or is that just an urban legend claim?
Sauna that was built then wasn't just one hot room, but it also had at minimum small changing room dressing/undressing, relaxing between turns in steam room. Also if it was first building made then adding also lounge which served as living space with beds and cooking stove while building house was common. With sauna you had place to stay warm first winter, able to get warm water, wash clothes, yourselves and even a give birth old times. Building sauna first made lot of sense.
These days sauna for home builders is more about getting sauna somewhere in that floorplan where works well for the intended users of that house.
wouldn't a kitchen accomplish that goal better?
I personally dont know how tar was used for health, but it was big export item of Finland during medieval times.
[1]https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/themes/themes/health-a-wellbein...
Now, there are things like Fucidin, Polysporin and silver ointment for infected wounds and burns, respectively, that are safer and more effective.
Some people still swear by it, because “tradition” and probably some element of malignant patriotism too.
Another weird/fun one is using bleach as an anti-inflammatory (topical only, of course...), although these days you can find derivative products that offer the same benefits but are much less harsh.
Not to be done too often but every once in a while I find it helpful. Not all that different from a strongly chlorinated pool.
Another cool one, especially if you don’t have a sauna, is doing a mustard bath. You will sweat like a stuck pig
So many questions...
American, English, or Dijon?
*Sponsored by Heinz? ;)
Pour that in a warm bath and soak for 20 mins. Then get out and wrap yourself in a towel and continue sweating for 15 mins or so.
It's used small amounts in additive in soap or shampoo mostly as a scent, mouth pastille and lozenge a for taste, animal health care kind antibacterial and bug resistant etc. long time ago.
Quite lot of applications especially old times long time ago before more scientifically developed medicines were commonly available. These days less there but it's used as a scent or for flavour.
I'm also still unclear on how it was used to treat human illness (treating boats and roofs is clear enough)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terva_Leijona
I'm guessing these might no longer contain actual tar.
Smells good, for sure. But I don't know if it promotes good health.
I'd love to see this (and other sauna studies) replicated by someone somewhere to the south or hotter climates in general (southern Europe, Africa, hotter parts of Asia and the Americas).
Basically, the sauna studies are probably mostly discovering that "healthier people can stand sauna longer". In countries where most people don't stand sauna for more than a few minutes, that self-selection bias won't exist.
The other is the health benefits, and that can only be measured from serious studies and not from how you or me feel about it later.
"The other is the health benefits, and that can only be measured from serious studies and not from how you or me feel about it later."
Yes and there are studies, so do you have anything concrete why they ain't beneficial, besides your personal dislike?
You lead with "Basically, the sauna studies are probably mostly discovering that "healthier people can stand sauna longer" that implies you did not even read them. (Besides, allmost everyone goes to Sauna in the nordic countries, that implies allmost everyone there is healthy by your logic)
But if Sauna for you was breathing fire .. one easy solution is to go to a less hot sauna.
I'm referring to feeling like that specifically after the sauna. I also feel great after eating a great steak and yet it's not the same as having good health.
> Yes and there are studies, so do you have anything concrete why they ain't beneficial, besides your personal dislike?
> You lead with "Basically, the sauna studies are probably mostly discovering that "healthier people can stand sauna longer" that implies you did not even read them.
Not that they are not beneficial, but that the benefits are not as large as they are assumed to be. The main reason is that there are no randomized trials and practically no replications outside of nordic countries. Also, if you compare the risk reduction reported by sauna use to other health interventions, you'll quickly see that it doesn't really make that much sense. Depending on the studies, you'll see risk ratios that say that frequent sauna use is as effective (or more) as doing high intensity exercise or smoking cessation.
> (Besides, allmost everyone goes to Sauna in the nordic countries, that implies allmost everyone there is healthy by your logic)
Actually, you have that backwards. If finnish people go so much to the sauna compared to other countries and it's as good as the studies say, why are they not much more healthy than other countries? Prevalence of cardiovascular disease in Finland is pretty similar to other countries. Same with life expectancy. There are two options: either the finns are doing something radically different from other countries that negates the benefits from sauna use; or the risk reduction shown from the studies is not real.
The most likely explanation is that sauna provides similar benefits as any of the other interventions based around mildly stressing your body: somewhat beneficial but nothing magical, with probably an additional, significant placebo effect.
> But if Sauna for you was breathing fire .. one easy solution is to go to a less hot sauna.
Another easy solution is to not go to a sauna and just do anything else that's beneficial to me in that time and not extremely uncomfortable. I already live in Spain, I get more than my fair share of hot uncomfortable environments.
Well yes, that might be enough, which might be the reason there ain't so many saunas in spain, but lots of them in colder climates. (I don't go to Sauna in summer either)
So yes, to be precise, the general statement "Sauna is good for you" is probably not true in general. There are also lots of other factors, the individual tolerance to heat and your heart condition(at times I enjoy 110 degree Sauna for a long time, but if I am weak, 60 degree can already be too much for more than a few minutes), then the general atmosphere in the Sauna, is it clean, are there nice people or people you feel like getting their diseases from by sharing the same room and sweat, ... in short, do you feel safe and comfortable there (placebo is real, but so are germs).
So in general, if you don't enjoy it, don't go. But also spain can be cold I experienced, so I do recommend to try out the heat effect in a controlled environment if you have the opportunity for a nice Sauna where no one pressures you to endure more than you want to.
My partner is also from a warmer climate and she did not like Sauna first, but step by step she now enjoys it.
The experiments where at 73°C which is a lot hotter than most gym/hotel/spa saunas I’ve been in outside Finland
Everybody has their personal preference of course. For me, the sweet spot seems to be a moderately humid sauna at 93c. At that point, the löyly is not too harsh yet but is still hot enough to make you feel alive :)
It's the most popular type of sauna - "the sauna" for a reason.
The typical preset on dry saunas in Bay Area is ~165 F (73 C). Which is cold. Waste of time and money :). Usually, by closing or pouring cold water on sensor, one can make it to 180-190 F (82-87 C) - this is where you start to feel like you are in sauna, though it takes prolong time to heat you up enough to enjoy the cold plunge. If you're lucky enough, you can get to 200, 210, 220 F (104 C) - this is where you start to feel relaxed like as if the heat is working inside you.
>Are you actually throwing water? Because even with 80 the steam is pretty hot
Of course those numbers would be impossible to enjoy in steam sauna. The only steam sauna that had a wall thermometer that i've visited in recent years was showing 55 C when it already felt pretty well and hot.
Note - steam sauna and "throwing water" are 2 different things. The steam sauna is a machine generating a lot of steam, so the room is close to 100% humidity.
The "throwing water" is like Russian "banya" - it is in-between of dry and steam, though frequently is more close to dry Finnish sauna - wooden walls, stove, etc. where in addition to the heated air, you'd throw a water on the heater/stones thus adding a hit of hot steam to that air (in some "banya" configurations if you happen to be close to and in the immediate path of that steam you can sometimes get light burns).
People have different preferences for the warmth of the sauna -- as low as 65°C for some elderly folks, all the way up to 120°C for more hardcore people -- but water is always thrown on the stove. You won't get burns, but it can have a real sting. It's enjoyable, but may feel uncomfortable as a new experience.
Here in mainland Europe, a "classic fin sauna" is usually at least 90°++
Depends on the location! Very often, at public locations there is a "saua master" taking care, in smaller locations I have seen people handling this on their own.
And in one location there was a sign: "no private watering due to electrical issues"
And anyone on the highest bench really gets cooked.
Neither of these are practised anywhere in Finland at least. But there are at least one Finnish swimming bath where they had to limit steam competitions and made a button controlled mechanism to administer water instead of free usage. Not because electrical shock prevention but because bad human behaviour per se.
Also, 80° celzius minimum for proper saunas, I have been to >100 celzius ones and its a struggle to remain for 15 mins inside.
Another point - I consider the after-part most crucial for health benefits to me - as-cold-as-possible long shower or even better a similar dip pool. Few days after that my cold resistance is significantly higher. Just the heating of body in sauna I can reach also ie with cardio workout or free weights, which brings tons of other benefits.
When needing to define type of stove, it's electric stove, wood heated stove. Latter has two types, which continuous wood burning is still common (this stove you can add burning wood during bathing) and older not so much any more used before bathing heated type stove which you cannot add wood while bathing. Oldest type is smoke-sauna, which doesn't have chimney at all. Wood is burnt in stove when heating, then when burnt enough sauna is ventilated first and then bathing starts.
But all these different heating elements are commonly stoves, just adding electric-, wood-, or smoke- stove is added context requiring.
Infra saunas then have those lamps of course, no stove there.
I won’t want to use my dishwasher as a sauna though /s
Sauna and hot climates may sound counterintuitive, but it has been tested by most Finns that when you come out of a hot sauna any outside temperature feels cool.
The first time I was in a sauna after moving was a bit harder than after getting used to it but doable.
Nowadays I just love them, my friends and I built a couple of saunas to leave by the lake in their summerhouses, the cravings of going from hot -> very cold, and back to the heat is hard to explain, and I totally recommend it.
I've been in saunas at 60-70C and the feeling inside was much bearable because of the lack of humidity than 43C under a climate closer to UK than inner/Mediterranean Spain.
Onsen baths are taken all year round: including summers that get hotter than in Finland, but especially enjoyed in winter.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauna
Hammam's temperatures are around 40-50 degrees Celsius and humidity is close to 100%.
These are very different conditions, with very different body response.
Which makes it absolutely unbearable. By the way, that combination of temperature + humidity will cause severe hyperthermia (which can be deadly) faster than people think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Sauna_Championships
:-D
The last time it was held, a Russian died and a Finn ended up in hospital with severe burns.
The problem is that staying as long as possible in a sauna can be fatal.
One used to read regularly (like a few times a year) about someone who came home drunk and went to (electric) sauna and passed out... and died.
Saunas in new construction now all have timers.
A different Finn won.
Makes me wonder how much of it is Sauna, vs just the luxury of having the time to go do nothing for ~30 minutes.
Most people have a sauna in their home, this is Finland.
Or if they don't have that, can just go to one of the numerous public saunas.
Skipping screen time between waking up and getting up will might solve this problem for a significant fraction of the first world population. My 2c.
I remember the first few months being so crazy. Feedings every two hours, and each feeding took an hour.
But still time for naps, short walks, etc. part of the survival was to work in little microbreaks when the baby was sleeping.
AH, MANY THANKS! That was the wording I was actually looking for when our twins arrived - I couldnt even sit down to read a printed newspaper article with 2 pages....
It’s a typical crab bucket mentality, wanting to make you feel bad because you have a minimum of self-respect. Can’t have that in this economy.
It is not a luxury. It is living with common sense.
Sometimes posting on Hackernews.
It’s one of the high points of my day (the soak, not the posting).
This “I wonder” just screams lazy thinking.
Or at least I do.
There’s just something extraordinarily relaxing about going from the high heat (though obviously not too high) until one can’t bear it, then transitioning to a cool off.
My phone charge lasts longer than 30 minutes. And it’s provably water resistant to tub depths.
I certainly don’t code in the tub. Strictly reading and discourse.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/girl-16-electrocute...
https://www.reddit.com/r/hungary/comments/1k7hxqq/meghalt_a_...
Sure! France,2021: https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/frankreich-verkabeltes-handy...
I looked up the history:
1961 GFCI invented by a professor at UC Berkeley
1971 Added to NEC code for outdoor outlets
1981 … bathrooms
1987 … kitchens
2005 … laundry rooms and unfinished basements
2014 … crawlspaces, around pools and hot tubs
But traditional summer cottages and villas have been either intentionally or still built wood burning stoves unless three phase power is easily available not bring cost up too much because remote location and long distance to grid. We have about half a million summer cottages in Finland. Which almost all have saunas and I would guess that perhaps 5% would have electric saunas as most summer cottages are built quite long time ago and off grid.
There are fancy (luxury) summer cottages where there is not one but either two or even three saunas built or moved there. All different types of course if having many. One electric inside for convenience.
Traditional (continuous) wood burning sauna, "jatkuvalämmitteinen" in Finnish, right next to lake because that type is consider to give better 'löyly' (steam in sauna) than you get from electric stove and thus preferred by many.
Third if some have is usually oldest type, the smoke-sauna. Which is really nice to have if you can afford keeping and have patience to make use of it few times a year. It takes lot of time and bit of knowledge too to warm it up which can take up to 6-8 hours, before it's ready to start bathing there. This was most common type about hundred years ago in country side.
Fourth type is or mostly was between smoke-sauna and continuously burning stove sauna. Its stove burns wood during heating, but then during bathing it's just releasing heat accumulated during heating. This type name in Finnish is "kertalämmitteinen kiuas" ie. onceheated-stove. And was most common in towns and cities before continuously warming stove was invented and became popular about 60 years ago.
I go sauna four times a week, once evening where I live and three times a week early in morning when I go swimming to (county owned) swimming baths.
e: typos, and clearer expressions.
[EDIT: I should have single phase, which is more conventional ]
But if you buy an old summer cottage further away from permanent living areas it may well be that a) you don't even have grid there or b) if you have it's single phase and three phase upgrade would be too expensive because you are being billed building cost for that work all in front.
Using that single phase for sauna stove needs then so much that it's not allowed by code or if you would be able to convince some electrician do some kind fo switching other devices off when stove is on most perhaps do not like to pursue that and choose wood stove their sauna instead. That's known working solution and remote location it's also a secondary heat source incase grid were down due some storm fallen trees on wires which mess cleaning takes several days etc.
2. If you have 230V single phase, not sure why you couldn't run a sauna from that, unless there is some other heavy load to be run concurrently.
Thus when it was common to build sauna for a while all new all least family size apparments late -80's and -90's that has been less common later decades. And it's become so common people not using saunas already built bathing and instead use it additional storage. Which has unfortunately caused even some fire accidents if stove circuit breaker was not disconnected. Last year we had this kind of happening when child apparently had played with the sauna timer switch and activated it.
EDIT: please before being outraged at my comment have a look at actual evidence, e.g. Time and income poverty by Tania Burchardt; bottom decile compared with top decile has 12 hours more free time a week!
I think you are misrepresenting (or perhaps, misunderstanding) the conclusion of these studies. The increased "free time" is most entirely due to high unemployment at the lower end of income.
If you control for unemployment and under-employment, the graphs pretty much flatten out (as you can observe in the later graphs of the publication you linked below)
If the argument is "bored rich folks like to play-act working in their free time", that's a very different argument than "poor people have more free time"
There's also the confounding factor of the type of work folks are doing by socioeconomic status. The person packing heavy crates part time in an amazon warehouse may be working fewer hours than the software engineer at AWS, but they also may need higher recovery time due to the toll the physical nature of the work takes on their bodies.
Is eating healthy more healthy for somebody who is rich and can hire a private chef, than it is for somebody who is unemployed and has a lot of time to cook healthy food.
Is exercise more healthy for a rich person than for a poor person?
I'm sorry but are you seriously considering "bored rich folks like to play-act working in their free time" to be real and widespread - among rich - phenomenon?
Pretty much every FAANG engineer is in the top 5% of US by net worth. The ones who got lucky on an IPO are top 2% at worst, often top 1%.
It is evidence that you don't want to accept because it's not compatible with your world view. And what do you offer instead - assumption that poor people are hard working folks and that rich people are slackers? And that's somehow not an attempt to shore up a purely political position? Please show ANY evidence supporting your thesis. Also it's not misuse of statistics at all! Mean is perfectly appropriate statistic here. Again - you make some assumption providing no support for it whatsoever.
Edit: it’s absolutely not true universally and it’s ridiculous to suggest it is. Comparing averages will be very tricky as well.
On a piece of paper, both kids had the exact same amount of "free time" away from school. But in real life, the second kid was actually working the whole time.
Wealthy people can buy back their time by paying for things like daycare, grocery delivery, takeout, and house cleaning. People with less money can't afford to buy these shortcuts, so they have to do all this unpaid work themselves. This eats up their free hours.
Jobs that pay less often change workers' schedules at the last minute, so they can never plan their days or get enough sleep. They also might have to ride slow public buses for a long time to get to work. This means their free time is broken into stressful little pieces, like waiting at a bus stop or waiting for an unexpected shift to start.
Even when they do get an hour to sit down, they are usually very stressed about paying bills. When your brain is constantly worrying about survival, taking a break doesn't feel relaxing, and can even make you feel more anxious.
So, while wealthy people might officially work more hours at their jobs, the money they make lets them buy real, relaxing rest. People with less money might have fewer official job hours, but their "free time" is entirely stolen by unpaid chores, unpredictable schedules, and the stressful work of just trying to survive.
The long and short of it is that poor people work longer hours; they simply receive less formal recognition for it.
Your attempts to hide these facts and paint poverty as enviable in this dimension are disgustingly inhumane.
The report I'm citing is using residuals after paid work, unpaid work and personal care. I suggest you should actually look at evidence instead of using some made up stories. Do poor people like one in your scenario exist? Of course. Are they large group? There's absolutely no reason to believe that (unless your world view depends on that) because evidence shows something completely opposite. It's surprising how gullible people here are - how can you actually believe that poor people do not have free 30 minutes a day? Please look at stats of time watching TV/day vs income. And if you want to have ACTUAL discussion I suggest you should focus on facts, not inventing tearjerker stories.
I didn't make anything up, I looked at you sources and then I did more reading.
And you can, too.
I'm not making that claim, but keep on tilting at windmills if you like.
Saunas are a great leveller between humans all living the same experience yet feeling alone in doing so.
Families will typically sauna all together, altho this system can break down when kids hit puberty.
At least my 2c why I think its helping
You'd have to stop sauna for a while and see if it reverses to strengthen the anecdotal case I guess.
Woah, that seems like a lot for me. I can usually stand maybe 60ºC for like 10 maybe 15 min. I don't think I'd be able to stand 30 min under 73ºC.
> The temperature in Finnish saunas is 80 to 110 °C (176 to 230 °F), usually 80–90 °C (176–194 °F)
And with that temperature, I think 10–15 minutes are pretty standard.
No point in going to saunas in America or uk as they require wearing clothes.
If the temperature there is not close to 120°C, we are kind of disappointed.
For my parents though I think it was net health negative as public sauna was always accompanied with a lot of alcohol.
I'm wondering if what's actually going on is the temperature swings are what's important, not how they come about.
I have also seen both scuba diving and skydiving suggested as beneficial due to the oxygen changes.
Could this perhaps be a form of exercise for the body's regulatory systems?
Weirdly I never saw any explanation.
I stopped because one day I took a warm shower and just gave it up. Don't know if taking hot showers was a lack of discipline, or sanity returning.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23411620/
That one was 80-90C, which is a really hot sauna.
And maybe Finns don't go to sauna when they plan to conceive? Does Finland have a lower rate of unwanted pregnancies?
I went to sauna 3 - 4 times a week, ex-girlfriend got pregnant 2 month after cancelling the pill (while I still went to sauna)
For the record, if you're not acclimated, intense heat exposure is a lot more agonising than 30 minutes of exercise for less benefit. If you haven't experienced a properly tuned sauna in your life you are in for a ride. What's being studied in the literature is nothing like your standard hotel experience.
> intense heat exposure is a lot more agonising than 30 minutes of exercise for less benefit
Having to do absolutely nothing other than not leaving is quite different from pushing through a physical activity that can also easily be causing all kinds of discomfort.
This is just so wrong. I use a 110C sauna pretty much daily, and I've done very hot onsens before, and I've never got nausea. The closest I've come is feeling lightheaded, but that's only when I combine it with ice baths. If you're feeling nauseous, you probably have a poor diet or an electrolyte imbalance
Let me guess that when it comes to exercise you think that you have to experience pain or almost pass out to get optimal adaptations? I guarantee that pushing your body to that level is highly counterproductive
by the rules of this universe, you can't survive being submerged in 40C water for a prolonged period of time (even 37C would kill you as well), because humans produce heat and if you can't dispose of it you'll overheat and be dead soon enough
So while I definitely think it's possible that hot baths and sauna have similar effects, I don't think this can be shown by simple thermodynamics and would require medical studies. Some sibling comments have already mentioned some.
To be clear, my objection was only to the supposed explanation/assertion of resulting core temperature being all that matters, not to the possibility that that's true.
Yes.
> have you spent some time pondering the difference in heat transfer between convection and conduction?
Also yes, but not in this context. I don't think basic thermodynamics (alone) is the right lens through which to analyze the health benefits of either. Without empirical studies, I feel like there can easily be plausible-sounding thermodynamic arguments for completely opposite outcomes.