sweat glands so hopefully that illustrates you that really are sweat and sweat production have nothing to do with the detoxifying detoxifying the skin that is that is a separate organ a separate organ system handles toxins over sweating in like a scheme song for example the act of sweating for the skin is actually very
08:00very irritating sweat pulls water actually out of our skin as we sweat you know it's pulling water out and the skin becomes dry when it becomes dry and becomes hyper irritable the skin barrier becomes impaired furthermore sweat has some little compounds in it that are known as pur ittichan Zoar itching itching compounds so sweat on the skin actually can can be very itchy it should lead to scratching scratching behaviors further impair the skin barrier people with atopic dermatitis known commonly as eczema they actually you know have to be very careful to make sure they rinse sweat off of their skin because sweat because it is an irritant and because it has this itching itching kind of compounds in it really can kick off a flare of eczema for people with eczema so sweat sweating is you know something that eczema sufferers really have to be conscientious of and it's
09:00also a misconception that when you sweat are producing sweat burns calories or helps you increase your metabolic rate or you know will help you lose weight maybe at a very very low level there may be some basal increased metabolic rate transiently but your homeostatic mechanisms don't don't subsequently keep your basal metabolic rate increase just by intermittently sweating like that it's also a myth that sweating will clean out your pores okay and improve blackheads blackheads are not the appearance of blackheads are not due to are not due to toxins in the in the pore they're not due to dirt in the pore blackheads the appeal the black appearance is oxidized pigment that results from air exposure to air of that pigment from just accumulated skin cells sweating is not going to remove that
10:00sweating is not is not going to facilitate removal of blackheads additionally there was actually a small study that looked at just steam steam sauna application to the face of people with acne they counted the amount of acne lesions that the people in the study had before and then at the end at the end people fell great they were happy they thought they looked better but objectively their acne was no better and then subsequently it has been shown that exposure to two a steam sauna and as well as exposure to two a dry sauna we have increased sweat production that's sweat on the skin because it's an irritant and impairs the skin barrier actually can worsen acne down the road so it's not recommended for people with like I said eczema or people with acne to go to go seeking a steam or dry sauna and then the other thing that occur with either steam saunas or dry saunas is that you do have increased blood flow
11:00to this scan that's that's something that tempts people to use them and hoping that it might improve things when you have increased blood flow to the skin and vasodilation that can make persistent redness or so if you're someone with rosacea seeking a infrared seeking a steam sauna or a dry heat sauna it's not recommended it's gonna worse than the rosacea but by and large I think the biggest risk to the skin from these saunas is various types of skin infections that's what we see the most clinically and dermatology as a result of people going into saunas whether it be the steam sauna or the dry the dry type of sauna people first of all the humidity and the warm climate is is a breeding ground for for tinea tinea corporis tinea pedis that is the and it's a fancy name for athlete's foot and ringworm so outbreaks of ringworm and athlete's foot fungal infections on the
12:00skin not uncommon in in saunas and spas no matter how hygienic the the spas are it's still a substantial risk these dermatophytes they make little spores that are incredibly Hardy and so you know it's really hard to it's really hard to eliminate that that risk particularly in an environment that's like a breeding ground for them you also have people coming in and out of the sauna with bare feet you may you may be coming into the sauna with a toenail fungus or a foot fungus they're not uncommon to skin to skin problems and they're bringing those spores in and leaving them behind and it becomes it becomes a real risk with using this on bacterial infections are a major major concern outbreaks of Staphylococcus skin infections and in sauna sauna users do you occur they're particularly problematic and high school athletes who may use a steam sauna after after
13:00working out yeah wrestlers are our one population that really can be plagued with this problem they say for example you might they might go to a tournament a match a meet and because of the skin-on-skin contact they might acquire a staph infection from their from their opponent and then after after the meet they go back into into the locker room they take a steam sauna and they expose all of their teammates to to staph infection and this can be a real real difficult problem amongst high school athletes collegiate athletes you see it very commonly it is is risk of the steam saunas for sure then another adverse effect of infrared radiation and an exposure to the skin is skin condition that is very disfiguring known as erythema a bikini erythema a big knee is the result of long-term exposure to heat below the threshold for
14:00what would generate a burn and die scene and people traditionally it was seen in people who didn't have central heating in their homes and would warm themselves by a fire and would stand in front of like a fireplace and that radiant and heat can actually have damaging effects on the skin this would you know show up on the lower legs and women it also you know in subsequent decades started showing up on the lower back and people who would go to bed at night with a heating pack still see cases of that now in more modern times we actually see cases of it from people who leave their laptop on their skin on their thighs you know you're working on your laptop for prolonged periods of time that prolonged contact with with heat with a heat source infrared heat source below the threshold that cause a burn can cause this disfiguring skin condition known as erythema a big knee and what occurs and
15:00what happens when this occurs is the kind of the veins in the in the skin the blood flow in there it sort of becomes stagnant and this results in transient kind of laced like appearing redness and then that subsequently turns into hyperpigmentation it's very disfiguring it is virtually impossible to treat to get rid of and it also sets up a stage that affected skin is subsequently predisposed to developing skin cancers so it is not a good thing too it is not a good thing how does that happen from infrared saunas probably not okay you probably go into the infrared sauna you don't have skin on skin contact and you're not you're not in contact with that heat for a long enough time but however the erythema a big knee has been reported in people who use an infrared sauna belt apparently there's some kind of belt that you can put on that delivers
16:00infrared infrared radiation and heats the body sub-threshold for a burn but in those people it has been reported that they develop this disfiguring permanent skin condition that can set them up for poor risk of skin cancer down the road so that is that's a risk at least with the belt most likely so if you if you're interested in some kind of belt I'm not really familiar with with the belt to be honest I've just read reports of this developing that is that is a risk so so yeah you know now that I have Debbie Downer to death the the saunas I don't like I said I don't underestimate the benefit of relaxing it is it is is really important really important so take some point I would say if you were somebody with eczema acne rosacea if you are someone who has a pre-existing medical condition that lowers your immune system like diabetes or you have an autoimmune disease that affects the
17:00function of your immune system these these medical conditions put you at risk for skin infections I would say in those groups be very very be wary of going into into a sauna the risks are more more substantial to you so the intent of this video is not to is not to fear monger you and you know ruin your ruin your potential winter holiday skiing vacation away from the sauna you know if you're otherwise healthy individual you know the act of relaxing it's gonna have benefits on you and you know these are these are some risks associated with it that you can be mindful of but if you're otherwise healthy you know doing it once in a while I you know this seems realist it seems reasonable but like I said insufficient evidence to go recommending it for any medical condition and there are potential risks and in the these subgroups that I mentioned you really want to be extra wary of those risks but you know like I said I definitely I definitely can see why you would enjoy doing it so on that
18:00note who wants to invite me to their ski lodge probably no one not only that buzzkill at the beach I'm also a buzzkill of a winter vacation but anyways guys I hope you enjoyed the Q&A today if you liked it give it a thumbs up share it with your friends and as always don't forget sunscreen and subscribe I'll talk to you guys tomorrow [Music]