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The most important thing you didn't measure: does this affect long term health in the same way exercise it known to. That is can I put a TV in my sauna and wat

• testing22321 7mo ago
  I don’t think the TV in the sauna will have long term health outcomes.
  • Filligree 7mo ago
    It will certainly affect the health of the TV.
• kyriakosel 7mo ago
  Agreed - one is muscular/metabolic demand, the other (sauna) is thermoregulation. Agreed on the long-term effect too: doing a study on long term health is a completely different story
• nsbk 7mo ago
  I recently listened to a podcast about the benefits of sauna or deliberate heat exposure and the gist is that if you get your core temperature at about 39 degrees celsius your cardiovascular system is working comparably hard to light exercise. My take is that your heart and lungs are working out, even if your body is not. Do you get the same benefits as going for a run or bike ride for a comparable amount of time? no, since your limbs don't get fit, but your heart and lungs do.
  • mminer237 7mo ago
    Edit: I posted this accidentally when editing without noticing. Hypertrophy isn't necessarily a bad thing. I thought I was discarding the comment cuz I realized I was out of my depth. whoops Please ignore my comment, though I will leave it to make the below comments less confusing. Original: You don't want to "work out" your heart though. Cardiac hypertrophy is a bad thing. The benefit of exercise is that your muscles become more oxygen-efficient. Your heart endures some stress now, so that it can work less in the future.
    • rhyperior 7mo ago
      That seems… misguided. Sources?
    • adrianN 7mo ago
      Wikipedia says Athlete's heart is benign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletic_heart_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletic_heart_syndrome
    • kiritanpo 7mo ago
      Cardiac hypertrophy is not necessarily a bad thing, it can be the result of positive adaptation, such as exercising. Eccentric hypertrophy (athlete's heart) is the positive adaptation resulting from training the heart. The heart has a lower resting rate and is more efficient at pumping blood. It returns to normal size if training stops. You'll never reach a state of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (the bad kind of hypertrophy) with exercise. Its cause is usually genetic.
    • jagged-chisel 7mo ago
      Your heart is also a muscle.
      • PaulDavisThe1st 7mo ago
        ... about the size of your fist. Keep loving, keep fighting. (attributed to Bertolt Brecht)
    • SJMG 7mo ago
      This is terribly uniformed. Do not listen to this. Cardiac hypertrophy isn't a "bad thing". This is completely contextual. What you don't want, for example, is pathological hypertrophy from things like hypertension, or exclusive left ventricular hypertrophy without associated increase in chamber size. The heart is very complex. You 100% should exercise it.
    • kazga 7mo ago
      Not true. You can't really train your muscles to use less oxygen for the same energy output (what "oxygen-efficiency" would imply). You rather increase their capacity to take up oxygen from the blood and burn it. They will use more oxygen to output more energy. That additional oxygen needs to come from somewhere. Endurance training at the same time trains the heart to deliver more oxygen to the periphery; the primary mechanism is increased cardiac stroke volume.
  • shmel 7mo ago
    Not saying you are wrong, but I'd like to see some evidence on that. Just because your heart is pumping faster doesn't mean your cardio fitness is getting better. Otherwise we could all just snort cocaine and skip the gym. Alcohol does that too, anyone with a fitness tracker can check that.
    • xtracto 7mo ago
      Moreover, I'm from a very hot and humid tropical region. Its normal to ne 40°C with 80% humidity there. And you dont see people having better health or longevity (Yucatan peninsula) .
      • Insanity 7mo ago
        The great but not super healthy Mexican diet might offset the potential heat exposure benefits! Although I’m basing that on the diet of my Monterrey-based in-laws, not sure how different Yucatan is.
        • xtracto 7mo ago
          LOL, Monterrey diet is healthy compared to the diet in the Yucatan peninsula. Tamales, Cochinita (roasted pork with herbs), salbutes, trancas. Everything of course cooked in Lard. With CocaCola on the side. So yeah, that's a strong point.
          • cpursley 7mo ago
            Lard is fine as is pork, it’s the sugar and carbs.
      • actionfromafar 7mo ago
        But that would be like exercise all the time which may not be optimal. (Not saying the theory holds that sauna equals exercise, but if it does, sauna all the time may not be great. Plus, there may be other confounding factors with living in various locations.)
      • 7mo ago
  • bluecalm 7mo ago
    For endurance training the main benefit of heat training is raising blood volume. Lungs are not a limiter. Developing stroke volume I imagine requires much higher intensity but that's just a wild guess based on my limited understanding of physiology. If heat training is better than another interval session remains to be seen but it seems a lot of smart people believe it's worth it nowadays.
    • PaulDavisThe1st 7mo ago
      and specifically, to be clear, plasma volume.
• HelloMcFly 7mo ago
  > That is this improves a marker for good health without improving health There is a substantial body of existing research to peruse about the impact of regular sauna use on health outcomes, much of it from Finland given the prevalence of sauna usage there allowing for larger sample sizes. It's a body of evidence rather than one knock-out experimental design.
  • gjulianm 7mo ago
    Much of that body of evidence relies on self-reported and self-assigned sauna usage rather than actual randomized trials, and also the papers show massive risk reductions that do not really fit with the country-level data (e.g., if saunas are that good for cardiovascular health and finns use them that much, why do they have similar rates of CV disease as neighboring countries that don't use that much sauna?)
    • HelloMcFly 7mo ago
      Much of it is, sure, but certainly not all of it! On your comparison to Sweden, be cautious! Finns generally have a higher risk and incidence of cardiovascular disease compared to native Swedes - in fact, they have some of the highest risk in the world! Research from Earric Lee and/or Jari Laukkanen from this past decade will have clinical trials with controlled groups rather than just long-term population tracking. There are within-Finland studies comparing high-risk Finns who use the sauna 4 to 7 times a week against high-risk Finns who use it only once a week, showing a clear effect (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25705824/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25705824/). Here is a non-randomized experiment showing a dose-response (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29048215/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29048215/). Those are just indications of information available. I would also argue that while of course randomized experiments are ideal, it is a mistake to dismiss all other forms of evidence so readily, especially with such preponderance of it.
      • gjulianm 7mo ago
        The first study shows a 0.37 hazard ratio for frequent sauna use. That’s better than a lot of the HRs reported for physical activity. It’s even better than not smoking. It just doesn’t really fit. Also, the fact that there are practically no sauna related studies outside of Nordic populations is suspicious too. I bet that with those hazards ratios a lot of people have tried to study the effects more, it’s suspicious there’s practically nothing out there.
• lfuller 7mo ago
  This feels like a false dichotomy. Even if sauna doesn't impact long term health in a way that can replace exercise, that doesn't mean that it doesn't improve health.
• Jtarii 7mo ago
  A sauna will do nothing for muscular-skeletal health.
  • derektank 7mo ago
    That seems like a very strong statement. Isn’t there evidence that Heat Shock Proteins are produced in response to time in the sauna, which have beneficial effects on muscle growth and repair?
    • Jtarii 7mo ago
      >which have beneficial effects on muscle growth and repair? Repair from what?
      • derektank 7mo ago
        Mechanical stress, i.e. exercise
• ricardobayes 7mo ago
  My take is probably too nuanced here, but the reality is that we don't know. People living in areas with longevity (blue zones), didn't really excercise (as in sports) or take multivitamins. For all we know, it might even come out that regular, gym-style excercise is even worse for longevity. Nordic people tend to live a long life even though they historically didn't have access to fresh vegetables or fruit and brutal winters (and darkness) prohibited excercise. ps. I'm not arguing that excercise is unhealthy, it's just that its contribution to eventual longevity, is currently unknown. Whereas anectodal evidence of saunas (being around longer than "excercise"), seems to work.
  • RankingMember 7mo ago
    > I'm not arguing that excercise is unhealthy, it's just that its contribution to eventual longevity, is currently unknown I see numerous studies indicating that exercise contributes directly to eventual longevity, e.g.: https://www.ama-assn.org/public-health/prevention-wellness/massive-study-uncovers-how-much-exercise-needed-live-longer https://www.ama-assn.org/public-health/prevention-wellness/m... https://www.acc.org/latest-in-cardiology/articles/2025/07/02/15/19/the-relationship-between-exercise-and-longevity https://www.acc.org/latest-in-cardiology/articles/2025/07/02... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3395188/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3395188/
    • ricardobayes 7mo ago
      Thank you for the resources. I do wonder what the correlation is: is it only because of excercise, or at least partially also due to the fact those who can set aside time and effort (and often, money) to exercise, have a "better" life than those who don't? For example, high life expectancy in Madrid, and Switzerland are often attributed to having broad access to great healthcare and stress-free lifestyle(both), despite living a relatively "unhealthy" lifestyle, at least in Madrid. Eating fried food everyday, little exercize among elderly (at least if you don't count walking to the bar). Those 85 year+ Madrileños probably had their last formal exercise when they had to do their military service back in the day. As in the case of top athletes, in your second article, is their longevity due to heavy exercise, or kind of, "despite it", and at least partially due to their accumulated wealth, health-conscious mindset plus the ability to afford a stress-free life?
• sonink 7mo ago
  I looked into Saunas in detail sometime back as a replacement/complement to exercise. There is a lot of research out there which says Saunas are as beneficial - but at the end of it I reached a similar conclusion - exercise is just better understood, so no point experimenting when something can go wrong.
• nyjah 7mo ago
  Zero shot you'd make it an hour in a proper sauna for an hour. People have this idea that saunas are always enjoyable. I sauna daily, and its nice up to a point. For me thats like 10-12mins in. From then on, its tough.
  • iammjm 7mo ago
    I go for 15 min sessions at 90 Celsius and the first 10 mins are ok, the last 5 are tough, like I have to control my breath to hang in there
  • trklausss 7mo ago
    You are clearly not Finn (/s)
    • nyjah 7mo ago
      lol, this is true. Wish I could tolerate it longer like a proper Finn. I’ll go 25 mins occasionally but mostly I do 15 mins, break, another 5-10 mins..
      • jampekka 7mo ago
        Finns don't do it that long. It's typically 5-15 minutes per sitting, with 2-4 sittings per session.
        • nyjah 7mo ago
          My answer was sarcastic back, fwiw, I follow the 'proper' finnish ritual or similar...
  • tuukkah 7mo ago
    When it doesn't feel enjoyable anymore, you're supposed to get out of the sauna and cool down - preferably in a lake. Then repeat as many times as you like.
    • 7mo ago
• z3t4 7mo ago
  I think that if you have one hour or more of free time and live in an area where you have easy access to a sauna, that would result in significant better health on it's own. Even if you choose to not use the sauna.
• tester756 7mo ago
  One hour in sauna? :O
  • bluGill 7mo ago
    A random time I pulled out of my head. If this is real the next question is what is the optimal time. (also temperature and humidity levels)
• jjallen 7mo ago
  My current guess is that you get much or most of the benefits, but not all (by both value and number). If you look at the actual changes in the body during both of these activities, most are the same as exercise, but not all. For example: body temp increases, heart rate increases, and we sweat. But the muscles aren't "engaged", consuming stuff (glycogen, etc.) while doing sauna. There could also be sauna benefits that exercise does not impart, or is less likely to do so: sweating greater than exercise could lead to excess excretion of plastics, carcinogens, etc. Running in mild/cold temps we do little sweating (unless long duration exercise), whereas every darn sauna at sufficiently high temps we are going to be sweating.
• pegasus 7mo ago
  Since you mention the TV, it seems there's a big factor missing in both the article and the discussion here. Namely, that sauna time is for many people the only time they ever take to be in silence, without the countless distractions otherwise bombarding our nervous systems. I.e. it's basically a form of informal meditation, which is known to have a lot of benefic impacts on body and mind. So maybe skip the TV part?...
  • willnz 7mo ago
    I recently got an outdoor sauna at home, and that's definitely a key benefit ...sitting in silence without any devices, no smart phones, watches or music for at least 15-20 minutes.
• jmdeon 7mo ago
  I'm being slightly snarky, but good luck watching a TV if you're doing an intense/valuable sauna session. When I'm in my dry sauna and really pushing myself with the heat and steam off the hot rocks, I basically have to mediate to stay in beyond 15 minutes because every part of my mind starts telling me to get out and cool down.
• iso1631 7mo ago
  If you're watching TV in a sauna you haven't turned the sauna on.
• throwaway-blaze 7mo ago
  Even more likely is those using saunas and tracking metrics with wearables are self-selected to be healthier/more active/etc. Correlation and causation...
• havella 7mo ago
  This question is dead from the beginning. Exercise is good for the heart, the muscles, metabolism. You do need muscle contractions above certain level of intensity and duration for this to happen.