July 29, 2024 • 9 mins
In this episode, Dr. Paul Anderson addresses common questions about sauna therapy and its benefits. He covers:
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- What is Sauna Therapy?: An introduction to the different types of saunas (e.g., traditional, infrared) and how they work to promote health and relaxation.
- Health Benefits: Discussion on the various health benefits of sauna use, including improved cardiovascular health, enhanced detoxification, and stress reduction.
- Optimal Usage: Recommendations on how often and how long to use a sauna for maximum benefits, including safety tips and best practices.
- Common Concerns: Answers to frequently asked questions about sauna therapy, such as hydration, safety for specific health conditions, and potential risks.
- Integrative Health Strategies: How sauna therapy can be incorporated into a broader wellness plan, including its role in supporting recovery, reducing inflammation, and promoting overall well-being.
- Personal Experiences: Insights and advice based on Dr. Anderson’s clinical experience and patient feedback regarding sauna therapy.
4o mini
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Doctor Paul here with Medicine Health, doing questions that you
have asked through various social media outlets, and this little
section we want to do is on heat therapies and sauna.
So I did a previous number of videos on this,
but recently kind of did a big top down on sauna,
and then I got some specific questions to answer around
heat therapies and sauna, etc. And so I want to
(00:24):
get into that. But the first question really was I
get confused because I'm paraphrasing. This is a big there's
a lot of questions we just jumbled into one, so
hence the paraphrasing. But basically there's confusion around what's the
difference if I do the steam room, or if I
(00:46):
do a dry sauna, dry heat sauna, or if I
do one of the infrared type sauna so far infrared
or near infrared, or what would be the other difference
if I went out and like worked out and heated
my body up, or what would be the difference if
I submersed myself like in a hot tub or hot
(01:07):
bath or something of that nature. The thing to keep
in mind is for many of the benefits of heat therapies,
not all for many of the benefits of heat therapies.
Anything that heats your body up creates the heat benefits. Okay, Generally,
(01:32):
getting to the point where you are hot enough, say
to sweat, et cetera, is kind of one of the
cutoff points. But you actually get different and particular benefits
on the way up to the level of sweating. And
there are some systems where you may sweat less and
(01:53):
some you may sweat more just because of the type
of heat. Now, the way to think about warming your
body up is first, how does your body normally do it? Well,
my body normally does it through feedback from my brain.
There's a place in your brain that has thermo receptors
heat receptors, and it'll tell you if you're you know
(02:13):
where your body's temperature should be, and if you're getting
too low, you're too cold. One of the things that
will trigger is shivering to raise because you're moving your muscles.
If your temperature goes up too high, it will trigger
things like sweating. Okay, so your body is already trying
to autoregulate your heat. Well, when I put external forces
(02:38):
or internal forces to heat my body up, I'm doing
something in excess of just living and just existing. So
the first thing would be like exercise. So people will say, well,
you know, I don't. I don't have access to anything
to heat me up outside of maybe my shower, but
I do exercise. So we work with that and I
(02:58):
will have them exercise, do their exercise lost, how much
they sweat, what they wear, and all that. So if
somebody's really trying to work on detox, I may have
them wear an extra layer of workout gear so that
they sweat a little bit more and all of that.
Now we always make this disclaimer. This is not medical advice.
(03:19):
It's just background information answering questions. You still you need
to run this by your healthcare providers because you can
get in trouble sunning dehydrated if you have an unstable heart.
It can be a problem there if you have unstable
blood pressure. So you really want to get sauna and
heat therapy is cleared before you go and do them.
But that being said, you want to make sure you're
(03:41):
hydrated enough. No matter what, whether you're static sitting in
a sauna or you're going to exercise and raise your
blood your blood temperature, your body temperature, you're still going
to get many of the benefits. But then there's the
external thing. So you've got like a dry and a
steam sauna maybe your health club, right, and they do
(04:02):
different things, but they both heat your body up from
the outside in. Now, when you get to other technologies,
such as this spectrum of infrared saunas, there are near
and far infrared. Okay, so you have red at one
(04:25):
end of the light spectrum. Infrared is technically not real
visible or not visible, and so there's a near part
and then there's a far part. That's the wavelengths involved.
There are differences. Some people think more some people think
more subtle, but there are differences between heating your body up,
(04:47):
say with hot rock dry sauna, and then actually being
in a sauna that has generators of infrared infrared light wavelengths,
so near and far infrared are both perceived by the
body to be probably something that's naturally occurring. We're just
(05:08):
having a lot of it, okay. In the case of
the infrared bands and spectrums and all of that, those
often are recommended by people who are recommending, you know,
deeper levels of detoxification, etc. And in some cases some
of those wavelengths do make a difference as far as
(05:30):
the enzymes that get turned on and all of that.
But what many people in the depuration world, which is
the whole body detoxification, which can include saunas and stuff.
Many people in the depuration world who have looked in
the heat and all of that will say, the bulk
of the benefits are just by heating your body up.
(05:52):
It doesn't matter how you got your body heated up. Now,
there might be specific benefits when you get to say
specifically an infrared sauna between near and far, but the
infrared are going to do a little bit maybe more
specific job of heating you and your cells up. So
what do these things do well. One of the cool
things that we're learning more and more about is toxins
(06:14):
that actually get into your body and move all the
way to your DNA can tag and sit on your DNA,
and they call them DNA adducts, and so a DNA
adduct is kind of very hard to get off of
the DNA, which makes a problem because they mess with
the way that the DNA works. So a lot of
toxins are DNA adducts, and some research seems to indicate
(06:37):
that heat therapies are one of the best ways to
dislodge DNA addicts from your DNA and your cells. So
that's a pretty huge thing. Now. The next thing is,
anytime you heat your body up, many of your immune
enzymes and other enzymes will speed up. Okay. Enzymes are
things that help a process to move more or quickly, okay.
(07:01):
So they get in the middle of the substrate or
the base and then the product or the thing that
you're sending out, and they speed that reaction up. Will
Many enzymes have temperature ranges where they work the best,
and some of your enzyme systems, such as especially around
your immune system, are really set up so that when
(07:24):
you get a fever naturally with an infection, the enzymes
up regulate, which is very important, and so as they upregulate,
they do more intermediate activity with your immune system. So
again heat can be very useful for immune things. Well,
we're running down on time here, but to summarize with
(07:46):
heat therapies, number one, the first goal is to heat
your body up, however you do it. The next goal
would be, if you're working for a specific outcome and
you're working maybe with someone who does detoxification or deburation,
they're going to tell you what their favorite intervention is
and you can work with that, but heating your body
up is the first goal no matter how you do it.
(08:09):
We speed up a lot of enzyme systems that are
good for cleaning up and immune activity, etc. We have
a lot of sped up detoxification and depuration enzyme so
things to move the chunk out of our body. We
increase the removal of DNA adducts talksin to actually get
into your nuclear material and it actually helps your metabolism
(08:31):
to speed up, which can be very useful for a
number of things. But we are out of time for today.
I'm doctor Paul Anderson Medicine and Health. I want to
thank you for listening. Please like, share, and subscribe. We're
on all of the pod burners, We're on YouTube, We're
on Contact Doc Radio Live and on all of their
back material, and we do live stream this on Facebook
(08:52):
as well. Doctorannow dot com is the best place to
get the link for all of the stuff. But I'll
see you next week on the radio. Things sh
Doctor Paul here with Medicine Health, doing questions that you
have asked through various social media outlets, and this little
section we want to do is on heat therapies and sauna.
So I did a previous number of videos on this,
but recently kind of did a big top down on sauna,
and then I got some specific questions to answer around
heat therapies and sauna, etc. And so I want to
(00:24):
get into that. But the first question really was I
get confused because I'm paraphrasing. This is a big there's
a lot of questions we just jumbled into one, so
hence the paraphrasing. But basically there's confusion around what's the
difference if I do the steam room, or if I
(00:46):
do a dry sauna, dry heat sauna, or if I
do one of the infrared type sauna so far infrared
or near infrared, or what would be the other difference
if I went out and like worked out and heated
my body up, or what would be the difference if
I submersed myself like in a hot tub or hot
(01:07):
bath or something of that nature. The thing to keep
in mind is for many of the benefits of heat therapies,
not all for many of the benefits of heat therapies.
Anything that heats your body up creates the heat benefits. Okay, Generally,
(01:32):
getting to the point where you are hot enough, say
to sweat, et cetera, is kind of one of the
cutoff points. But you actually get different and particular benefits
on the way up to the level of sweating. And
there are some systems where you may sweat less and
(01:53):
some you may sweat more just because of the type
of heat. Now, the way to think about warming your
body up is first, how does your body normally do it? Well,
my body normally does it through feedback from my brain.
There's a place in your brain that has thermo receptors
heat receptors, and it'll tell you if you're you know
(02:13):
where your body's temperature should be, and if you're getting
too low, you're too cold. One of the things that
will trigger is shivering to raise because you're moving your muscles.
If your temperature goes up too high, it will trigger
things like sweating. Okay, so your body is already trying
to autoregulate your heat. Well, when I put external forces
(02:38):
or internal forces to heat my body up, I'm doing
something in excess of just living and just existing. So
the first thing would be like exercise. So people will say, well,
you know, I don't. I don't have access to anything
to heat me up outside of maybe my shower, but
I do exercise. So we work with that and I
(02:58):
will have them exercise, do their exercise lost, how much
they sweat, what they wear, and all that. So if
somebody's really trying to work on detox, I may have
them wear an extra layer of workout gear so that
they sweat a little bit more and all of that.
Now we always make this disclaimer. This is not medical advice.
(03:19):
It's just background information answering questions. You still you need
to run this by your healthcare providers because you can
get in trouble sunning dehydrated if you have an unstable heart.
It can be a problem there if you have unstable
blood pressure. So you really want to get sauna and
heat therapy is cleared before you go and do them.
But that being said, you want to make sure you're
(03:41):
hydrated enough. No matter what, whether you're static sitting in
a sauna or you're going to exercise and raise your
blood your blood temperature, your body temperature, you're still going
to get many of the benefits. But then there's the
external thing. So you've got like a dry and a
steam sauna maybe your health club, right, and they do
(04:02):
different things, but they both heat your body up from
the outside in. Now, when you get to other technologies,
such as this spectrum of infrared saunas, there are near
and far infrared. Okay, so you have red at one
(04:25):
end of the light spectrum. Infrared is technically not real
visible or not visible, and so there's a near part
and then there's a far part. That's the wavelengths involved.
There are differences. Some people think more some people think
more subtle, but there are differences between heating your body up,
(04:47):
say with hot rock dry sauna, and then actually being
in a sauna that has generators of infrared infrared light wavelengths,
so near and far infrared are both perceived by the
body to be probably something that's naturally occurring. We're just
(05:08):
having a lot of it, okay. In the case of
the infrared bands and spectrums and all of that, those
often are recommended by people who are recommending, you know,
deeper levels of detoxification, etc. And in some cases some
of those wavelengths do make a difference as far as
(05:30):
the enzymes that get turned on and all of that.
But what many people in the depuration world, which is
the whole body detoxification, which can include saunas and stuff.
Many people in the depuration world who have looked in
the heat and all of that will say, the bulk
of the benefits are just by heating your body up.
(05:52):
It doesn't matter how you got your body heated up. Now,
there might be specific benefits when you get to say
specifically an infrared sauna between near and far, but the
infrared are going to do a little bit maybe more
specific job of heating you and your cells up. So
what do these things do well. One of the cool
things that we're learning more and more about is toxins
(06:14):
that actually get into your body and move all the
way to your DNA can tag and sit on your DNA,
and they call them DNA adducts, and so a DNA
adduct is kind of very hard to get off of
the DNA, which makes a problem because they mess with
the way that the DNA works. So a lot of
toxins are DNA adducts, and some research seems to indicate
(06:37):
that heat therapies are one of the best ways to
dislodge DNA addicts from your DNA and your cells. So
that's a pretty huge thing. Now. The next thing is,
anytime you heat your body up, many of your immune
enzymes and other enzymes will speed up. Okay. Enzymes are
things that help a process to move more or quickly, okay.
(07:01):
So they get in the middle of the substrate or
the base and then the product or the thing that
you're sending out, and they speed that reaction up. Will
Many enzymes have temperature ranges where they work the best,
and some of your enzyme systems, such as especially around
your immune system, are really set up so that when
(07:24):
you get a fever naturally with an infection, the enzymes
up regulate, which is very important, and so as they upregulate,
they do more intermediate activity with your immune system. So
again heat can be very useful for immune things. Well,
we're running down on time here, but to summarize with
(07:46):
heat therapies, number one, the first goal is to heat
your body up, however you do it. The next goal
would be, if you're working for a specific outcome and
you're working maybe with someone who does detoxification or deburation,
they're going to tell you what their favorite intervention is
and you can work with that, but heating your body
up is the first goal no matter how you do it.
(08:09):
We speed up a lot of enzyme systems that are
good for cleaning up and immune activity, etc. We have
a lot of sped up detoxification and depuration enzyme so
things to move the chunk out of our body. We
increase the removal of DNA adducts talksin to actually get
into your nuclear material and it actually helps your metabolism
(08:31):
to speed up, which can be very useful for a
number of things. But we are out of time for today.
I'm doctor Paul Anderson Medicine and Health. I want to
thank you for listening. Please like, share, and subscribe. We're
on all of the pod burners, We're on YouTube, We're
on Contact Doc Radio Live and on all of their
back material, and we do live stream this on Facebook
(08:52):
as well. Doctorannow dot com is the best place to
get the link for all of the stuff. But I'll
see you next week on the radio. Things sh
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