Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Sauna

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

Even though it's associated with Nordic countries, the Sauna has been around in many different cultures for as long as people have been trying to get warm in a hot box. But how about health benefits? Dr. Sydnee talks about the history of saunas and spirituality, as well as the association between sweat and the perception of health – and that even though actual studies don't say anything definite, sometimes it is just nice to get in a warm, steamy room.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota: https://www.ilcm.org/donate/

Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. Hello everybody and welcome to Sawbones. It's a marital tour of Misguided Medicine.

Around these parts, they call me Justin Tyler McElroy. Oh. There's a sputoon, I think, or a bullet. I'm not sure. I'm Sydney and Smurl. That was... That was actually me shooting a bullet into a spatoon. That's what that sound was.

There's a huge mess. Everyone's furious. Everyone in the bar. Who let him in? Who let him in? Oh, they're dumping their sassperilla on my head. Dagnamet. I wouldn't let you have either a gun or a spatoon in this room.

You probably wouldn't even let me have a sasperilla after 6 p.m. Justin, it's cold. It's so cold out there. It's always cold, Sydney. That's true. Warmth is something we dreamed. It's always been frozen. Yeah, it's always been cold.

We've always been frozen on our hill, stuck here. Yeah. Except we can't be stuck here. We do have to go. Look at my toes come off in the boot, Sydney. Oh, Lord. That's what the question is no longer, are the roads? too bad to drive. It's yes and

will you be driving yes anyway. How badly do you need eggs? Well, we've got to get to work. Justin, it's been making me crave a warm place, heat. I need a warm place to be. That inspired that and Hannah with your email.

Thank you, Hannah, inspired this episode about saunas. Oh, doesn't that sound nice? You know, it's funny, we sort of here in the Macaroy Studios here at the ranch. We certainly simulate a sauna here with our tiny trapezoidal room that we lock our hotbox ourselves in with our powerful studio lights. By the end of a recording, it's usually getting pretty ripe in here.

This would make a good sauna. Were we short-sighted? And not making this a sauna. Not making this tiny trapezoidal closet into a sauna. We should have. I know, but we do the thing with the... Your office closet could be a sauna. But it's a job.

If we get all that stuff out of it. This is my job. No, the closet, your office closet. That's where I store all my video games. I know. Okay. We can debate the necessity of physical media later. There's also some drainage issues that I'm not excited to address.

I'm not sure about the plumbing requirements of an indoor sauna. Well, I mean, it really depends on what kind of sauna you want, Justin. And we're going to talk all about the different. Oh, I didn't even know they're different varieties. I think most of us associate sauna with like Nordic countries, right? Like is that when you think of like who saunas? I don't know if this is because we've seen Frozen the musical. I, yeah, maybe.

Sort of the, I haven't seen Frozen the Musical. You saw that without me, but I'll have to take your word for it. You haven't watched Frozen the Musical? No, I'm not really, I'm kind of a cool, I like like anything goes or, you know. There's a whole song Okay, well in Frozen's Musical There's a whole song about Hugua Yeah, I know that I've seen that one

The kids sing around the house Yeah, and in it Like a bunch of people come running out of a sauna It's sort of like a clown car effect Because the sauna looks very small But then lots of people With like the branches they come running out Oh, I love that, I love the branches, yeah

Sona But that being said, Sona is not really specific The concept of Sona is not specific To anyone culture As far as I can tell from researching this. People have been trying to find ways

to get into a hot room and sweat together for like 10,000 years. Well, honey, not to be a pedant, but I would argue that human beings have been trying to get together and get sweaty and ribs together for as long as there with human beings.

I mean, I mean, in a communal sense, like, let's all get in this hot room and sweat together. Yeah, I guess. I'm just, it's hard for me to believe the research on these two ideas is completely disparate, but okay. I like when you find things that connect. Okay. So the first

sauna was probably like what we would call a pit sauna. You dig a hole in the ground. You put stones. You heat them up. And then you cover them with some sort of like thatch or peat or something like that. And you pour water

on it because water on the hot stones makes Sona. Steam. Steam. Yeah. And so now you're in an enclosed space. It's steamy and you sit in it and sweat. Here is the sauna story that I can provide you. This is literally the only context I have for Asana, the only time I've been in Asana in my entire life.

So I can get all my expertise out of the way up front and we'll dive in the medical aspects. I was at Asana in, I believe it was Shawnee State Park at the or at the university up in that area. I believe, it was for a church retreat and they had a sauna there and one of the kids on the very first day of this three-day retreat peed on the rocks of the sauna and then that was it for the sauna for the weekend and none of us got to get back in the sauna

but that was it. Yeah, because then it's urine steam. Yes, it is urine steam. And the verdict was fast and authoritative. We all hated that. So we left. You know what though? You know what though?

I guarantee you there's some nasty wellness blogger out there. Not that you're judging. I'm judging urine steam. I am going to judge that. I'm going to judge. If you want to bathe yourself in urine steam, I am going to say

don't. I'm going to say no. I'm going to say don't and don't encourage others. Urines team sounds like it could be the name of a sequel to Urinetown. I mean, there's a whole, we've done a whole episode on people who like drink urine and put urine on their skin for, like, wellness reasons, right?

Like, they think that it is doing something good for them. And we've talked about why that isn't really so and why you probably shouldn't do that. And we've done all that. But you know there's somebody out there who thought, ooh, but what if I steamed it and then just, like, sat in the pea steaming. So you just have the healthy ammonia nights. There's going to be somebody. If it's not already out there, I guarantee you we're going to, we have now incepted

it into some wellness person's mind right now. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry the universe. Sorry. But we have found like sweat houses going back to the Bronze Age and again across cultures like I this is not specific to Finland or to Nordic countries. You know the UK Ireland, Mexico all over North America. Obviously it's a Native American tradition as well like the sweat lodges in Japan. There were caves, natural caves that were used to, you know, as like sweat like bathhouses type things. And a lot of it, if you look for. through different cultures, a lot of it is tied not just to, it feels good, like it's nice to go in there and get, I don't know, I think there is this sense, because I hear it from people a lot when they're

sick. This is a common thing that a patient will say to me. I just, I got, I had a fever and I was so sick, and then my fever broke, and I got so sweaty, and I just, like, sweat it all out. Like, People even say, like, they put on extra layers of clothes so that they can just, like, really sweat it out. People do that, I think, when they're running, right? Like, to make themselves sweatier, don't they're, like, outfits you can wear? Yeah, trash bags, I think. Yeah, to make yourself sweat more. And I think there is this concept, like, I'm going to sweat stuff out of me and be healthier after it's over.

Yes. Right? Yes. I think probably having colds and fevers breaking at some point has given us the connection between those two, right? that moment of like, oh my gosh, I'm feeling so much better than I was before. It has to be connected to that fever I had. Yeah.

No, and I think if you look, and I don't know, it's a chicken or the egg thing, is there something innate where when we get really sweaty, we just feel better because we associate it with fever breaking? Was that just like that link was made in our brains, you know, at some point evolutionarily and now it's stuck? Or is it because bathhouses and sweat lodges? and saunas are such an old concept. They have been used by humans for so long

that they are ingrained in us. Even though I have never been... I don't think I've ever been in a sauna. I've never been in a sauna. Even though I've never been in one, I have that programmed in me to think sweating is healthy because for, you know, thousands of years,

humans have been going places to sweat for health. Do you think there could be a connection to between typically like endorphins being triggered by activities? that cause us to sweat. So like things like exercise and amorous activities. Hanky, panky.

And if you look at like not just, again, feeling good, the other part of it is really a spiritual connection. So like Roman and Greek bathhouses, which, you know, were not just a place where you would go to get sweaty, but like you would go to commune with others. Like it was part of socialization. You would go to the bathhouses to be around other people. Harder to had weapons too.

That's true. You know, there's a vulnerability to it. I think you're sitting around other folks. It's a very vulnerable place. But it was also a place like they were associated with purifying yourself. So there's, you start to see this sort of spiritual aspect to it as well. Like you're getting clean inside and out. Like you, this is a way to like rid your body of toxins, both like from a physical sense, I think we would think now, but also from a spiritual sense.

And that's definitely when we look at like the tradition of sweat lodges among the native. Americans or if we look to like in New Zealand or the Aboriginal people of Australia, the sweat lodges are very much a spiritual experience, right? This is not just about, I'm going to go in there and really sweat out all the toxins. There's a connection. Yeah, there's another layer to it. Yes. This has to do with the spirit and the body. These are places, the sweat lodges are places where you're more connected to the spiritual. You're more connected to the afterlife, maybe. Maybe the spirits of your ancestors. are closer to you in a sweat lodge.

And this is true in a lot of different sauna cultures, the idea of the sauna being a different sort of space. And I don't know if part of that, I mean, because some traditions, you wouldn't just be in a sweat lodge. You wouldn't just be in a building where you're getting really hot and sweaty because you could make the case that, or are you just getting dehydrated and maybe a little delirious? Which could be baked into this, right?

Maybe that is part of why people felt they were having a spiritual experience. experience. Maybe it is a spiritual, I mean, I don't, there's much that I do not know. But also then in some cultures it would involve taking certain substances or, you know, like there'd be more to it. There would be sound or, you know, there could be musical things. There could be, again, things you ingest as part of the sweating experience. One way or another, though, you see very much that these are spiritual things. This is not just a purification of the body. This is a purification of of the soul. And in Finland, specifically,

where a lot of this is I talk about like sauna culture and then the research on sonnas, I'm gonna focus a lot on Finland because in the modern day, our sauna's good for you is an interesting question. And it looks like the Finns are most dedicated to answering it.

Because it is so deeply embedded in their culture, if you're looking for like actual scientific research on is the sauna, healthy? Is it more than just like a fun thing to do? Most of that research is coming out of Finland. Yeah, makes sense. In Finland, saunas have been tied to folk medicine for a very long time. So they were very much, as all these other examples I've given, they were very much tied to not just like, I'm going to go in there and sweat and it feels nice. I'm going to go in there, be part of the community, talk with my neighbors, become close to others, and it is also a spiritual experience.

people slept in the sauna. It would be like a place you could meet up with somebody in secret, like meet me in the sauna next Friday or whatever. You would go cleanse before, like, church to go. You would go to the sauna to cleanse yourself. People might choose to give birth in the sauna. That's true. Yeah, that makes sense. That seems like a at least more of a chill experience for the being born person.

It's a little bit more of a gradual, you know what I mean? Not this like cold hot. hospital room with the fluorescence or what have you, but something a lot more womb-like, presumably, the sauna. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you think about it, there are people who do like the water births, and we've talked about that on the show before. That is, there are risks to that. They're dangerous to that. The sauna, if you're looking for a humid environment, definitely, I would say a sauna. At least nobody's underwater. That's true. So that's going to limit your risk. But I can see a similar sort of thought. And it's because the sauna in Finnish folk medicine is very much a liminal space. You are no longer wholly among the living and you're not wholly among the dead.

You're in a another, you're in a third space. I like that. Yeah. No, I like it too. And that's very much like the souls of your ancestors are present with you in the sauna. Now, I'm not saying this is necessarily a modern Finnish person would say this. But this was the folk medicine concept. But they're not peaking.

Well, I don't think, I did not read a lot about... Ancestrian speaking. No. About the fact that you are nude in the sauna. My guess is that that is, since it is so ingrained in their culture, there is no like, you know, it's not odd. It's not, you wouldn't be uncomfortable about it because it is so much part of it, right? I don't know. Like, we Americans don't get naked in front of each other a lot, right?

I mean, isn't that fair for me to say? I've been in some locker rooms where that is not accurate, but I know what you're saying. Okay, locker rooms. But if you think about, okay, like bathing together, we watched Terrace House. Indeed. And we saw people who had just met bathing together, being nude together. That is not something that typically would happen in our culture. True.

Right. Too true. So what I'm saying is, I think. Different cultural standards. Yeah, I think like the standard for like being nude in a place like a bath house. house or a, I mean, you see that in like hot springs. There are definitely places where people go and they get naked in a public place like that with not, I mean, there's no thought of this being off. I will also say I was raised Baptist in West Virginia in the 80s. I should not be the bellwether for what is the appropriate amount of nudity in really any situation.

I think, I think that it is fair to say, and this is not unique to American. Certainly this is true to a lot of other cultures. I think we tend to be a little more prudish about nudity. I think that is. That's, I mean, that's, that seems more than fair. Yeah. And I have, I mean, as a physician, I have no discomfort about nudity in others because, like, I need, sometimes I need you to get naked so I can look at, so I can examine you, right, so that I can do a proper examination. For sure. See, yeah. Right. And there is nothing about me that feels weird or, like, uncomfortable with that.

That being said, when I have to get naked, I do feel uncomfortable. So, well, there you go. I don't know how we swear that. Anyway. So the sauna is a place. where you can go and be part of the community, where you can go and feel closer to those who we've already lost, as well as the more vital part of like the cycle of life.

It's a very much, it's a spiritual experience in Finland. It's connected to a lot of folk medicine traditions. And we see this up until in 1890 when they actually banned folk medicine in Finland. Oh. And so the sauna had to become something different, right? Oh, okay. Because the sauna was this place where if you were sick, if you needed healing, whatever, you would go there to be as part of the healing. Its identity had to evolve.

It could no longer be this sort of spiritual folk thing. The sauna needed to be something else. And it could just be fun. It could just be go sweat because it's fun. It feels good. It's fun. But why not investigate if maybe it is medicine, is the sauna Madison? And we're going to talk about that.

But first we have to go to the billing department. Let's go. The medicines, the medicines that ask you make macabre for the mouth. Sydney, is the sauna medicine? Justin, I'm going to tell you there's a lot of research. Classic, Sydney, you just won't even, I'm just trying to buy a sauna. And if you'll just tell me if it's medicine, then I'll know if I should get the $8,000 son or the $20,000. Listen, they get so expensive.

Can I tell you, I did forget to mention this. We were talking about how it's like the sauna is so deeply embedded into Finnish culture. You talked about peeking. Ancestors peaking on you. There is a in traditional Finnish folk medicine. There is a one-eyed elf, the sonatomtu, who was said to watch people in the sauna to make sure that they were being respectful and behaving themselves. So there is, like, it isn't just that they might peek. There is actually somebody whose job is to peek on you.

And it was to keep, like, kids in line. Like, if the kids are going to be in the sauna, you'd be like, now listen, there's an elf watching you. That's a kind of elf on shelf I can get into. That's a supernatural deity that I can absolutely support. Just a little elf, making sure you keep your hands to yourself and your eyes appear. That elf was created by a Baptist. Yeah, good for that elf. Good for that elf.

Our elf is an awesome elf. Rains from up on the shelf of wisdom. Yes, he's an elf. Our elf is an awesome elf. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. In Finland, in a country of 5.5 million people, there are about 3.3 million saunas.

There are a lot of saunas there. Yeah. I mean, some of those people are kids. So, like, as a kid, you probably don't have your own sauna yet. So, like, definitely a sauna per family, right? Like, we have to assume there's, like, probably about a sauna every family. We should build a sauna, Sid. Let's build a sauna you and I.

I bet we could do it. Let's build a sauna. We can't leave our house anymore because we're snowbound forever and ever. We'll never be able to leave. I'll just go out to the woods with an axe and hew some tumbre. I'll just hew some tumbre from the woods, bring it up here, and we'll make a sauna. We could build one of those little triangle saunas. You know what I'm talking about?

It looks like a little triangle house. Yeah, but if we can't leave the house ever again, we might as well spend our time on a really great one. You know? We're stuck here forever and ever. I read in one of the articles, and I hope this is true that the unofficial motto of Finland is Sisu, Sana and Sibilius,

who's the composer of the Finnish national anthem, which I appreciated. Yeah, we just watched Sisu Road to Revenge last night. Listen, if you haven't watched Sisu and Sisu Rode Revenge, I don't know what you're doing with your time. They explain at the top of the movie

what Sisu is, like the concept of Sisu. We like to... Kind of an unwillingness to die. Sisu is what you have when all hope is lost. It's that determination. Determination. Yeah.

Sisu, if you haven't seen it, is an amazing film about a mean old man that finds a bunch of gold and is just trying to go home and gets hassled by a bunch of Nazis that he has to kill a lot of. And then Sisu wrote revenge is a beautiful story about healing. No. But some of the other stuff. It's great. It's great. folk medicine, the question is, well, is it doing something for us that we can measure in an objective way and scientifically claim it's helping? So if you look at like what proponents of sauna,

especially people who are going to try to sell you a sauna, which we're going to get into the sonnas that you can buy for your own home. But if you look at what they say, it's a wide variety of medical claims. And I will say research has been done into most of the things that they're claiming now whether or not the research is as conclusive as they would tell you. You know, we talk a lot on the show about the things that are hard to research because no one wants to like put their kid up for like, you know, you can test my baby on this crazy new pregnancy medication. Like, is it like, no, this is my baby.

I don't know. It's like, I bet sauna research is not too hard to fund willing participants. We're like, yeah, you know what? I can get into that. It's hard because a lot of it is like cohort studies. And what that means is like we're asking people like, you know, you know, you. You all sauna. You all don't sauna.

And then we're trying to find differences between them. And that's a little more difficult because, one, it's harder to control for a lot of variables. A confounders. Yes, a lot of confounders. And then two, like, if it's already people who are sauna-eem. What? Is that the, is that the gerund? Is that right?

It sounds wrong, doesn't it? But I think you're right. Sauna-ean. But, I mean, like, is there something different about people who have chosen to build or buy or whatever a sauna and use it regularly? You know what I mean? Yeah, there's a lot of, yeah, that's hard to control for. Well, because especially now, nowadays that it is connected, I think, with a lot of, like, wellness culture, you have people who may be seeking out a lot of different health practices for themselves,

and sauna is part of it. And so is that a different person than somebody who's like, listen, I'm just trying to get by. I don't have time for the sauna stuff. Are there intrinsic difference? You know, so it's hard. And some of the studies have teased that stuff out, and some haven't. What the evidence generally is looking at, is one blood pressure.

So there have been a lot of studies into the idea that, and I think this kind of makes sense. If you sit in a hot room and it's steamy, will it cause your blood vessels to dilate and then your blood pressure will get lower? And if you do this regularly, is your blood pressure always lower? That seems like a really, okay,

that's a fair question to ask. Is it having some sort of lasting effect or is it transient? So there's a lot of research being done on, hypertension. In general, then that led to a lot of research on heart disease because, you know, the vasculature, like veins being too tight, that it gets tied to blood flow and the process of having a heart attack or having a stroke. And so there's a lot of evidence or a lot of research then that was done on like if you sauna regularly, will you have fewer heart attacks? If you sauna regularly,

would you be less likely to have a stroke? So you see some studies that have started to look into that. And again, most of the studies we're talking about, one, are more cohort studies, meaning we didn't randomize people. We just asked them if they saw it or not. Two, they're mostly done in Finland. And that's fine because there's a lot of people who saw it. So it makes sense, except can you extrapolate data that is only done on people who live in a certain place to people who live everywhere else in the world? There's some issues with that. And then three, there are a lot of studies that are only done on Finnish men.

And so then it's hard because now you've got both a gender and, you know, like an ethnic bias to the data. So can I, does that data apply to me, a woman born in West Virginia? I don't know. Right. I mean, like it's so there are some limitations to it. Yeah. But also, again, it makes sense that they're the ones doing the studies because they're the one doing a lot of the saunaying. There have been studies done on dementia.

I think a lot of this sort of makes sense because we know that a lot of dementia has to do with disease in the vessels in the brain. and we're thinking about the effect of a sauna on your blood vessels, it makes sense that we would then study dementia. Pulmonary disease has been studied, lung disease, and then a lot of other sort of random conditions. What we know at this point, so there was a great meta-analysis that looked through. Basically, a meta-analysis takes a bunch of studies

and kind of compiles them to look at, like, aggregate, all these studies on sauna and blood pressure, what's the headline? We put them all together, and we looked at what conclusions came from them, and how what the strength of the studies were. And can we say that there's good quality evidence for this or not, right? Right.

So what they found about high blood pressure, first of all, is that there's definitely a reduction in your blood pressure immediately after a sauna. But that kind of makes sense, right? You know, that your blood vessels have dilated, and we would check your blood pressure, and it would be lower than when you, before you went in the sauna. There was one cohort study, again, where we were just taking people who do sauna,

and then some who don't, so we didn't randomize them. that said there was a 47% risk reduction of getting high blood pressure over 25 years. So it was a long study. That's good. But it hasn't been replicated. There has been no randomized control trial. And again, most of the studies that they were looking at in this meta-analysis were only done in men in Finland. Some included women, but most were just men.

So I don't know. Does it lower blood pressure? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Similarly, when you look at like the aggregate of all the data on heart disease and stroke, there was an inverse relationship in two studies where they said, look, the more you sauna, the less likely you are to have a heart attack or stroke. They showed that in two studies. However, they said very clearly, we cannot establish that it was causal.

We saw a correlation. There's definitely a connection between. You know, it's tough too because, oh. I wonder if it's also complicated by the fact that when you're in the sauna, it's not just like one factor. Like there's a bunch of different things that that is, right? Like, for example, I know there's been a lot of research about meditation and the impact that can have on your overall physical health.

And it's like, in a sense, even if you're not actually meditating or following a practice, like the idea of sitting in a place and being still and that being all we're really doing as like just being present in that moment. Like that could have an effect too. If you're this sort of person that sits for 20 minutes and silence in a song every day, you may be having some of those benefits. Well, and that's what if you look through like the sort of technical,

why do we think any of this might be true? What you're talking about for meditation or for other similar activities, I think we're looking at the same things. We're trying to reduce like the tone of your vessels is not just tied to one thing. It's tied to, I mean, I think in a colloquial way, we'd say like your stress level, but like what hormones are being

released? What factors are circulating in your body that are being released by your brain, by your gut, by your vessels, by your, you know, by all of your adrenal glands, everything? What is being released by all of these things that is affecting those blood vessels? And how can we modulate all of that? And the answer is so varied, right? Like there are so many answers to that question. And all of them together probably are the right, you know, but, but that's a, it's bigger than one thing. With dementia, again, suggested a reduction in risk, causal link not established. Lung disease, they did see some improvement in like if you have some sort of obstructive lung disease, like asthma or COPD, after you get out of the sauna, there was a suggestion that,

like, you had some improvement in your symptoms, but it seemed like it was short-lived. Like it was a transient thing, which kind of makes sense. It's almost like sitting over a humidifier for a while or like if you were ever sick and you like intentionally were breathing in. Did you ever do that? Like warm up hot water, create steam, put a towel over your head and like breathe it in. Like I used to do that to try to maintain my voice. It's a similar idea. But again, right now we don't know that it fixes anything.

And then it's been studied in smaller studies for things like chronic pain like arthritis, fibromyalgia, chronic headaches. there was a Japanese study on depression. There have been several hypothetical sort of, we think it would be good for your skin for these reasons, but no, like concrete, like we put people with eczema in a sauna, and then we, you know what I mean? We haven't done that.

People with eczema have said it improved their eczema, but I don't have a big study to tell you that it does anything for skin condition. And then there's a lot of quality of life stuff. Like they see a positive association with, like, social functioning, physical functioning, vitality, but it's all association. The headline is a lot of it seems to be similar to what physical activity would do.

And that's what a lot of proponents of sauna, who I think are coming from a really scientific background would tell you, is if you think like going for a run is good for you, this mimics some of the effects of going for a run. Now, listen, don't try to bury that like that's a shrug. If we can get the power of exercise without exerting the energy, folks, this is a huge, huge leap forward. But these, I would say that people who sauna on average are healthier than you and me and would probably say, well, no, what would be best is if you went for a run and then sauna. Okay, pal. And then they're going to catch up with you after. I should know, is it dangerous? This is a big question.

A lot of people are like, well, but if you have heart disease, is it safe to sit in a sauna? generally speaking for a healthy individual or for somebody with a stable chronic condition like stable heart disease we don't have any evidence of harm that sitting in a sauna is more like it's strain on your heart now if you are somebody with unstable heart disease like if you recently had a heart attack or if you have decompensated heart failure obviously an environment like that where it's very hot and there's a lot of humidity that might be that could create a strain on your heart in that situation so if you have you you are, if you have unstable disease, possibly, and they have had cases of like sudden death, usually linked to something like that, right? Yeah. But if you are stable or a healthy individual, we don't have a lot of evidence to say sauna is dangerous. There are burns as a common problem in saunas because people touched hot things, but they did a seven-year retrospective analysis of 598 patients with burns treated in a major

finish hospital. 26% of the cases were from saunas. That's a lot of sauna burns. Wow. But 40% of those were under the influence of alcohol. So there's a big headline. Don't sauna and drink. Don't sauna and drink is a big headline.

They've also, that's usually when they found cases of sudden death in sauna. A lot of them were related to alcohol. There's a lot of do not drink alcohol when sauna in. That's a headline. I bet just physically too that's not great for you. It's not. The combination of those two doesn't seem smart. No, because you could get dehydrated.

You could sweat a lot. You could become, you know, and then obviously the alcohol is diuretic. And yeah. So don't sauna and drink. And then, you know, the other thing is a lot of people combine sauna with cold plunge. So you go from a really hot environment to a really cold environment or vice versa. And there have been, like, not just anecdotal, there have been case reports of people who have had, like, a bad cardiovascular reaction to going from a really hot environment into a cold. cold one where it causes your blood vessels to constrict all at once, there have been some sudden

deaths from that. Now, again, the thought is that if you do not have underlying cardiac disease, it should be safe. And certainly most people who do this are fine. However, there have been some anecdotal reports that perhaps the hot to cold is not beneficial or is dangerous. And then also, we don't have any hard research that cold plunge is helping you. I know I'm just going to make a bunch of people mad. But like we do not at this point have a lot of scientific evidence with the cold plunge. Cold plunge. Catching stray. Well, I'm, and especially the hot to cold. I will say, if you want to buy a sauna, you can buy infrared saunas. So, Justin, have you heard of infrared sonnas? I've seen them advertised in boozy hotels before. So the idea

passing through my way to a workshop. The idea behind an infrared sauna, it makes sense why it was invented. Everybody likes saunas, but like traditionally it involves rocks and firestals. fire and steam and, you know, it's not something that's easy to have in your house. So the idea with an infrared sauna is you get all the benefits from a sauna, but it's just lights creating the heat, you know, infrared lights creating the heat. And so you don't need all of these other things. Okay? That was the big idea.

It actually dates back, you know, who first kind of led the way for the infrared sauna. Who? John Harvey Kellogg. Wow, that guy's popping up so much in our show this lately. I know. He's been very vibrant, very present. One of the most notorious sawbones figures. One of, probably the most.

Yes. He invented in 1893 the incandescent bathlights were shown at the World's Fair in Chicago. And that was probably like the first iteration of what would become the infrared sauna. We see the first one patented in 65 by a Japanese doctor. And then after the 70s, they really took off as like you can buy these. to have in your home for wellness, holistic health. You can combine them with like colors for like chromotherapy or like scents, you know, aromatherapy. They become part of that whole sort of like health, wellness, like get in this room and hear things and smell things and look at things that will make you better and live longer.

And they very much become connected with longevity as well. Like the idea is if you sit in this infrared sauna for 20 minutes a day, you'll live longer. that's it's big in like the biohacking longevity crowd makes sense the thing i will say about infrared sonas the benefit is supposed to be one just like the practicality of them two they claim that the infrared lights can penetrate deep into your tissue and then can like detoxify you and fix your mitochondria all true all of these things um infrared lights based on studies can only penetrate one to two inches into your skin so they can't you know they're not going to detoxify your liver which doesn't need to happen anyway, but they're certainly not going to do that.

Even if it could, it wouldn't. Even if it could, it wouldn't. But it's not. Even if it could, it wouldn't, but it's not. The other thing that they say is that they're not as hot. They don't get as hot as a traditional sauna would, and so if you can't tolerate the heat of a traditional sauna, the infrared sauna.

Get out of the kitchen. Is better. Any evidence that they claim that are specific to infrared saunas, they're just drawing off this stuff that I already told you about. They're pulling evidence, research that's been done on sauna saunas, and some of them have involved have also included infrared sonnas, but it's not unique. There's nothing unique about the infrared

sauna that makes it superior to the sauna except that it just doesn't get quite as hot. And I guess you're not going to get a sauna burn because there's no hot rocks. And peeing on the rocks, not a problem. I think what's the problem, as I started researching infrared saunas, and you look at these

medical sonnas that you can buy, Justin. It looks great. It looks like tiny little houses. Yeah. Tiny little modernist houses They will sell you all of these beautiful full spectrums on. And they all have these like different. They will talk about their health benefits and all the things that they can do to make your life better and make you live longer and all these things. There's something about it to me that feels.

Is there a cross, by the way, does it say? Do you want to know how to that? I would love to know what you're going to click here to learn more. If there is a contact us form, you know you're in trouble. No, no, it's 10 Gs. That's what I would have. That one is 10,000. That's a four person.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a four-person $10,000. Let's see this big one. I'm not saying it's reasonable. I'm saying that's what I expected it to say. Now, the full-spectrum sauna, that's a 404.

I don't love that as someone I'm going to buy a sauna from. Ultra full-spectrum. That one says medical on it. The medical 7. Ultra-full-7. That's a 404. Anyway, you can buy them. I mean, there's tons of companies selling these things.

The thing that bothered me, as I was looking at these infrared saunas, one, no evidence that there are any different. than any other sauna. One, two, you miss Christmas and can't ask for one. I think that there's something about it that feels kind of gross and like we're colonizing saunas. It feels like, don't you want, don't you want the experience of a sauna without all the icky, like, you're with other people you don't know and you're outside.

And then it's like there's rocks and it's steaming and you're sweating around people. And then, ooh, isn't that all gross? Wouldn't it be nicer if it was in this, like, clean, sleek? Yeah. It's just light. Like, this is also not the right term, but it's like a sauna gentrification. Yeah. If you will.

It feels like, yeah, don't you mean. You know what I mean? There's something about it that just, I don't know. I felt, it felt like this is the cleaner sauna for you. I would not invest in an infrared sauna myself, especially they push it for things like weight loss and chronic pain. Like the stuff that people usually try to make a lot of money on, right? And then live longer.

And I think that there's no evidence to suggest that it's going to do any of those things specifically, right? Like I said, there's been some evidence in these other areas. And so if you want a sauna, if you, like, want to engage in the practice of sauna and you are a healthy individual, I think that there's, you know, I mean, I kind of want a sauna after doing this episode. Like, I wish I could go sauna. But if I did, I'd want the whole steamy, sweaty experience. I don't want these glass, weird glass boxes in my bathroom. We hope you've enjoyed the whole sweaty, steamy experience of sawbones this week.

Thank you so much for listening. Thanks to the taxpayers for the use of their song of medicine as the intro and outro of our program. Thanks to you for listening. That's going to do it for us for this week. Until next time, my name is Justin McRoy. And I'm Sidney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Maximum Fun

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