SaunaScape

One of our goals when we started this site was to create an exhaustive directory of saunas throughout the world.

We’ve got a fairly sizeable database of them already, and we’ll be sharing these with you in the coming weeks as we get the bugs worked out of our templates.

In the meantime, if you would like to share your favorite sauna with us, please do so via the “Submit a Sauna” link in the menu at the top of this page.

The sauna sequence recommended at Sauna in Deutschland

The “Sauna in Deutschland” site of the German Sauna Federation, has a helpful chart showing the proper routine for your visit to a German sauna. The image attached to this post has my translations into English of the original German version.

The German method adds warm foot baths to the mix, something that is not seen among other cultures visits to the sauna. They use these as a way to gently warm the body before entering the sauna and to help recover after cooling down.

The basics of the sequence are:

• Allow a minimum of 2 hours for your sauna visit, and don’t forget to bring towels, sandals, soap and shampoo with you.
• Before you enjoy your sauna take a warm shower.
• To sweat faster in the sauna, dry off fully, and take a warm footbath before entering the sauna.
• Take a sauna session, no longer than 15 minutes, or shorter if you start to feel uncomfortable.
• Laying down in the sauna gives a more even heating of your body. If you are going to do this, you should sit for the last 2 minutes to prevent yourself from feeling lightheaded as you exit the sauna.
• After your sauna, get some fresh air to replenish your body’s oxygen.
• Cool yourself down by dousing yourself with water: Either with a hose for gentle cooling, a deluge shower, or by taking a dip into a cold plunge pool. Before you use the cold plunge, you should rinse the sweat from your body. You should chose a more gentle cooling method (e.g. the hose) if you have high blood pressure.
• After cooling down, take a warm foot bath to rewarm your body.
• Taking another cold shower will help train your blood vessels.
• Now relax, by taking a rest in a reclining chair, using the tanning beds, or getting a massage.
• If you are going to take another sauna session, repeat the sequence from the warm shower.

Dr. Oz and Oprah with an infrared sauna on her set.

Oprah had her regular medical guest, Dr. Oz on yesterday for her “Extreme Life Extension” episode.  In the same episode where he presented novel concepts like tissue regeneration, restricted calorie diets, hyperbaric oxygen chambers and custom-grown replacement organs, Dr. Oz presented an infrared sauna as an extreme life extension tool.

On the set, Dr. Oz had Oprah try out the sauna (dressed to the nines of course):

After a few minutes in the sauna, Oprah says she’s starting to feel the heat. Dr. Oz says the high temperature helps lower blood pressure and increase blood circulation. “It gets your heart to beat faster, and it burns calories,” Dr. Oz says. “It raises your metabolism a little bit, and also when you sweat, you sweat out toxins through the skin.”

As part of the piece Dr. Oz explained that the sauna helps you “burn 700 calories…without lifting a finger.”

I’m not a huge fan of infrared saunas, as I think you’re missing out on a lot of the sauna experience with them. (I’ll be writing more about this in the near future.) Another TV doctor, Dr. Weil, agrees with me on this topic. However, any show that features a sauna with 8.5 million daily viewers is a great help to promoting the sauna culture to more people.

I haven’t been able to find a video of this segment posted online anywhere. If you know of one please leave the link in the comments.

Photo by Tsja! on Flickr

Tim Ferriss, author of the highly recommended “The 4-Hour Workweek“, added a thought-provoking post to his blog today: “How to lose 30 pounds in 24 hours.” It describes his techniques for dropping weight in advance of the weigh-in for competitive sports.

Now, most times, sauna is not a competitive sport, and even when it is, it’s not divided into weight-based classes. So what is interesting to the average sauna-goer? Water, and how your body deals with it. Some of his interesting points follow:

If you weigh 200 lbs., 120 of those pounds are water, which is distributed between three systems: blood, cell interiors (as pertaining to powerlifting, muscle fibers), and the spaces between the blood vessels and the cells dependent on them. Approximately 8% of your total water volume is contained in blood plasma, 67% is contained in the cells themselves, and 25% is found in the spaces between the two, which includes subcutaneous water.

His point being that you can “safely” lose 25% of your body weight in water. Though this is not recommended long-term:

Ball State University research has demonstrated a 7% decrease in speed over 10 kilometers by runners dehydrated by just 2%-3% of total body mass. For a 150 lb. (68 kg) strength athlete, this represents a very meager 3-4.5 lbs. (1.4-2 kg) of water loss.

Of course, the most interesting revelation for me was not about the fluids you drink, but the fluids you absorb through your skin:

The author has seen elite wrestlers make the mistake of taking a shower the morning of weigh-ins, only to find they have gained 2-3 lbs. (1-1.4 kg)!

So that shower you take before and after your sauna isn’t just cooling you down. It’s actually rehydrating you.

Mihael Cankar, a Finn living in Helsinki, has been maintaining his Finnish Sauna site since 1994. He has achieved his mission of bringing information about sauna culture to the internet.

He covers all of the important topics for the potential sauna-goer: How to Use the Sauna, Health Issues, building and maintaining Your Own Sauna, and the History and Traditions of the sauna. He rounds out his own content with judicious links to content by others, including Dr. Weil and a first-time sauna goer.

Pay his site a visit, and you’ll never wonder what Avantouinti means again.

[cankar.org/sauna]

The Müller’sches Volksbad is one of the most beautiful places to swim and take a sauna in all of Europe. This Art-Nouveau bathhouse, a donation by Munich citizen and engineer Karl Müller, was originally opened in 1901. At that time it was the largest and most expensive pool complex ever built. The facility was rennovated extensively from 1972-1999, including removing what were a series of tubs and showers for the citizens of Munich, and replacing this area with the current SaunaLand.

The large warm water pool at the Volksbad. The cold pool is behind it, under the windows

The sauna area in the Müller’sches Volksbad is no longer the largest in Munich, but it is still the most unique. The soaring ceilings, chandelier hanging in the dome above the pool, the ornate decorative stone, wood, and ironwork, all make you feel as though you had returned to the 19th century while inside. Only the shower room with its modern fixtures and the Finnish Sauna, with its 1970′s vibe feel out of place here.

The Volksbad has only a few baths:

• a Finnish Sauna with an hourly Aufguss program (200°F or 95°C),
• a large steam room with a steam jet blowing near the door and a fountain in the back (115°F or 45°C),
• a Roman-Irish sweat bath with cool (115°F or 45°C), warm (140°F or 60°C) and hot (175°F or 80°C) rooms,
• a sizable cold pool kept at a brisk 60°F or 15°C, and
• a very large warm pool under the central dome.

During the busy hours, the facility can feel quite crowded. Especially with the small sauna, getting a seat for the Aufguss can require you to sit in the sauna for 15 minutes before it gets started.

Bring your swimsuit along, if nothing else to marvel at the architecture in the textil areas. Each of the two pools sit in arched halls. Surrounding the pools are individual wood changing cabins. The pools themselves were both set up for lap swimming and water exercise during my visit. These are probably the least kid-friendly of Munich’s public pools.

There is a restaurant in the building with the Volksbad. This is outside of the admission area. In warmer months, the terrace in front of the Volksbad appears to be their Biergarten.

When you enter the Volksbad, you pay for your ticket at the cashier and are directed to the left-hand turnstile for the Saunaland. As you pass through the turnstile it helpfully displays the latest time you can exit with your admission fee. Once you enter, you come to a recond reception desk with a stairway to your left. To the right of the stairs, there is a bank of small lockers. Choose one of these that has a key, put your entry card into the slot inside, close the door and extract the key.

The ground-floor rest and changing cabins in the Volksbad. Photo from Wikimedia Commons user Chris_73

This key will also open a corresponding locker upstairs. A rule of thumb with your lockers: The lower the number, the further back your locker will be. The highest numbers are right at the top of the stairs. One common comment about the Volksbad is its lack of privacy. Many of the lockers are in the hallway, and there are no changing cabins available on the upper floor. If this isn’t your thing, or you can’t negotiate the stairs, for an extra € 3,80, you can rent a changing and rest cabin on the main floor. These are private, locking wood stalls, and each is equipped with a small bench / bed.  I did not ask, but I believe you rent these from the attendant at the base of the stairs. In addition to the lockers upstairs is a rest room and a fresh-air terrace.

Once you’ve undressed and stowed your things, finding the showers is your next challenge. They’re back downstairs. To get to them, you must progress through the saunaland to the warm pool. Turn left here, and walk through the cooling-only showers into the shower room.

The Volksbad is in downtown Munich, right across from the Deutsches Museum, where the Ludwigsbrücke crosses the Isar. Getting there is easy by public transport: Take any S-Bahn line to Isartor, then follow the signs for the 5 minute walk to the Deutsches Museum. The Volksbad is on the same side of the street as the train station. Proceed down the stairs as soon as you cross the bridge. It is also accessable by Trams 17 and 18. There is no parking available at the Volksbad, but their website shows the location of some nearby garages.

The Volksbad is operated by SWM – the Munich City Utilities. The SWM operates a number of public pools and saunas throughout Munich. The SWM does not offer any towels, robes for rent at any of its facilities. The sauna area does not have a snack bar of any kind. Filtered water is available to fill your own bottle, or if you buy one of their cups.

I just got back from a trip to Germany, where I visited the sauna in my hotel. The reactions seen by some of the unsuspecting guests inspired our latest poll:

Poll Answers

Plans for Kalle Hoffman's current sauna, rendered in beautiful ASCII from his sauna building FAQ

For those of you looking to build your own sauna, a good reference point is Kalle Hoffman’s Sauna Page and Sauna Building FAQ. Kalle is a Finnish software developer living in the San Francisco area. His pages recount lessons learned while building a few of his own saunas.

Better yet is his FAQ, which is more a digest of interesting e-mail correspondence he’s had dating back to 1995. It’s a cross between a bully pulpit and a show and tell, but very informative. Most interesting are his collection of ASCII sauna plans that he’s shared with his correspondents over the years. He also has plans for The Kallenator, a sauna stove made from two old 40-gallon hot water heaters.

Washout of cocaine during a sauna detox regimen at Narconon

There has been a lot of buzz on the celebrity scandal sites lately about Katie Holmes using a sauna detox regimen to prepare herself for her next pregnancy. These being gossip rags, they are heavy on innuendo and drama and light on the facts.

The program was developed by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, and is detailed in his book Clear Body Clear Mind. Since then, it has developed a serious medical following. The program has participants:

• Perform some moderate aerobic exercise to stimulate blood flow,
• Take a high dose of immediate release Niacin to mobilize the fatty acids in their body,
• Sit in a relatively low temperature sauna (150°F / 65°C) for up to 5 hours per day, exiting as needed to shower, both to cool down and rinse toxins excreted through sweat off your skin.
• Participants drink lots of fluids during their regimen, and take prescribed doses of vitamins and cold-pressed oils to compensate for other nutrients lost in the detox procedure.

This detox regimen has been used to remove toxins from both drug abuse and environmental exposure.

Narconon uses the detox program in their addiction recovery program for drug addicts. Their philosophy is that with drugs stored in your fat, you will constantly be getting a low dose of drugs into your system. As long as these are present, you can’t make other changes to eliminate drugs from your life. The chart that accompanies this post shows a case study of a former cocaine addict in their program. At the beginning of the program, the participant had no traces of cocaine in his sweat or urine. Within a few days of starting the program, the levels returned to those of a habitual user, then over a period of 50 days, all the remaining cocaine washed out of their system.

Sauna detoxification has also been used for people exposed to environmental contaminants, for instance 9/11 rescue workers, and Chernobyl residents.

If you think you have heavy contaminant levels in your system, DON’T ATTEMPT A SAUNA DETOX WITHOUT MEDICAL SUPERVISION. Done properly, a detox can cause a sudden release of contaminants into your bloodstream. These can give you the same affects as your original exposure, or worse. If you’re not properly replacing the other necessary things that the detox is removing from your system, you could be creating new problems for yourself.