Dry Sauna Benefits: What Are They?

By Timothy R Kentwell


The dry sauna is a very trafficked setting at any half-decent gym. As any man or woman who has gone to a fitness center's dry sauna on a regular basis already knows, it is often only used by a small subset of the gym community. Those who utilize them tend to use them with a higher level of frequency than, for example, the individuals who just come to the center to go for a fast jog and get out the door.

One of the many benefits of a dry sauna is that, unlike other high heat rooms such as a steam room, they are dry! This means there is less of a real possibility of potentially dangerous fungus cropping up and not being noticed by the staff that is supposed to maintain it. Dry saunas also have the advantage of a propensity limit the irritation to the lungs and airways of the throat and nasal cavities because the intense heat and the energy it is carrying is not channeled into steam being pulled into the lungs.

Many people have the belief that one of the advantages of hot saunas is a type of detoxification process. While this very well may be true because of the volumes of water being pushed through the pores, there hasn't, in fact, been a significant amount of scientific research demonstrating this to actually be true. Nonetheless, it does indeed seem to make practical sense and it might not be a big surprise if one day some scientific literature happens to show this to be, in fact, true. At this point in history our environment, and even foods contain things that should not be ingested. Bisphenol A, something found in many plastic containers and canned foods, is one such example.

One cool thing that has been demonstrated by science, however, is that some amount of hyperthermia (that is, overheating) after a workout significantly increases the amount of muscle growth following after the workout. The research was done in an animal scientific model. In this particular scientific publication, I believe (my memory fails me) the research was performed on rats or, perhaps, mice in particular.

One thing is a certainty, dry sauna use has been very popular in a very large number of cultures throughout human history and perhaps with good reason. One of the benefits of dry sauna use is it dilates the blood vessels, and causes the heart rate to rise giving the sensation of intense cardiovascular activity, and that familiar surge of endorphins following right afterward. Those endorphins feel fantastic and are known to improve feelings of well-being.




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