Saunas: Health Benefits (& Caveats)

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In A Rush?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Saunas are generally seen as a very healthful activity, but some worry about potential risks

  • Today’s main feature examines the pros and cons in the context of various heart conditions, as well as the wide-reaching benefits in many other areas of health

  • We also examine the pros and cons for those who specifically have a sensitivity to the heat!

• As we age, our collagen levels tend to get depleted more easily. Collagen is important not just for youthful good looks, but also for the health of bones and joints

  • Today’s sponsor NativePath are offering high-quality collagen without additives or harmful impurities

• Today’s featured recipe is potato salad as you haven’t had it before… This rainbow roasted (no oil!) potato superfood-laden gently-spiced salad is pretty as it is tasty as it is healthy!

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

A Word To The Wise

Watch and Learn

A Urologist Explains Edging: What, Why, And Is It Safe?

Dr. Rena Malik shares her expertise:

Prefer text? The above video will take you to a 10almonds page with a text-overview, as well as the video!

Mythbusting Friday

The Heat Is On

In Tuesday’s newsletter, we asked you your (health-related) opinion on saunas, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:

• About 53% said it is “a healthful activity with many benefits”

• About 25% said it is “best avoided; I feel like I’m dying in there”

• About 12% said “it feels good and therefore can’t be all bad”

So what does the science say?

The heat of saunas carries a health risk: True or False?

False, generally speaking, for any practical purposes. Of course, anything in life comes with a health risk, but statistically speaking, your shower at home is a lot more dangerous than a sauna (risk of slipping with no help at hand).

It took a bit of effort to find a paper on the health risks of saunas, because all the papers on PubMed etc coming up for those keywords were initially papers with “reduces the risk of…”, i.e. ways in which the sauna is healthy.

However, we did find one:

Source: Benefits and risks of sauna bathing 

So, very safe for most people, safe even for most people with heart disease, but there are exceptions so check with your own doctor of course.

And drinking alcohol anywhere is bad for the health, but in a sauna it’s a truly terrible idea. As an aside, please don’t drink alcohol in the shower, either (risk of slipping with no help at hand, and this time, broken glass too).

On the topic of it being safe for most people’s hearts, see also:

Beneficial effects of sauna bathing for heart failure patients

As an additional note, those who have a particular sensitivity to the heat, may (again please check with your own doctor, as your case may vary) actually benefit from moderate sauna use, to reduce the cardiovascular strain that your body experiences during heatwaves (remember, you can get out of a sauna more easily than you can get out of a heatwave, so for many people it’s a lot easier to do moderation and improve thermoregulatory responses):

Passive heat therapy: a promising preventive measure for people at risk of adverse health outcomes during heat extremes

Sauna usage can bring many health benefits: True or False?

True! Again, at least for most people. As well as the above-discussed items, here’s one for mortality rates in healthy Finnish men:

Sauna bathing and mortality risk: unraveling the interaction with systolic blood pressure in a cohort of Finnish men 

Not only that, also…

Source: The multifaceted benefits of passive heat therapies for extending the healthspan: A comprehensive review with a focus on Finnish sauna

(the repeated clarification of “Finnish sauna” is not a matter of fervent nationalism, by the way, but rather a matter of disambiguating it from Swedish sauna, which has some differences, most notably a lack of steam)

That reminds us: in Scandinavia, it is usual to use a sauna naked, and in Finland in particular, it is a common social activity amongst friends, coworkers, etc. In the US, many people are not so comfortable with nudity, and indeed, many places that provide saunas, may require the wearing of swimwear. But…

Just one problem: if you’re wearing swimwear because you’ve just been swimming in a pool, you now have chlorinated water soaked into your swimwear, which in the sauna, will become steam + chlorine gas. That’s not so good for your health (and is one reason, beyond tradition and simple normalization, for why swimwear is usually not permitted in Finnish saunas).

Want to read more?

You might like our previous main feature,

Turning Up The Heat Against Diabetes & Alzheimer’s ← you guessed it, sauna may be beneficial against these too 😎

Take care!

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This Or That?

Vote on Which is Healthier

Yesterday we asked you to choose between sweet cinnamon and regular—we picked the sweet (click here to read about why), as did only 10% of you!

Now for today’s choice:

Click on whichever you think is better for you!

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Recipes Worth Sharing

Rainbow Roasted Potato Salad

This salad has potatoes in it, but it’s not a potato salad as most people know it. The potatoes are roasted, but in a non-oily-dressing, that nevertheless leaves them with an amazing texture—healthy and delicious; the best of both worlds. And the rest? We’ve got colorful vegetables, we’ve got protein, we’ve got seasonings full of healthy spices, and more.

Click below for our full recipe, and learn its secrets:

One-Minute Book Review

End Your Carb Confusion: A Simple Guide to Customize Your Carb Intake for Optimal Health – by Dr. Eric Westman & Amy Berger

Carbs can indeed be confusing! We’ve written about it ourselves before, but there’s more to be said than fits in a single article, and sometimes a book is in order. This one is such a book.

The authors (an MD and a nutritionist) explain the ins and outs of carbohydrates of various kinds, insulin responses, and what that means for the body. They also then look at the partly-similar, partly-different processes that occur with the metabolism of fats of various kinds, and what that means for the body, too.

Ultimately they advocate for a simple and clear low-carb approach broadly consistent with keto diet macro principles, without getting too overly focused on “is this fruit/vegetable ok?” minutiae. This has the benefit of putting it well aside from the paleo diet, for example (which focuses more on pseudo-historical foods than it does on macros), and also makes it a lot easier on a practical level.

The style is very textbook-like, which makes for an easy read with plenty of information that should stick easily in most reader’s minds, rather than details getting lost in wall-of-text formatting. So, we approve of this.

There is not, by the way, a recipes section. It’s “here’s the information, now go forth and enjoy” and leaves us all to find/make our own recipes, rather than trying to guess our culinary preferences.

Bottom line: if you’d like an easy-to-read primer on understanding how carbs work, what it means for you, and what to do about it, then this is a fine book.

Click here to check out End Your Carb Confusion, and end your carb confusion!

Penny For Your Thoughts?

May today see you well-prepared for the coming weekend,

The 10almonds Team