So you have developed some degree of interest in sauna use… that’s great! One of the first things you should most likely know about saunas is that while they’re not overwhelmingly popularly used in American culture, they are in a number of nations such as in Finland, and Korea. In some places sauna use is a center for both socializing and relaxing. Saunas are believed by many to clean impurities from the body due to the great volumes of fluid excreted through the flesh. Whatever the reason in fact may be, within cultures that have completely embraced sauna use it has had a significant amount of lore that has built up with its adoption.
As a matter of fact, sauna use is both viewed as a place of birth as well as a place to prepare for burial or even worship those who have passed away in some cultures. This may seem very weird to people from countries such as the United States of America, but it is important to note that while the individual beliefs regarding saunas is probably not objectively accurate scientifically speaking, sauna use is still viewed as a part of culture and has helped these people weather the hardships of their varied environments.
What we actually do know is fact about sauna use is that a number of things occur physiologically that can be of benefit. The sauna puts in motion the natural stress systems of the body. Sometimes a small modicum of physiological stress can indeed be good for your wellbeing, and as a matter of fact, the activation of this stress system causes the body to produce heat shock proteins, also known as chaperonins.
Chaperonins aid in keeping the proteins in your body from unfolding in the heart and shield the human body from not only heat stress, but many other types of stresses also. By conditioning your body to be more capable of tolerating heat stress through the use of a sauna, you may actually be making your body hardened against other varieties of stress as well.
One other cool (no pun intended) feature of sauna use is that it creates a release of beta-endorphin that is frequently significantly larger than that which you would even achieve simply through weightlifting. This endorphin surge is what makes exercise being truly habit forming for a good deal of fitness geeks, and is also responsible for increasing mental fortitude and perhaps even reducing depression. Endorphins are a endogenous painkiller, and because of that, it should not be a large surprise that sauna use has been scientifically proven to assist in a wide variety of types of physical pain.
Thanks for spending just a little bit of your time reading some of the words written here. If you’ve got just a few moments to spare also consider checking out: sauna use, and cognitive science nervous system.