Also, for men trying to conceive children, please know that repeated deliberate heat exposure can reduce sperm count. The counts rebound after cessation of sauna/hot bath use, but that can take ~45-60 days. Men wishing to avoid sperm count reductions due to heat may opt to apply a cool or cold pack while in the sauna; this is not possible in a hot bath/tub, for obvious reasons.
There are many ways to access controlled deliberate exposure to heat, including dry saunas, steam saunas, hot tubs, hot showers, or by simply increasing body temperature by wearing warm layers of clothes during a brief jog. Pick whatever method or methods you can routinely work into your schedule and that match your budget.
Regular use of sauna can improve cardiovascular health. Laukkanen et al. found that through regular use of sauna, participants reduced their risk of cardiovascular events/stroke that led to death. This paper found that increasing the frequency and length of sauna sessions subsequently decreased the long-term risk of cardiovascular disease.
In order to use sauna to benefit cardiovascular health, try the following protocol. Heat the sauna to a temperature in the range of 80-100 ℃; 176-212 ℉. NOTE: Your personal heat tolerance should determine the actual temperature. Try to stay in the sauna anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes per session and repeat the use of the sauna from 2 to 3x per week, or as often as 7x per week.
Saunas have traditional roots in Scandinavian cultures. For centuries, many who regularly use sauna have noticed a correlation between their sauna use and improved mood. The body responds to heat with a release of dynorphins and endorphins in the brain; dynorphins at first cause discomfort and agitation but biochemically set the stage for endorphins to have enhanced effects on our mood and body, which is why after sauna we feel a mild, happy euphoria.
Hormesis is mild, tolerable stress that stimulates the body and helps it to positively adapt. Hormesis can take many forms, and heat is one such form. Studies have found that the regular use of sauna can decrease cortisol levels; enhance the activation of DNA repair/longevity pathways; and increase the activation of unique heat-dependent molecular mechanisms, termed Heat Shock Proteins, which help monitor and possibly repair protein structure within our cells.
In order to gain the benefits of deliberate heat exposure for general health, including improved mood, stress management, and the enhancement of the body’s hormetic (mild stress) response pathways, use sauna for a total of 1 hour per week, but not all at once. Rather, split that into 2 to 3 sessions. (The sauna temperature should be between 80-100 ℃; 176-212 ℉).
To use sauna for improved release of Growth Hormone, use the sauna infrequently (once per week or less). However, those days you do sauna, you will be in the sauna for multiple sessions of 30 minutes each with cool down periods in between. Peer-reviewed research says this protocol works well to increase growth hormone: 30 minutes in sauna, then cool off outside sauna for 5 minutes, then 30 minutes more in sauna, then cool off. A few hours (or more) later in the day, you repeat that for a total of four 30-minute sessions of sauna in one day (that’s a lot!).
Growth Hormone plays a key role in stimulating muscle growth, strengthening bones, repairing tissue, and increasing metabolism.
Remember to hydrate well before and after you use the sauna. Sweat is made of water and other important electrolytes. Drink at least 16 ounces of water for every 10 minutes you spend in the sauna.
Throughout the day, body temperature fluctuates in sync with your natural circadian rhythm. Using the sauna during the afternoon/evening will help match your body’s natural cooling with the “post-cooling sauna effect” in order to aid in falling asleep at night.
So in order to get light information to the pineal and thereby get the proper levels of melatonin according to the time of year, we should all try and get outside as much as possible during the long days of summer and spring. And in the winter months, it makes sense to spend more time indoors.
So if you need to get up in the middle of the night and use the restroom, which is a perfectly normal behavior for many people, use the minimum amount of light required in order to safely move through the environment that you need to move through.
We talked earlier about how UVB light exposure to the eyes triggers activation of these particular neurons within the eye, and then with centers deeper in the brain, and eventually the pineal gland to suppress the output of melatonin and thereby to allow testosterone and estrogen to exist at higher levels because melatonin can inhibit testosterone and estrogen.
15. We also need to get UVB sunlight exposure onto our skin if we want to activate this p53 pathway in keratinocytes and the testosterone and estrogen increases that are downstream of that p53 pathway.
I think the 20 to 30-minute protocol, two or three times per week is an excellent one, and seems like a fairly low dose of UVB light exposure.
It's hard to imagine getting much damage to the skin. Of course, if you have very sensitive skin, or if you live in an area of the world that is very, very bright and has intense sunlight at particular times of year, you'll want to be cautious.