Why I Changed My Mind on Saunas

00:00 What's up, man? So, I have like a little bit of a three-part question. Um, I do a lot of content and I like to introduce introduce a lot of people to cold plunge, sauna, contrast therapy. I'd love to know what your take is on all three, but a little more specifically on saunas, traditional versus infrared. I think that all of us have some sort of allstatic load, which is this idea that like we all carry a stress load, and saunas are stressful. Um, you know, you can use that to your advantage or you can use it to your detriment if you overuse it. So, my friend Gary Brea talked about putting his aged parents, I think his parents are in their 80s, and they're actually not ambulatory. So, he can put them in the sauna and get them a workout quote unquote without actually having them move. And it's true. I think this is the benefit of sauna for people that are um kind of sedentary or not super active is that you're getting a low-level workout. When I was in my residency in Seattle, I used to go to a gym there called SP Seattle Bouldering Project and we called it the VIP workout or the executive workout. You just go in the sauna. You don't actually go work

01:00 out or do anything. You just go in the sauna. And I mean, living in Seattle, I know there's a few of you guys from Seattle here living in Seattle. It was nice to have warmth sometimes. Um, so I I would I would do the executive workout occasionally, but I think that it's easy to overuse sauna because if your allosatic load is already high and you're already doing jiu-jitsu and hitting the punching bag and doing hit workouts and throwing kettle bells around and swimming and maybe not sleeping a ton because your kids are young or something and you try and throw sauna on top of that, you're just not going to get a net benefit. I don't think for humans. Um, I think that there are unique benefits to sauna perhaps in terms of detoxification, but I don't think there's anything magical about it, right? I think the Finnish studies that we see for sauna are like, you know, it's interesting for me to think how much exercise are these other are these guys getting in Finland and are these humans that are just basically the only exercise they're getting is the sauna. Well, yes. If you're going from zero to one and you're getting the equivalent of a few walks per week, you're going to see a massive longevity benefit to sauna. Does that mean sauna benefits you right in terms of longevity? If you are

02:00 already lifting weights, if you're already doing, you know, if you're already running six or 60 miles a week, it's a hard call. And I think we have to be honest about that. And I feel like this this sort of unqualified prescription for people to do sauna for longevity doesn't make sense to me. Um, but I think that you have to do it in your own life. And I think you will see if you look at sauna that it will elevate your stress hormones, um, like cortisol. It will elevate your fasting blood sugar. And I'm even experimenting with an aura ring. I have no association with them, but I definitely see my HRV go down, right? So, HRV is heart rate variability. Generally, it's a it's a high level indication of readiness or uh recovery, and you want that to be higher. Uh when when you guys are here in Costa Rica, I think your HRV is probably going up because you're in an environment where you're not stressed, you're sleeping, hopefully, you're exposing yourself to infrared, you around infrared light. You know, this is a a good thing to see the HRV go up. I think as a society we are overstressed and and overtrained and so when you see the HRV go down you think oh that's not

03:00 maybe not a good thing and so you know I went to a gym in Miami and I did a couple of days of sauna with cold and my HRV went down noticeably down now I didn't continue that maybe it would have recovered and you know I'm curious what other people have experienced but just keep those factors in mind now when you add cold plunge it gets interesting for me um I I like to do sauna and cold together I like to do contrast therapy just because of the way it feels on my brain I don't like to do cold plunge by itself. And if you do cold plunge by itself, you should do it before your workout and not after your workout. And so I I don't mind doing sauna and cold plunging every once in a while. It can be a social thing. It's fun. Um and especially so I might do something like I don't know 180 degrees in the sauna for 15 minutes. Then you get in a cold plunge for a couple minutes and you go back in the sauna. And I think a lot of people do too much of the cold plunge with the the contrast. When I was hanging out with Gary Brea, he likes his s his cold plunge at like 52, 53, which I like that temperature. I had a very cold cold plunge at my house here and I actually sold it. I'm going to get another one, but I used to keep it at 34

04:00 cuz I love the ice and you're like, "Look at how badass I am. I got this really icy sauna. You have to break the ice and I just don't think that's necessary." I like a 52 degree um um cold punch. So, if you're going to do that, that's great. It it certainly will change the neurotransmitters in your brain. You'll get more dopamine. you'll get more catakolamines, but what is it doing longterm to your recovery? Is it overstressing you long term? Keep those things in in in in sort of um in terms of consideration because ultimately we're all just trying to be as healthy as possible. And I think that no matter what you're doing, you always have to qualify it in the context of your own life and sometimes you could overfill the bucket or put yourself over the edge. And was there a third part to your question? Yeah. On the sauna, if you had to choose, if you were going to be doing it, would it be traditional? We pour some water on the rocks. I like that. Over infrared? Yeah, I like that. major reasons why just feels better. It's hotter, you know. Um, yeah, but I think that infrared light is valuable for humans and but you are getting a lot of infrared light even in a hot rock sauna because it's heat and so that there's a huge amount of infrared in there. So, one of the cool

05:00 things about being in Costa Rica is we're getting a ton of infrared light because we're outside. I did a podcast with my buddy Tristan Scott and he really opened my eyes to this idea of infrared light deprivation and infrared light deficiency in humans. I did not know until I talked to him that the mitochondria in our whole body, not just in our eyes or our brain, use infrared light to make melatonin and use that as sort of a systemic store of an antioxidant in our body. And so you can think one of the probably the most damaging things that we could do for ourselves is sit indoors in an office behind glass all day. You're getting no infrared light. So it would be interesting to compare the amount of infrared in an infrared sauna versus an actual finished sauna. But just personally, I prefer the finished sauna. Totally. And would you say that time and temperature would absolutely make the difference? Absolutely. Yeah. And I think you could experiment with it and see what works best for you and see how you feel. Yeah, I think that sweating is valuable for humans. We use our sweat glands to do a lot a lot of detoxification and we want to sweat. I just think be careful. Don't overuse either of them. And then last last part of the conscious therapy part, do you think that by going

06:00 from sauna to cold plunge the time and temperature? talked about that, but do you think there's any potential risks to to somebody just jumping into contrast therapy? Well, certainly if you have pre-existing cardiovascular disease, yeah, absolutely. It's definitely going to put a stress on your heart. [Music]

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