Dhru Purohit Show - The Hidden Power of Heat: How Sauna May Reduce Heart Disease, Alzheimer’s & Depression with Bill Gifford

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

This episode is brought to you by Sunlighten.  Heat isn’t just about comfort; it’s a powerful biological signal that can reshape your health from the inside out. When used intentionally, it may unlock benefits for your heart, brain, and mood that most people overlook. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with New York Times best-selling author Bill Gifford to explore the powerful and often overlooked role of heat in human health and longevity. Bill breaks down how sauna use may reduce the risk of heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and even depression, while offering practical, real-world guidance on how to use heat safely and effectively. This conversation goes beyond trends, unpacking the science of heat therapy, its cultural roots, and how simple habits can profoundly impact long-term health. Bill Gifford is the co-author of the New York Times bestsellers Outlive and Spring Chicken: Stay Young Forever (Or Die Trying). A veteran magazine writer and editor, he is deeply interested in extraordinary athletes and cutting-edge health science. He is a longtime contributing editor at Outside, and his work has appeared in Wired, Bloomberg Businessweek, Men’s Health, Bicycling, Slate, and The Best American Sports Writing. In this episode, Dhru and Bill dive into: (0:00) What if heat is the missing key (0:28) The shocking Finnish data (2:14) Ancient ritual to modern science (4:21) The moment heat changed Bill’s life (7:14) Why cultures prioritized sweating (11:31) Slashing your risk of heart disease (19:07) Heat for sleep, mood, and depression? (29:24) The Alzheimer’s link (34:09) “Mommy proteins” and brain cleanup (36:02) How to sauna for your body (38:35) Why humans evolved to sweat (54:52) Amplifying the benefits of exercise (56:25) The cost of constant comfort (1:07:22) Sauna do’s and don’ts (1:22:10) The numbers that change everything (1:26:23) The basics most people miss (1:28:50) Where to go deeper Also mentioned in this episode: Hotwired: How the Hidden Power of Heat Makes Us Stronger Try This: 4 Fascinating (and wild) Things I’ve Come Across This Week For more on Bill, follow him on X/Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, or visit his Website. This episode is brought to you by Sunlighten.  Right now, Sunlighten is offering exclusive savings for my community. You can save up to $1,900 plus free shipping when you go to sunlighten.com and use the code DHRU when you fill out the Get Pricing form.  Sign up for Dhru’s Try This Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bill, today you're here to talk to us about your new book, Hot Wired, and the Hidden Power of Heat, something that most of us have been taught to avoid, but that actually may be one of the most powerful tools for improving our cardiovascular health, resilience, and even longevity. Before we get into some of the fantastic stories in your book and the backstory, I want to kick off today's podcast with some of the most exciting top line data around the power of heat. And to me, when I read your book, that is the Finnish studies. Some groundbreaking work over, I think, 20 plus years that's been there. Can you talk to us about those studies to sort us off and what they found? Yeah, sure. So, you know, for a century, people in the,

The physiology in medical world talked about heat as something that was always dangerous, right? And then in 2015, a cardiologist in Finland named Yari Laukonen dove into some data from a big heart disease study that they had done in rural Finland, where they had a terrible problem with men dying of sudden heart attacks. And there were a bunch of lifestyle factors that these guys were asked about. And Laukonen zeroed in on sauna use, because I think he likes sauna. himself. And he noticed that the men who did sauna like every day did it the most frequently and actually stayed in there the longest had about a 50% or more reduction in these fatal heart

attacks. So that problem was cut in half. All cause mortality cut by half roughly. And then this just jumped out of the data. Like heat is actually potentially beneficial for these guys. So He could be like a therapy and not just something that was dangerous. Totally changed the conversation around Heat. And so that's what got me going. Like, oh, my gosh, like, I got to dive into this

and see what's happening. Well, it partially got you going because you were part of a team that co-authored a book. You're the co-author of Outlive, a number one New York Times bestseller. And in your introduction for your new book, you write how when you guys came across some of that data, you were scratching

your heads and debating about whether or not to include it. And ultimately, you decided that you'd present the information, but that it wasn't part of your core recommendation for people to embrace the power of heat and regularly step into things like sauna use. So give us the backstory of how you were skeptical and then you ended up changing your mind as part of this book. Right. So I think, you know,

any kind of epidemiological finding like that needs to be approached with skepticism because it's correlation and you're not proving causation, right? So you have to look a little deeper and were there confounding effects like social class or, you know, age or, you know, all the usual confounders. But the size of the effect was so big that that said there's probably something there. And then I looked a little deeper and there are actually some other big studies of things like practices like, taking a hot bath. There's a huge study of Japanese people, I think it's in Kyoto or Osaka,

one of those cities. It was like 20,000 people. They found that the people who took hot baths every day reduce their heart attack risk, their cardiovascular risk, and they're all-caused mortality risk by a similar amount. So that started to tell me

that there's something to the heat story and that potentially heat therapy should be added to the usual sort of lifestyle interventions that we talk about in the longevity world, which, you know, the usual, you know, fix your diet, exercise in the right ways. And then, you know, sleep was added to it, stress. And now maybe heat should be part of the,

should be on the menu. Yeah. You know, you're from Salt Lake, or you live in Salt Lake. I've been there for many years. And you talk about in the book how you've generally been somebody that found yourself being gravitated more towards cold. And but one brutal, I think, winter that was particularly cold. There was a little opening, which I think it kind of coincided with this opportunity

to write an article in a magazine where you were looking at stepping into regularly using the sauna yourself at your local gym. Can you expand on that a little bit? Yeah. So we had this winter. And this was when Outlive was kind of done and going off to the. to the press. We had this really snowy winter,

and it was like snowing every day, and every day it was getting up, freezing cold, shoveling six inches of snow, cleaning off the car, getting snowed down my neck, you know, it was like Groundhog Day,

then drive the kid to school. So I was like, oh my God, I'm like, enough, you know, like this is too much. It's like I'm living in Buffalo or something. And so I just wanted to be warm. And so we belong to a gym. And so I would just start going to the sauna in the gym just to be warm.

And, you know, it wasn't, it was a typical sort of crummy, you know, gym sauna. No sauna snob would approve of this of this sauna. It had the no sign, you know, the crappy old heater and the sign that says don't put water on the rocks a whole bit, right? it wasn't even that hot it was maybe like 160 um i started going in there and you know going for five minutes i got for 10 minutes i started feeling better and i started feeling better physically and mentally and that sort of something clicked i thought aha okay we kind of like maybe i should look into this finished data a little more deeply you know because like something's happening here right so I felt better mentally and physically

and you know there's science suggesting that there might be something to it so I took a deeper dive and then at the same time I could talk about the just as luck would have it I got this assignment from men's health magazine which I've written for for 25 years they're like hey

you know look into the science of sweat and it's like huh and I think I was actually I was coming out of the gym at that exact time when I checked my phone, I was like, hmm, I'm sweaty now, you know. So I took the dive into how we sweat, why we sweat,

what happens with heat exposure and heat adaptation and all that fun stuff as well. So they kind of, the two stories kind of meshed. Well, we're going to get into some of that information in a minute. But I want to come back to the Finnish studies and break it down a little bit more for our audience. One of the crazy things about these Finnish studies, and we've written about them in our newsletters,

some past podcast guests have brought them up. But sauna use is so common over there that one of the things that they had to do as part of this study is they had two different groups of people. Can you talk about that? Well, the one group that they didn't have, there was no control group because they couldn't find anybody in this study.

It was a study of like 2,300 Finnish dudes. from the 80s, they couldn't find anybody who didn't go to sauna. They found like 12 guys who didn't go to sauna, like 12 weirdos. Because everybody, there's more saunas in Finland than cars, right? So everybody does it. It's part of your life. And so that was one thing, right? So there's no true control group.

But then these guys also were, you know, Finland was not a particularly, it wasn't the happiest country in the world back then, and it wasn't the healthiest country in the world back then, right? They had a real issue with cardiovascular disease. I think there were a lot of Russian cigarettes and Russian vodka being consumed. And so, you know, this wasn't a terribly healthy population, which is interesting to me because, you know,

often those are the populations where you can really move the needle with a simple intervention. you know, similarly to like taking a sedentary group. And I think I just saw a study the other day. It was like, yeah, 30 minutes of intense activity a week, like made a huge difference in various parameters. So it was not a healthy group and there wasn't a control group. Yeah.

In fact, inside of the studies, there was the people that were doing the sauna use like four to seven times per week. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the quote unquote control group. because there was no control group, as you mentioned, that wasn't doing sauna at all, because it's so common over there, but the control group was doing it like one to two times a week.

Yeah, so that's me sometimes. I'm like a control group, you know. If I get busy, like, don't get to go to the sauna. These study subjects had filled out like a 10-page questionnaire about all aspects of their life, right? So there's data from this study, it's the quopio- ischemic heart disease study about all kinds of other things and not sauna,

but they had a page of sauna questions. How long do you go in the sauna? How many times a week? How hot is it do you think? And do you go like less than 10 minutes and all that, you know, a lot of questions about their sauna use. But it's interesting to me. So people, I think people misinterpret these studies too a little bit. So think about like, let's say 20 years ago you filled out a questionnaire about, let's just say like your workout habits, right?

So what's your workout? You know, how often do you work out? How intensely do you work out? What kind of workout do you do? Do you work out the same way now? Probably not, right? Yeah, I work out differently than I did 20 years ago. Yeah.

And so I don't think you can extrapolate a prescription from those studies necessarily. I think directionally, it's really strong case to be made that using sauna fairly frequently is probably good for you. And staying in a little bit longer is probably good for you, but it's not this like precise thing. it has to be 176 degrees, you know. Like, we can't, we can't, we can't go there. We can go directionally that it's probably good. And it's good across like almost every health condition you can, you can name, like stroke, Alzheimer's disease.

These guys, the frequent saudi uses had much less Alzheimer's disease. And we can go into that. They seem to have better sort of glucose control, you know. And then the most interesting, and we'll talk about this, but they had fewer, 80% fewer psychotic episodes in their life. Like, that is a really interesting finding, I think. Well, let's go into some of that. Because if there's anybody that looks at sort of weighing all the data along with what's available to us, so we don't sensationalize it, but that we actually take away the directional information

and apply it to our life, it's going to be you. You're the guy, right? Which is why we have people. Yeah, yeah. So heart disease is the number one killer of men, but also, you know, my audience is like 75% women. And a lot of women, when they hear the stats that, yeah, okay, breast cancer gets a lot of attention,

other cancers get a lot of attention, Alzheimer's disease, which is also super important for women. You know, women are diagnosed at twice the rate of Alzheimer's disease as men. But when they hear that cardiovascular disease is still the number one killer of women, sometimes there's like, oh, wow, I forgot about that or I didn't know about that. So when you look at what actually is going on the body that would allow sauna in a way to replicate light or moderate exercise, as you talk about in the book, and be beneficial for your heart, how is that happening through the power of heat? When we're in a hot environment, one of the first things that happened,

and that could be outside or it could be in a sauna. Our body's trying to like maintain a constant internal temperature more or less. And so one of the things, the first things that happens is your heart rate goes up.

Right? Your heart rate speeds up, accelerates you more blood flow. And more of that blood is going to your skin to try and like radiate the heat off into the environment, right? That happens even before we sweat. And so blood flow under your skin

can can, can go up like 16 fold, right? It's a lot of blood just right under the surface of your skin, especially like in your fingers, the extremities. Like you get a lot of circulation with your fingers and toes, right? So it's whooshing through under your skin. And so heart rate goes up. That's just, it's like you're going for, you know, like a light.

It's like light aerobic exercise, right? and depending on, you know, and it mounts steadily over time. I've noticed it like you're wearing a monitor. But if you're in there for a while, it can get up to like, you know, above 100. And so it's like essentially like a light jog. So it's like light exercise. But you don't have the muscle activation, but you have the cardiovascular. And you also have the dilation of blood vessels and nitric oxide gets released and all that's good and all that's why.

That it kind of explains how one of the most. consistent benefits, you know, observed in sort of short-term sauna protocols is this, like, reduction in blood pressure similar to exercise. And then, interestingly, there was just something that popped up the other day that I think you called out that that people who use sauna regularly had a lower heart rate, like at night. Like, this is wearable data, right? And so that's a kind of what happens with exercise too. You know, your heart rate. Yeah, the more you work out your heart

during the day and give it some good stress, you end up in a situation that when you're not working out and you're relaxing, your heart rate is lower. Yeah, yeah, which is cool. Yeah, and then there are other things that happen as well, right? Like sleep is a big one, right? And that, you know, I like to do the sauna thing in the afternoon or the evening, and then you have that like body temperature coming down,

and that kind of helps you relax and go to sleep. It's kind of a signal. Because your body temperature fluctuates during the day and night, right? It's up during the day, goes down at night, reaches a, you know, bottom sometime late at night, and it starts to go back up in the morning. Yeah, there's some really great data that came out earlier this year that I've heard you talk about was it last year early this year? We'll link it in the show notes.

We wrote a newsletter about it, that anybody who's listening that's worried that, okay, I don't have a sauna. There are other ways also to incorporate these benefits. We're going to go through all of them, but just as a preview,

because we love to give value right away in the beginning part of the episode, is that a warm bath can replicate many of these things. Absolutely. A hot bath, we don't want anybody to burn, but a warm bath, there's strong data that's there

that you can get some of those. those same benefits that also can improve many of the things that we're talking about. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there was the hot bath study I mentioned. And then there's short-term data from Chris Minson at the University of Oregon. Has put people in, you know, a hot tub for 30 minutes, 40 minutes, and it has the same sort of heart rate elevation, the blood vessel dilation, endothelial function improves.

So blood vessel lining of your blood vessels, all the same. that improves in just a good old hot tub, right? Or a good old hot bath, you know? So heat is heat in a way. In a way, I find that that's sort of validating, that sort of validates this idea that heat is good for you. It's not just some special kind of heat, right? It's any kind of any kind of heat exposure. And it could be, you know, infrared as well. There's good, there's some good data around infrared. Sona has been a staple in my routine for years, not only because it gives me that super relaxing and enjoyable pause in my day, which I really appreciate, but because I genuinely feel the

difference when I consistently use the sauna. And one of the brands I trust in this space the most is sunlight. Their saunas use clinically studied infrared wavelengths to gently raise your core body temperature. Instead of just heating the air, that infrared light penetrates deeper into your tissues supporting circulation, cardiovascular health, recovery, and your body's natural detox pathways. But beyond the science, it's how it makes you feel. I'll do 20 to 30 minutes, I'll get a deep sweat, calm my nervous system, and I almost always sleep better that night. Sona truly is a magical signal to the body to step into recovery and repair. And now we're seeing the data to back this up. Studies are starting to show that people have lower nighttime heart rates when they use the sauna

which is a sign of better recovery. So I personally feel that if you're serious about longevity and resilience, sauna is definitely worth exploring and prioritizing. And here's something new that makes it even more accessible. Sunlighten has partnered with TrueMed, which means that you may be able to use your HSA or FSA funds towards your sauna purchase, depending on your eligibility. This is a huge financial hack.

You can basically use pre-tax dollars to save on your sauna, using HSA or FSA funds. So right now, Sunlighten sauna is offering exclusive savings for my community. You can save up to $1,900 plus free shipping when you go to sunlighten.com and use the code Drew when you fill out the get pricing form. That's Sunlighten, S-U-L-G-H-T-N dot com with the code Drew, D-H-R-U to start saving today.

Yeah, just a little side note that I I want to work into here because we're talking about sleep, we're talking about infrared, is that, you know, as part of this, this, your initial sort of, end of one experiments during this time, sleep was one of the first things that you noticed. You had never really, you know, felt like, from what I understand, like sometimes your brain would just be on at night, right?

You'd be thinking about stuff. Do you want to talk about your own personal experience with heat and sleep? Yeah, you know, I, in this period, when I started going to the gym sauna, one of the, first things I noticed is that, you know, my brain was a little quieter at night. And so that was, that was kind of nice. And I don't know if, if that was potentially due to the light exercise effect. You know, you sleep better after you do like some aerobic activity during the day. So that

may have been part of it. It could have been, you know, temperature elevated than kind of going down and signaling that it's time to go to sleep, or it could have been, it could be something else, like the sort of anti-depressive effects or anti-anxiety effects of heat exposure that have been observed in some studies. Yeah, well, since we're on that end of one story, part of that story for you is also, too,

the anti-anxiety, anti-depressive, you've noticed that one period of time that you might have been struggling with a little bit of depression. Oh, for sure. And Heat came into the story as part of that as well. Do you mind talking about that? I started talking to some mental health researchers, a guy named Chuck Rezon from Wisconsin,

and then Ashley Mason from UCSF, both super interesting. And Chuck's a little older, and he'd been looking into the relation between, like, Heat and some of the kind of Buddhist meditation practices and how these monks would like generate heat than their bodies. He's like, hmm, is heat the pathway to or the key to enlightenment? And so he incorporated that, anyway, it's a long story, incorporated that into his mental health research and he's kind of looking for alternatives to SSRI medications, right?

So he's trying different things. And one of the things they tried was this heat treatment. So you heat people up in a basically an infrared, individual infrared chamber and get their body temperature up to 101.3 Fahrenheit, which seems to be the magical temperature level at which like some good adaptations happen physically. And so he did this to like, I think it was like 16 patients. And then there was a control group that was put in the thing and kind of just warmed up. These are severely depressed patients.

And they found that their depression symptoms just kind of like went away. in some cases, or we're cut in half by average. So that's a huge effect, right? Bigger. Yeah, and bigger than any placebo effect or any medication can accomplish. And so they've pushed that story, and they were doing a story in Colorado. And I was like, oh, I'll, you know, I'll try out your protocol. Because, you know, I like to, like, experience things and not just kind of like lecture people.

like I want to like feel it you know it makes it more real you come out with a good story it might kind of suck while you're doing it but it's still a good story so I'll do it it'll be a good story and I was thinking like hmm

okay they're using this I think it was the the Hamilton Depression scale I'll just take the questionnaire and lo and behold you know I'm like oh I'm like solidly moderately depressed That's interesting.

So maybe I actually need this. You know, I had various, there were various things going on, you know, that would explain that. Yeah, they don't, we had some medical issues in our house and, you know, stuff that was kind of tough to deal with. And being a writer, you know, like, you know, if you're like a, you know, happy, well-adjusted person, you don't necessarily become her. Anyway, so I went and did this study and it was, you know, it was, you know, it was. terrible, you know, it was like really difficult. It was like over an hour. In this personal infrared sauna, you know, it was heating me up and I'm sweating buckets and I have a temperature probe, you know, where the sun don't shine. And they're monitoring me and they're like, you know,

Ashley, one of the researchers Ashley Mason was like rubbing ice cubes on my, on my, on my face to like keep me from from losing my mind. Anyway, it was really tough, right? So I was like, you have to be really pretty depressed to like make this seem appealing. And then at the end, you know, the temperature gets up to a certain level to that 101. And then they dunked me in the cold plunge, which I didn't feel as good as I wanted it to. You know, I think it was like a little too cold. And I thought, man, this was this was rugged.

Like I'd have to be way more depressed to make this, this protocol seem attractive. Then I go home, go back to the hotel, have a meal, sleep. And then I'm driving home the next day. And it's like the sky opens up. It's like, lo! I'm feeling like this euph-I mean, it's like euphoric state. And it's like, wow. Like, this did this.

I'm feeling something. And then the next couple of weeks, I'm like all motivated. I'm not depressed anymore. Getting lots of work done. You know, I just feel fantastic. And that's end of one. So your mileage may vary. But it was quite an experience.

Yeah, it sounds like quite an experience. Definitely tough as you're describing it. But also some of the things that you're proposing inside of this book is not that we have everything figured out with heat. But if that we actually step back into the power of heat in our lives, it makes us more resilient. and it can be an adjunct to other things that we might be doing. So if I was somebody that was struggling with depression, in addition to any other traditional outlets I might be looking at, and some of the interesting data that's out there

about some supplemental things like maybe, maybe, this is again maybe, omega-3 fish oil, et cetera, that's out there. I would say, what do I have to lose when it comes to heat? Maybe, you know, even if it doesn't immediately help my depression, my heart's going to be stronger. I'm going to be more resilient. I'm going to feel like I'm going to take on more of the world. So at least should be part of the conversation when it comes discussing because the biggest component is, besides some of the data that sounds really exciting, what are the downsides

except for extreme situations, which you also highlight inside of the book, too? Yeah, as long as you're not, yeah, don't pass out in the sauna. I mean, that's the key. And yeah, do it in a safe way and work into it, you know, baby steps. I think that's another issue with like a lot of people out there putting out these like one size fits all protocols. Like right out the gate, you have to go in for 20 minutes at like 190 degrees. Like I don't think that's not a great idea, right? And especially for since your listeners are, you have a lot of female listeners, you know,

an experience of a, you know, 120-pound woman in a sauna is going to be very different from a 180-pound guy, right? It's just a different. On the mental health thing, you know, it's really interesting when, like, science catches up to something that people have been doing for thousands of years. And I don't think that people in Finland or people in, you know, the Middle East were going to the hamam or the sauna. or the Roman bath

to simulate light exercise, right? It wasn't like they weren't like working on their cardiovascular health, right? They were just there because it made them feel good. Yeah, or it made them feel good or was part of a deep-seated ritual as part of their society. And a way of bonding and social,

which is a huge throughline for your book and something that we've obviously lost in our sort of modern world. Yeah. A couple more things that we mentioned that I just want to touch on before we continue down the story of the book and a little bit of the interesting understanding about evolutionary biology about why us as human beings are so wired to be hot. We're going to get there in a second. Okay. We promise we're going to talk about two more things, Alzheimer's and the reduced risk of psychotic episodes. So the Alzheimer's data, the top line sounds pretty wild. Can you just repeat it again? again from the Finnish studies. They found that this elite sauna group, the four to seven times a week people, had a, like, a 63% reduction in the rate of Alzheimer's disease

over the study period, which is incredible, right? Huge effect. Like, there's no diet, there's no, certainly no medication that does that. And the really interesting about that finding is it was repeat. by a totally different group, totally different research group, looking at a totally different group of people, right? They looked at like 13,000 people, patients of,

of like mobile health clinics in Finland, so economically diverse group from the 70s, right? And they found that there was a similar reduction in Alzheimer's disease and dementia, all kinds of dementia over the 20 years. which was really interesting, so it's like confirmed. Definitely. And how do you want our listener who we've taken polls of our audience, both audio as well as our

newsletter audience. And Alzheimer's disease is one of the scariest diseases, cognitive decline, dementia. I've had a grandparent that struggled with dementia at the end of his, end of his life. And it's scary for all the reasons that everybody knows because you feel like nothing is scarier than losing your sense of self and not knowing who you are. In some ways, it's even scarier than cancer, which is one of the scariest diseases that are out there.

How do you want our audience to be thinking about that in their life and understand what the data shows and if there are any limitations and how they might be thinking about their own risk reduction of this very scary top four killers that you've outlined in the book, outlive. In my first book on longevity, I call these diseases the horsemen, the four horsemen. Yeah, the four horsemen, yep. And, you know, one of my takeaways of, you know, writing about this topic for more than 15 years is really how much we don't know.

And Alzheimer's is like the shining, the premier example of that. We don't really have a great theory about how to treat the disease, right? Or even. why it how it starts, how it progresses we don't have a great idea about that but we do know ways to reduce risk and so there is an element of prevention that becomes

crucial right and you know aerobic exercise in particular is really important part of that right and metabolic health is an important part of that the sauna data that's why

it was so striking that the two studies found that sauna use reduces Alzheimer's risk significantly. And so we can talk about why that might be, but one obvious reason might be this improved blood flow that we're talking about. So it might keep your vascular, cerebral vascularature, in better shape as you get older. That's huge. Just that is a huge effect. Yeah, and with Alzheimer's disease,

As you mentioned, there's so much that we don't know. But there are some things that are connected with other diseases that are out there. We know that the worst off your metabolic health is and individuals that are diagnosed with diabetes have a much higher risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. So when you think about sauna and some of the original components you mentioned, it simulates light to moderate exercise. That's going to be, in a way, components that are helping with your metabolism, not as strongly as moving your. as moving your muscles in aerobic activity, strength training, some other things that we know that are out there, but still giving that positive stress

to your arteries, your endothelium, you're getting the nitric oxide, which seems to be have some play in when it comes to reducing our risk of Alzheimer's disease. So at least something that can be thought of as a regular usage as part of the things that we're weighing. You know, everybody's weighing out okay, you know, I have my diet, I have my sleep, I have my exercise, I have, you know, maybe some

basic supplementation that I take, stress, community. We're all weighing out components of how to do these things without going crazy, especially in this modern world where every guru that's out there wants us to do 20,000 different things to be in the perfect health. Yeah, there aren't enough hours in the day. There aren't enough hours in the day. But a big but, when it comes to something like sauna, if somebody was worried about it, it sounds like after reading the book and hearing you hear, it's like, hey,

in addition to all other benefits that are there, this seems like something that could be promising for risk reduction when it comes to Alzheimer's disease and cognitive decline. Absolutely. I think there's a good case, good case to be made for that. And, you know, it may just go back to this idea that when we're exercising or when we're in a sauna,

we're just sending more blood around, where blood is like whooshing through our brain and, you know, our organs, and it's kind of flushing out things, right? And bringing good things where they're needed, right? And so it's just that, you know, that circulation is, might be part, might be most of it. We haven't talked about the heat shock proteins yet.

Yeah, yeah. Well, let's chat about them because those play a role in everything, but they play a role in just general brain health, which would relate to Alzheimer's cognitive decline, but also this idea of possibly reducing psychotic episodes for people that are dealing with, you know, major mental health disorders. So let's talk about those heat shock proteins.

Yeah, so these are really interesting little molecules that they're kind of discovered in an interesting way. Some Italian scientist, I think, left his cell culture out under the land. too long and he was like oh oh no he came back he thought it would be like cooked and in fact he found that that these little these cells have like activated these proteins that are protected them from the heat stress and they're called heat shock proteins because of the way they were discovered they're really stress proteins but heat

is a form of stress that activates them yeah one of my sources describe them as um mommy proteins so they take care of the mommy proteins like take care this is a woman who said this by the way the other proteins and other sort of machinery in the cell and even like DNA right so they keep DNA from degrading they keep these other cellular you know structures from degrading they cellular membranes are more

resilient right stress resistant and then they clean out a lot of the crap that like accumulates in our cells just from being alive right And so that points to another potential benefit in terms of the cognitive decline, right? It might help clear out waste from our neurons. Yeah. Pretty cool things. And again, 101.3 Fahrenheit, that's kind of where that's the sweet spot where these things are activated.

Yeah. When you talk about that sweet spot and you reverse engineer some of the sauna recommendations or heat recommendations from people that are out the day, the biggest one being that a lot of people hear that you know, 180 degrees for 20 minutes or 190 degrees for 20 minutes. What do you seem for a person that weighs about, you know, like, 170, 160, what have you seen, you know, or is there a way for our audience to take that, you know, magic number of 101?

What does it take? How much heat stress do you need to get you there? Or it's so different for every person? It's different for every person, you know, in a finish sauna and especially it takes a while because the interesting thing about finish style sauna is

especially if you're doing the water on the rocks and getting the steam your skin is actually quite hot but your core takes a while to like to heat up and that's why the studies use that infrared sauna and that's why

a lot of these you know other hypothermia studies use hot water so a hot bath actually gets your body temperature up more quickly. Yeah, that's an important thing because I think when some of this data came out, initially people were like, oh, you can't do infrared. Infrared sonnas are, they don't this, they don't do that. There's a lot of hate, yeah.

There's a lot of hate on infrared, but really winding back and hearing what you're saying is that infrared can be just as powerful and sometimes, if it's more, if it's something that you can tolerate better, stay in longer, your core body temperature, body temperature could get hotter, quicker, which would allow you to reap those rewards. So there's pros and cons of all these different interventions that are there. Yeah, yeah. And that's, you know, one of my things with any kind of lifestyle intervention is you have

to do the one that you like and that makes sense for you. And, you know, if you happen to like sitting in hot water, that's great. And if you happen to like sitting in a finisana, that's great too. You know, or, you know, in infrared, you don't get that. You know, some people find that the sense of heat overwhelming and infrared's a lower temperature. Anyway, there's so many different ways to skin a cat. Yeah. You know, it takes a while to get your temp up to 101.3. And by the way, you can do it, you know, on like a hot bike ride in the summer pretty, pretty quick.

That works really well. You know, let's zoom out a little bit because a huge part of this story is, you know, is that we were literally designed. Our human body, our biology, is designed to embrace heat. It's a huge part of our story. And if you look at modern life, modern life has largely, through all the beautiful things that we all get a chance to enjoy, including AC,

we've removed a lot of that heat that's there. So, as we've talked about already, that heat has many benefits that are there, but help our audience understand just how deeply heat is a part of our story in our evolution. Yeah, and sweating, especially. And sweating. We're basically the only animal that sweats to cool itself. and, you know, evolution, it turns out, really, really likes sweating. And so, like, a million years ago or more are ancestors. And these are pre-human ancestors, right?

So they underwent a series of genetic mutations, like really rapid genetic mutations, and they ended up spreading these ecrine sweat glands all over. our bodies. And Ekrine sweat glands, so there's two kinds of sweat glands. There's the kind like in your armpits, those are the gross ones, apocrine. And then Ekrine are harmless. They just put out water and salt. So that's good sweat, right? That's when you're working out and when you're hot, like that's the sweat that comes out. Anyway, we have those. Dogs, deer. Most other mammals don't. And so because our ancestors had, were able to cool themselves. They were able to operate and function during the heat of the day, right, when most animals were hiding in the shade. So we had this advantage. We could be

outside. And then, you know, coming into like, as humans evolved and became a little more smarter, right, sophisticated. We, and this was a theory from a professor at the University of Utah, which is, you know, a mile from where I'm sitting. And I think he was a trail runner, right, in the mountains. And he noticed he came up with this idea that our ability to sweat basically allowed us to, we became like endurance machines. We were like superhuman. That's maybe the wrong word.

We were incredible endurance athletes that even though we couldn't run as fast as like an antelope or, you know, a prey animal, we could eventually run these animals down. Our ancestors could run these animals down over time because we could cool ourselves, and they couldn't. And so, like, if you think about, like, walking your dog on a hot day, you know, the dog will be panting, right?

Trying to cool itself. And the only way you can cool itself is by panting. You're sweating. You might not love it, but you're doing much better than the dog, right? You could outlast the dog. And so that was the theory of persistence hunting. And then that let us go from being kind of like, you know, a tasty snack in the food chain to being on top of the food chain.

Yeah. It's that combination of our ability to tolerate heat through sweating and be able to do things that just other animals couldn't do. Yeah. And along with that narrative is that because we grew up around nature, we, We evolved around the environment that already existed, not the other way around. The environment didn't evolve around us. And we were just used to heat being more a part of the equation. Of course, we lived in colder environments as well, too.

But heat was a huge part of that narrative. And we've engineered that heat out of our life. Yeah. Just in the last few decades. If, you know, you took like our whole 300,000 years. history and put it into one year. I think air conditioning is like 30 minutes ago. It was invented 30 minutes ago, something like that. So very recent, right? Even like her grandparents didn't have air conditioning. And, you know, they probably wanted to have air conditioning at times. You know,

it's it's comfortable. It's great for sleeping. Here's how much we wanted to defeat heat. The first ice machine was invented in like 1850. So before electricity, right? This guy, crazy guy in Florida, he was actually a doctor and he was trying to treat patients who came down with tropical diseases like yellow fever. And these terrible fevers, his patients were, you know, it was hot, obviously, in Florida, Papalachiaola, Florida.

And somehow he put these physical principles together of compressing gases and then letting them expand and he could create ice. It's a crazy invention. It was before the air conditioner, before electricity. Before that. For refrigeration, yep. Yeah, before that they had to, there was a whole business of like chopping the ice out of ponds in like New England and they would put them on train cars and send them to the south

or put them on boats and ship them to India. Crazy. Like a month-long journey. And then, you know, colonial Brits in India would stir it into their drinks. The efforts that we went. Relief from the heat. Yeah. Relief from the heat.

But at the same time, there's benefits to that, too. But we can talk about that. There's benefits to it too. And just like so many different things, you know, processed food, walking. You know, we just had Dr. Courtney Conley on the podcast recently, who also talks about sweating. of her book as well too. I don't know if you guys have met each other, but you guys have very sympathetico. She's focusing on the power of walking and how humans were, you know, like, designed to walk.

And you're talking about how heat is a crucial part of our story and our evolution. And you both touch on sweating as being a big part of, you know, what's allowed us for that. But pulling off that tension, something interesting that I learned about, about sweating that I had, I didn't even know, You know, just how many sweat glands we have? It's crazy. In our body. Can you tell our audience about that? Millions.

It's like two to four million on average. And so there's like hundreds per square centimeter in some parts of our body. So like on your forehead, there are a lot because your brain. Like a lot of this is like protect the brain, right? And the brain kind of like, yeah, we have like a lot of little thermostats in our brain. And so that's, if our head gets hot, we'll sweat. We sweat on our back. Interestingly,

evolutionarily, these Ekrian sweat glands actually came from animals' feet, paws. And so it was really like foot sweat that like evolution decided to spread all over our body and use for a different purpose. Sweatland activation is a whole different story. So not all these sweatlands are activated all the time, you know. And you might have more sweat glands activated than me or vice versa. Or you might sweat more than I do. It's all very different. It's not fully understood why certain people seem to sweat more

or be more effective at cooling themselves. But with training, you can improve your ability to sweat. And so you feel less uncomfortable on a hot day. Yeah, there's that adaptation that happens that the more you expose yourself in a way that's not crazy jumping into it, the more you expose yourself to heat, you get used to the heat, and you become better at handling the heat that's there.

You know, we can't talk about sweat and the power of heat without talking about detoxification. You know, the wellness community has talked about detoxification is being a central thing that's there, and you have a whole chapter inside of the book. So I'm going to jump ahead a little bit because it's on topic right now. what do you want to tell us about detoxification

and maybe some of the myths that have been around there? Sweating is powerful. There's a lot of things that come along with sweating and sweating is really first and foremost designed to cool the body. And there seems to be some mild, mild, mild, mild level of detoxification, but burst some bubbles here when it comes to detox, sweating. Yeah, toxins, it's a tough, it's a tough one.

It's a big topic in the wellness world. But, you know, sort of officially, right? Your skin isn't like a detox organ, it's your kidneys and your liver, right? That are filtering out stuff from your blood and your body that shouldn't be there, right? Medicine kind of dismisses it, right?

And I think correctly, I think a small amount of bad stuff comes out, but I think that's just stuff that's present in your, in your not only your blood plasma, but your intercellular fluid in your cells. But it's not like a preferential way to get rid of toxins, right?

It's not a very efficient way to get rid of toxins, right? That said, people really cling to this idea. And so I sort of like thought about it. And, you know, after a good, like, sauna session, you do feel purified, right?

And your skin feels really good. So I think it does kind of, it cleans your skin really well. And that was the original function of sauna. That's why you went to these different bathing traditions or the homam or the Roman bath. Even the sweat lodge, right, had a cleansing function. So you feel cleansed, right? You're not necessarily chemically detoxified.

But again, this has not been well studied. Right. And the concentrations are very tiny and these things are difficult to measure. And so I'm leaving the door open to maybe somebody will figure out that somehow it does activate our detoxification organs in a certain way, but so far not really. Yeah, when I read that section of the book, the thing that I walked away with is that, hey, there may not be there there right now. Maybe some stuff comes in the future, but zooming out and looking at the totality of the information around sauna use, which I've shared with you. I've been like really trying to get my parents on the train. My dad has a pretty good job, thanks to my

brother-in-law, who's a cardiologist who really sort of encourages him and they do sauna together sometimes. And my sister, who helps me out with the podcast, my older sister, shout out to my big sister. My mom is a little bit more like, ah, I don't like the hot or other stuff that's out there. But anyways, what I was mentioning around this is that looking at the totality of the information and the data is that, you know, there's not the strong data that's out there that this is a good vehicle for detoxification. No. But so what? There's all these other benefits that are out there. And even if you feel, you know, mentally detoxified because you're not bringing your device inside of the sauna.

So you get a little bit of break. A lot of people like to do a meditation. inside of there, right? Your skin feels better. You have this moment for yourself, and sometimes you have this moment with other people where you end up having these really beautiful conversations inside of a sauna reflective things that are there.

So even if you're not getting the chemical detoxification that a lot of people are looking for, there's so many other digital detoxifications and other things that end up coming with sauna use. Totally. And I would add to that, you know, what we talked earlier about the, you know, the increased circulation, right? And I think that just also flushes a lot of crap out of various parts of your body. So, you know, I think there's something to that, but you're not oozing mercury out of your skin.

And in fact, interestingly, there's some suggestion that, you know, if you go into a sauna with toxic crap on your skin, it might end up going in. Yeah. You were talking about the firefighters. Yeah, yeah. and some of their exposure inside of the book. Can you just chat about that? Because that's kind of fascinating. Yeah, and that's a real problem.

And, you know, firefighters have tremendous exposure to all kinds of bad stuff. And, you know, they look seriously and intently at sweating and different kinds of sauna type protocols for detoxification. But, you know, I think the International Association of Firefighters finally commissioned to study in concordinated. that it's really not that effective and that potentially you might, you know, if you have stuff on your skin, it might potentially go,

go the other way, the way you don't want it. Yeah, when I read that and I thought about, well, how does that maybe apply to some of our listeners or me in my own life? One of the challenges that we have in modern-day society, I'm not going to rank it as one of the biggest problems that's there, but one of the challenges is that many people are wearing, you know, synthetic clothing and myself included. You know, some of the most comfortable clothing that I've owned over the years is, you know, half polyester or, you know, rion or this, rayon or this thing. And I thought about, oh, man, like before a sauna, or at least especially after a sauna where your pores are really opened up throughout your body, maybe I don't want to be slipping on if I have an option.

Just choose more natural fibers, cotton, other things like that instead of choosing some of these things, which we know have through our modern washing. dryer system, everything like that. We know that there's a tiny level of microplastic exposure from all this plastic clothing that we're wearing there. Again, it's a minor thing and we're not trying to major in the minors,

but it was a little thing that was like, oh yeah, you know what? After sauna, I should really be wearing more, you know, cotton, all their stuff, things like that, instead of plastic clothing. The finish solution to that problem is to wear nothing. Yeah.

The most natural fiber. Yeah. Wear your birthday clothes. Not always acceptable. Not always acceptable in our culture over here. But a lot of the cultures, although I went to a really cool bathhouse, sauna place. It was actually a really, it's a famous place. It's in Santa Fe.

I don't know if you ever been there before. It's called 10,000 waves. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I've heard of it. Yeah. Yeah. I went on a boys trip a few years ago. And we really didn't even know what we were getting into.

It's just sort of almost Japanese and fired bathhouse. And it's really cool. You have people of all different ages. And we went there. We all got ready to go into our first sauna. And, you know, we look like amateurs because we're wearing, you know, like our shorts and a robe and whatever. And then we went into this sauna and it was filled with like 95% senior citizens. And I would say that 75% of them were butt naked.

and my first buddy who went in, you know, he almost thought he went into the wrong room. Every room is like that, by the way. And I was like, you know what? Didn't know that. This is the benefit of getting older and wiser. You just do not care. And you're not trying to put up a front and you're just like,

I'm just going to do my thing. Nothing to hide. You know, another interesting tidbit. Little little things. You know, I wrote some interesting notes as I was going through your book that are related to, you know, the power of he and our body and how our body uses heat. So only 20, about 20% of the energy during exercise.

I'm a huge fan of exercise. We talk about it in our podcast a lot, our audience. Only 20% of the energy around exercise becomes movement and 80% becomes heat. Yeah. Why is that interesting? And what should our audience take away from that? I found that information devastating, actually,

to realize that we're wasting so much energy and like I'm trying to ride my bike up a hill and 80% of it is turning into heat and not pushing me up the hill. So that really kind of made me angry. But it's like your car, right? So you drive your car and the engine gets hot and you have to have a whole cooling system

to keep the engine running. And it's a similar phenomenon. It's a similar level of inefficiency, frankly. That's why even in cooler climates, right? You see people jogging and it's 40 degrees out and they're wearing shorts, right? We just generate a tremendous amount of heat. And that's really, that's why we have this, partly why we have this cooling system to offload all that heat so that like your car, our engine can operate more efficiently. You know, it really gives you an appreciation for the role of heat in our life.

And, you know, for the folks that are listening, sometimes I like to flip the question and give the opposite. If somebody's out there and they're auditing their life and they're like, I do not embrace the power of heat on a regular basis. I'm getting order in my years. What is it costing them? When somebody just doesn't embrace the power of heat, goes out of their way to be very comfortable all the time in their car,

in their house, isn't stepping into the sauna, isn't doing that, isn't embracing the heat through working out, as you were mentioning this little, you know, factoid. What is that costing them? Well, it's a little bit similar to, like, not exercising, right? In our society, it's really easy to not, not only not exercise,

but not walk, right? Not get any physical activity of any kind. You can have your groceries delivered and you don't have to lift a finger, essentially. You know, the heat thing is not as severe as that, but you're kind of missing out on, well, all the, like, the cardiovascular benefits that we've talked about, the stuff from the Finner Sanna studies,

the Alzheimer's disease prevention, you know, this is what you're missing out and not doing, like, heat therapy type things, heat bathing types of practices. In terms of, like, athletes or there's a, there's a heat adaptation effect, which is, it's like a performance-enhancing modality. It's like altitude training. So, you know, I avoided the heat myself for a long time. It was a story I told myself, like, I don't do well on the heat.

You know, I was an amateur bicycle racer, you know, when I was younger. I was like, oh, I don't do well in the heat. I don't do well when it's like 50 degrees. And like everybody does well when it's, you know, runners. That's the ideal temperature. And you can actually, I didn't know that you could actually train yourself and lean into it

and then get benefits from actually leaning into the heat in a safe way. You know, you can't talk about heat without talking a little bit about cold. Yeah. Contrast therapy and cold plunging has become very popular. We've even done episodes here on this podcast about it. And I've shared how,

just like I go to the sauna with my buddies of the gym, and it's a great opportunity to connect. we've used it no different than probably a lot of people are using cold therapy, whether that's cryotherapy at this local spot that we go to here in Los Angeles, or cold plunging. It's kind of like a fun, challenging thing that we do to get each other hype and excited. And I have felt anecdotally, you know, you were talking about the study that you did where they were taking you through the depression study and the infrared sauna and dunking you

afterwards in the cold, which sounds like it wasn't really a contrast therapy protocol, but was more to help bring down your core temperature so that it wasn't harmful for you? Or were they actually trying to do contrast therapy in that? No, I think they're actually trying to study the two in conjunction. That was the point of that study. So the heat and, you know, the hyperthermia and then plop you in a cold plunge. And that has a long history as a mental health intervention. Going back to like 18th century mental hospitals, mental institutions, they would just kind of, you know,

dunk people, patients in cold water, like without warning. Like with a trapdoor. And so, you know, it shocks you, right? So whatever you're in, you know, that's a great way to get out of whatever mental loop you might be in, right? go do something else or get a surprise and you're not worrying about, you know, all your problems. So jump in a cold plunge. All of a sudden, you have your problems over here, but you have a big problem, which is that you're in ice cold water that can kill you. Right.

So that's the thing you have to think about. You can't think about a lot of other things when you get really cold. You're very present. It brings you into the present moment. It sure does. And, you know, I'm a little bit of a cold plunge, skeptic. Like, I don't think the science is as robust as on the heat side, but it does have its uses.

And it's fun to do with other people. And, you know, if I'm in the right, at the right time, it's perfect. And it's great to, you know, help you cool down so you can get back in the sauna. And that's how people use it in Finland. That's all it is. You just cool down. It's a way of cooling down. So zooming out, you know, because you wrote a whole section in the book about it,

the data around especially this aggressive cold plunging movement that's out there in modern sort of Instagram culture, not strong to weak. And along with that, the best use of cold when we look at historically and some of these studies that you've been, you know, a part of yourself is in relationship to heat and the contrast that goes in together. That's the takeaway for our audience. Did I get that right? It's a compliment. You know, I think it does have, like, mood benefits, you know, but sometimes, you know, sometimes, like, I'm not up for it. Like, I don't need another stressful thing that day.

And it's a very stressful experience, I think, more so than heat. Cold is, like, an existential threat, really. Many, you know, this is another astonishing thing. I learned about, like, 10 times as many people die for causes related to cold as to heat. compared to heat. Wow. And your body has a real like cold shock response

that's very sudden if you're in the wrong situation it can lead to drowning. So if you're jumping into cold water and you suck in a big mouthful of it happens to be water and not air.

It could be bad. You can have a heart attack for older men. And I think really like in this sort of gym bro world, like it doesn't help you build muscle. I think that's the biggest issue with it from that perspective. It shuts down muscle protein synthesis, apparently.

Yeah. Yeah, that's why you've seen a lot of the updated recommendations for the people that are a fan of cold exposure, of, you know, four to six hours away from exercise. Yeah. If you're trying to be. Yeah. You know, that said, I love it.

When it's, you know, 98 degrees out, I'll go to my local sauna place, which has an awesome cold plunge and hopped in. And I feel great the rest of the day. So it has its uses, yeah. And I'm not as consistent with cold as I am with heat. And I think you find that with a lot of people, right? You find that with a lot of people, even if they're fans of cold exposure, just consistency over time. It's easier to be consistent with heat than it is to be consistent with that cold exposure. Yeah.

And if you go back to like our evolutionary past or just our ancestral past, our grandparents passed, like they had to deal with like cold. You know, cold was a problem, right? So when people move to like North America or migrated up to Finland and you're dealing with a lot of like non-ideal cold temperatures all of a sudden, even so even though we evolved in the heat, right, we've migrated in the last 40-ish thousand. years to some very cold places, right? So cold adaptation is, you know, it is a thing like in our terms of our past. You know, as we're winding down over here, and I still have this fantastic

thread that I want to talk about here that you shared on X the other day, because I look at this conversation around heat, and I see it as part of this through line that I've been sharing with my audience for the past few years and being very open about my own story when it comes to health and wellness that many times I've gotten distracted by the latest fad or I've been convinced by somebody about this minor aspect of health and how it should be one of the main priorities. And really the message to the audience over the last few years, which has followed my own journey, has been double down on the basics. And you wrote this fantastic thread. And before we walk through some of the key things that you talked about in there.

I think you have five key insights. Is there anything else that you want to share about this fantastic book, Hot Wired, with our audience here? You know, I think the biggest thing for me was to take something that I kind of thought I didn't like that I couldn't benefit from and sort of peel back the onion

and found that it's been sort of life changing in a number of different ways. I mean, the most basic is, you know, I used to kind of get fat in the summer because I would stay inside in the air conditioning. And now I, like, go out and, you know, hike, ride my bike and, you know, all safely. But, like, I can, I can, I can function, right?

I can, like, enjoy my life in the summer. And then I can also use this tremendously powerful modality of sauna to sort of you know it can be like a little bit of a substitute for exercise but it also helps quiet my mind which I think is a more important

thing for me and it's a refuge as you said it's like you don't have your phone you're not worrying about tweets you know you might have an interesting conversation it's just a nice space apart from the noise of our world

do you have a regular group or individuals that you've turned it into, we all know that when you can make something social, you're much more likely to stick to that behavior. For you, how does the heat protocol show up for you in your regular life and are you have a date and time where you try to do it with other people to make it more consistent in your life? Not yet. I'm working on that. One thing I don't have is a sauna in my backyard and that's intentional. That's so I don't go and like sit there by myself. Because, you know, I'm a writer. I work, you know, at my home and my, I need to get out.

I need to get out of the house, right? So there's a couple really nice sauna places here in Salt Lake City that I go to and they're friendly. And, you know, there's always, at the very minimum, there's some, like, excellent people watching to be done. And sometimes there's some good conversations to be had. Any do's and don'ts that you want to share that are not the obvious ones of, you know, making sure, you know, we're not trying to, especially when it comes to the. bath, we're not trying to like burn ourselves. We're not trying to, you know, go crazy all of a sudden. Anything you want to share about that?

Not overdoing it, I think, is right out of the gate, I think, is a big one. You know, again, we hear a lot of sort of prescriptions and protocols. If somebody on the internet says, go in the sauna for 30 minutes at 190 degrees, maybe don't start with that, you know, start with 10, right? start with some reasonable and you know listen to your body right and so for me I try to go a little bit

past the point where I start to think about getting out okay so that's one number two like pick the format that suits you and that's available to you so if that happens to be infrared that's fine it happens to be a hot tub

that's also fine you know you want to get a little uncomfortable but you don't want to like crush yourself Right? Because then you won't come back. You won't enjoy it. Big mistake that my partner and I made when we went to Finland. And that was like going from the minor leagues to the major leagues, right? Right? That was like, that was like big league, big league sauna. We didn't hydrate enough. We didn't drink enough and we didn't have enough like salt. And so the next day we were just totally wiped out and bickering. And she's like, man, right, man, right. It was totally, it was just because we had gotten too dehydrated. And it's really easy to do. You sweat a phenomenal amount in a sauna or in a hot yoga class, by the way. Yeah, I sweat like double in a hot yoga class what I do like on a bike ride.

Don't do it every day, I think, when you're starting. That's another one. I tend not to like to sauna early in the day because then I get sleepy, right? So I do it later in the day. It's a good adjunct to exercise, and that's a really interesting way to use sauna. And we have these Olympic marathoners here in Utah

who they'll do their long training run, and then they'll hop in the sauna after that. to kind of keep those, keep that heart rate up, keep those endurance benefits going without beating up the body. So that's really cool. Yeah, it's nice to see people stacking it along with exercise, do a little exercise session, do a little sauna afterwards, get that continuation of that heart rate exposure.

The study we referenced earlier found that people who were doing sauna, often were doing it in conjunction with a workout, right? So you've got the sauna, you've got the workout. and then, you know, maybe you're sleeping better, right? And then maybe you're eating better. And maybe you feel better mentally. It's like a snowball. Right?

It's like a, maybe that's the wrong metaphor because it's snowball is not going to last very long at a sauna, but it's compounding benefits and compounding behaviors. Yeah. And once you start to really understand the lay of the land of wellness and what really moves the needle forward, you start connecting the dots, which goes right into this thread that you wrote about,

But you start connecting the dots that it really is about that. It's about these compounding behaviors that all support each other. And that if you just focus on them, it leaves a lot of room in your life to do all other things and give love and attention to everything else that you care about. We don't need to be so consumed by our wellness protocols that it prevents us from living. And I thought you captured this beautifully.

So I'm going to tee you up here. Okay. I'm going to tee you up here. You wrote a great thread, and the thread was titled, five ways to escape the gurus and reclaim your health. All right. I'm going to read your tweets. Okay.

You're the author, but I'm reading them here because I have them word for word. And we're just going to do a director's cut version of each of them. Okay? Sounds good? Sure. Yeah. All right. Number one, number one of the five ways to escape the gurus and reclaim your health.

Number one, keep it simple. The two greatest drivers of health and longevity are, cardio respiratory fitness and muscle strength. Focus on the basics. Go for a walk or run. Do some push-ups. Get some good sleep. Avoid crappy food, especially late at night.

Manage stress and nurture your friendships. Give us the Director's Cut version of not just why you wrote this first tweet, but even wanted to write about this thread in general. Oh, I just think there's just a lot of noise out there. There's a lot of conflicting information. I think there are a lot of people trying to make it, I think, more complicated than it needs to be. And frankly, most people, you know, including me, struggle with just those basics. Like, there are days when I don't get, you know, activity or resistance in my life.

And, you know, I hate it. You know, like, I was spending a lot of time in Charleston. Last fall, I gained a bunch of weight because the food's so good. You know, so you've got to get back to basics. And just think about that stuff that really matters and it really moves the needle. And that is activity, strength, decent diet, sleep, relationships especially. Another thing that I'm working on. And, you know, I think those.

Those are the core, right? It doesn't really need to be that complicated. Absolutely. Okay, number two. All right. Number two, out of five ways to escape the gurus and reclaiming health. Keep it cheap. True health doesn't require expensive gadgets or supplements.

The health care system and some gurus out there profit from complexity and illness. Skip the $100,000 red light beds. A good trainer can be a smart investment if you need motivation and a nice bike or soda. might help too, but the fundamentals are low cost or free. Be skeptical of anything being heavily sold. Bill, everywhere we look these days, somebody's trying to sell something. Yeah, and it's understandable, you know, on one level because our medical system is structured so that they, it, it's designed to treat six people, right? And for money, right? So that's, that's the business model. If you're talking about people, people,

saying healthy, there's less, it's less profitable. And, and, you know, I'm not being cynical about it. A patient who stays healthy is really kind of like under the radar of our system. And it's, they're kind of not generating any revenue, right? And so, um, people try to figure out ways to, to do that, which is, which is great. Like if, if, if the medical profession could figure out how to focus attention on keeping people healthy, that would be awesome. And that would probably be worth something economically. But there are a lot of people out. They're selling things that often aren't proven or aren't well tested or aren't necessary. And so again, you know, I'm like Mr. Back to Basics. You know, you can do resistance training like I could drop and do a few push-ups

right now and it wouldn't cost me anything, right? And I could even. go make a pretty good meal or go to the grocery store and buy food for a pretty good meal. It wouldn't cost that much either, right? It costs more than McDonald's, but that's the price I'm willing to pay. So that's really what I was trying to say. The stuff you need is not, does not have to be expensive. And even if you can't afford to put a sauna in your backyard, you can probably afford a hot bath. And so many YMCA's and places that are around there, places that are pretty cheap memberships. It'll do, yeah. They'll have saunas. Right?

Yeah. Then you have a warm bath at home and you can still get a lot of the benefits that are there. Okay, let's go to number three on the list of five ways to escape the gurus and reclaim your health. Avoid perfectionism.

Don't chase arbitrary elite goals like an Olympic level V-O-2 max. Progress matters more than perfection. Simply moving from below average to above-average fitness for your age delivers huge benefit. Yeah, and, you know, I meet a lot of people who are in that situation. And I meet a lot of people who, they're very concerned about health and longevity.

And then you look at them and they're, you know, they're like 90% of the way there. They're like doing great. And so there's sort of a, there's sort of a steep curve from like doing nothing to doing something. And I think most people are on, still on the side of like, the side of like, like not doing enough or doing nothing, right? So us adding a small amount of activity for a sedentary person really moves the needle a lot. And so that's really what I was talking about with that.

Like you get a lot of gain from, you know, let's say going from like a junky diet to a slightly better diet or going from below average VO2 max to just above average for your age. I mean, that's a significant reduction in mortality risk. I've been thinking more about like,

what are the entry points for people? And if you hold out this idea that you have to be perfect, then it becomes difficult to know where to start and it becomes sort of unsustainable. If the goal is really just to get better, everybody can do that, right? So if you're not walking, you can walk, right?

And you'll, yeah, you'll see gain from that. You don't have to become an Olympic athlete, certainly right away. you know, the walking can lead to maybe bike riding. It could lead to maybe more bike riding, right? And you're climbing up the ladder. You don't have to go to the top right out of the gate. Yeah, it's a great reminder.

We can all fall into that trap, but that's why we need these little nudges to remember to do what we instinctually know, which is perfectionism in any category of life, is going to lead to a lot of unhappiness. Just don't judge yourself as compared to others are some arbitrary standard. Yeah, well, this sets up number four actually perfectly,

which is you, do you. Ignore rigid protocols, pushed by internet influencers. They often feel like chores. Personalize habits so that they fit your life. Here's an example. You have a hack, which is you have a dog. And that dog forces you to get 10 to 12,000 steps daily. It builds strength.

You're carrying dog food. It reduces stress, glucose, provides morning. son, social connection, and even blood pressure lowering paths. That's right. My little longevity dog. I went through a period of not having a dog, and I was just kind of miserable. Like, I wasn't getting out for this, like, morning walk, and it dawned on me that my morning dog walk was like my foundational health practice. It's like I go out for half an hour, 45 minutes.

You know, we walk up and down some hills. we walk on some trails. Get a little bit of exercise. It kind of scrapes out the cobwebs, you know, get sort of like some blood glucose, you know. I think, right? I'll often stop. I'll like take my phone and dictate like a couple paragraphs in an email.

So it gets the brain going. We have friends in the neighborhood. So it's social activity. You're getting sunshine? Sunshine, yeah. That's, that's here. huge. And, you know, my mood shifts like, you know, as soon as I walk out of the house and see, even today is a cloudy day, but just see the sky. It's just like, ah, it's just great. Yeah.

It's a total, total reset. And then, yeah, I'd like, I'd like him to carry his own food sometimes, but, but, you know, sometimes I actually carry a pack with a bag of dog food in it, which he knows, by the way, when I'm doing that. And that, that adds, like, it's like rucking light. So when I, when I feel ambitious, I do that. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, but that's something that makes the larger point is that it's something that fits into my life and that I enjoy doing, you know, I used to run a bit, but, you know, my body doesn't like that as much anymore. So we do more of the weighted walking. And I, you know, I ride my bike. I enjoy that. And in the winter, I like to go cross-country skiing. You know, it's stuff that I like fits into my life. I'll do it. I'll

keep doing it. And, you know, rather than forcing myself to do something, the thing I have to force myself to do is the lifting side, right? I'm not like naturally a gym guy. So that's the thing I have to kind of make myself do. But I do that in a way that also works for me and makes sense for me. Yeah, that's great. Okay, last one. Be proactive. Don't wait for problems, get the data. Request the key screening tests, things like colonoscopies, advanced lipids, including APOB, dexas scans, especially after 50. That's an interesting one.

The gallery test, right? The multi-cancer screens, some interesting data that's around those. Know your family history and act on it to avoid preventable issues. You know, and outlive, you guys wrote a lot about, you know, being proactive and the power of that, especially with things like, you know, a lot of younger audience members of mine know that we've been talking a lot about colon cancer and how that's one of the top cancers for, you know, young people and how the guidelines on that are always, you know, adapting and getting a colonoscopy earlier, especially if you have any sort of family history of cancer that's there. So yeah, what else do you

want to add into this insight? Because being proactive is often the one that I would say that sometimes traditional medicine has a challenge with. You know, there's some very loud voices that are on X, formerly known as Twitter, who largely see that, oh, I'm not convinced with the data around these advanced screenings and the false positives or why everybody should be going out there

and getting, you know, a CCTA or some of these other cancer screenings, like the gallery test. Yeah. But when I look at it, from an individual level, I want to know. And I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not such a baby that I can't sort of hold multiple

things into account. I'm not such a novice with my own help that I can't understand that, hey, there's maybe slight limitations with some of these screenings, but I'd rather know earlier so I can, I can do something about that. But anyways, that's my rant, but this is your tweet. So I'll turn it over to you. That was a good rant. I like that rant.

You know, and it's interesting, and maybe you could help me understand why there is such a, like, a resistance to do tests that costs, you know, a few hundred bucks and might potentially uncover a life-threatening condition. And yet, you know, you go farther down the road, let's say with cancer, right? And that, sure, like, here's a $200,000 chemotherapy drug or immunotherapy drug. And, you know, let's do the $900 test first and maybe avoid the $200,000 drug. And, you know, I think some of those tests need to be better, but something like the Dexas scan is a good example. You know, there's a little bit of risk associated with obviously the radiation, but I think it gives you some interesting information. Not only about body comp, body composition, you know, not just like muscle, but where your fat, is located, right, and how much fat you have.

That's important. Bone density is important. Oh, yeah. I have a neighbor, an older man, who is having a tough time right now because he's got some like spinal fractures due to osteoporosis that he didn't know that he had because men don't get dextas scans. Yeah. If he'd gotten a dexta scan 10 years ago when he was 60, maybe he could have been made aware

and done something about it. Absolutely. And I've seen firsthand in my own family. family that, sure, there are the people that get so nervous about data. They don't want to know because there's already a history of anxiety, other things like that. That's the exception to the rule. And obviously, those people have to be mindful about any aspect of anything that they're navigating and my heart goes out to them. But we have to also remember that, you know, if you study the history of medicine, it was considered best practice in

the mid-1900s that if somebody was diagnosed with cancer, it was up to the doctor to determine whether or not they wanted to tell them because they thought that maybe if they told him and they were older in life that they could spiral out of control and they would be so depressed that that depression would be worse off. And we know now that you would, that that's not right. You know, people should know the information and be able to decide themselves how they want to process and handle it.

And what I've seen in my own family is that when people get that more advanced information, even if they know, for example, that they have some extra visceral fat or they have extra subcutaneous fat that's out there, seeing their actual muscle mass breakdown in a dexas scan, seeing their bone density levels and how close they are to being, you know, osteopenic in their data, it's motivating because when you see that, you're like, okay, I can't hide from this. I need to do something about this information. Yeah, I just got one of those scales where you grab the handle. Yeah, the biodensity scales.

Yeah, shocking information. But it's motivating, right? To like, okay, I got to do something about this body fat situation. It's not as great for like the bone density of different parts of your body. But, you know, it gets you part of the way there. Bill, this has been great. And I want to acknowledge you for all your work. You were way ahead of the career.

curve, even with the first book, what was it called? Spring chicken. Chicken. Spring chicken. You're way ahead of the curve and your work has been something that's shaped the conversations around health and wellness and in the right direction. I would argue for a lot of the stuff that can be easily distracted. I'm the first person to put my hand up in the air and say that I've been distracted about, you know, what matters and what doesn't. And not that I have at all figured out now, I'm sure I'll change my mind in the future about things as well too, and that's the beauty of evolving

our thought. And I've been somebody to distract other people with some of the content that I've done in the past, but that's the human side of me. And we can always end up shifting that and doubling down on the basics, and especially with the new book, you've made the strong argument of why proactive, intentional heat exposure and tapping into our evolutionary biological ability to be heat adapted

is something that we would be better off prioritizing as one of those basics, if not just for the social benefits that come along with doing sauna with the people that we love in our life. So I want to acknowledge you for writing this book. It's really great to read the story. the history, but also have the evidence space to remind us about why heat matters so much in our lives. Thank you, Drew. And I think being curious is a nice attribute that you have and takes you in some interesting directions.

And I think it's a good, that's kind of what drove this book is my curiosity about this thing that I kind of thought I didn't like but had some interesting data around it. So let's try it, see if it works. One little factory that I learned about you is that it seems to be that that curiosity comes from some of your Montessori background. That's true, yeah. I was a Montessori kid. Yeah, so they just send me off to like, you know, with like some crayons or something and a big roll of paper.

And I do a whole big like PowerPoint presentation about dinosaurs. You don't want to eight foot long scroll. Go down the rabbit hole. It's sort of always done. Bill, the book is out there. It's fantastic. We've linked to it in the show notes, hotwired, how the hidden power of heat makes us stronger. I'm excited for my audience to check it out. Please buy a copy, but even more important, integrate the power of heat into your life. Thank you, Bill, for your work and for being on the podcast with us today.

Thanks, Drew. Great conversation. Awesome. Thanks for having me. Hi, everyone. Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share with a friend, share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about.

It's my weekly newsletter. And it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-dy-day-to-day protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly step-by-step protocols for whole body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes

that's called Try This or just go to Drew Perot.com. That's D-H-R-U-P-U-R-O-H-I-T dot com and click on the tab that says, try this.