SaunaScape

OFR48 Performing in an Ofuro

What do a Japanese pop group and a specialized bus in Finland have in common? They’re both all for singing in the sauna!

Rocket News from Japan tells us about OFR48, a new, all-female pop group made up entirely of workers at Ofuros, or urban Japanese bath houses. The OFR in their name even stands for ofuro.

The performances started as a way to make customers feel more willing to approach the staff of the bath houses: An awkward experience because the bath customers are naked. The clothed female workers serve both the men’s and women’s sides of the spa.

The performances began in the bath houses around Tokyo. They were so well received that the group has gone on to perform at larger venues. They plan to release their first single “Our Customers are Naked” in May. Their music video for this performance follows.

Meanwhile Russia Today reports on naked Finns singing — while driving. An enterprising tourist company spent € 30,000 (US$ 39,000) renovating a 1986 tour bus into a mobile sauna paradise. The bus holds 17 passengers who can either enjoy the sights of Lapland or sweat their ride out in a wood-fired sauna installed in the bus. For everyone’s enjoyment the bus features a karaoke system allowing its passengers to belt out tunes as sweat pours from their body.

Should you find yourself near Rukatunturi, Finland, you can hire the sauna bus yourself. See our database for more information.

So enjoy your sauna and keep singing.

What do a Japanese pop group and a specialized bus in Finland have in common? They’re both all for singing in the sauna! Rocket News from Japan tells us about...

Sauna (Photo credit: Muchobra)

“I like the sauna, but does it have any real benefits?” is a popular question we hear on SaunaScape. The answer is yes! In recent years, a number of studies have shown a regular sauna gives many benefits. Here are our top ten:

10. Saunas make your hair look great

We spend a lot of time and money on different hair care products to keep our hair looking natural. The truth is, we don’t need to. Our body has many specialized organs that condition our hair better than the synthetic products on the marketplace. The trick is getting them out.

A few minutes in the sauna will activate the sebaceous glands on your scalp, releasing a set of compounds that moisturize and condition your hair. If you wash the dirt away and spend some time in a sauna, a quick rinse is all it takes to reap these benefits. Our sauna and hair care post has more information.

9. Saunas are cardio everyone can do.

Saunas are a unique way to get your heart pumping. As your skin heats up, your heart goes into overdrive to bring cooler blood to the surface and lower your skin’s temperature. Inside of a sauna, you can raise your heart rate up as much as mild exercise while not moving.

Saunas benefit people with high blood pressure, recovering from heart attacks and other “lifestyle diseases”.

8. Saunas help you reach a healthy weight

There is a myth that you can burn up to 600 calories an hour while sitting in a sauna. That is not true, however it comes from a medical study that proved sauna users are more likely to stay on a diet and reach a healthy weight. Overweight people who used the sauna regularly lost much more weight than a control group who didn’t use the sauna. That same study found underweight people who used a sauna were more likely to gain weight than people who didn’t.

Read our post “Weight Loss in the Sauna” for more information about how saunas benefit those trying to lose weight.

7. Sauna users catch fewer colds

An Austrian study found that people who use the sauna regularly are less likely to get sick than people who don’t. In fact, the group who used the sauna regularly caught half as many colds as the group who didn’t.

Read our post Fewer Colds for Sauna Users for more information.

Of course, if you already have a cold, stay out of the sauna.

6. Saunas can get rid your acne

Acne, pimples, blemishes, blackheads, spots – the bane of our teenage years – can be caused by your pores getting blocked by buildup of oils from your skin or dead skin cells. The heat of the sauna and your sweat can help your skin mobilize these contaminants leaving you with clean, clear skin.

For details and a procedure for using the sauna to eliminate acne, read our post Sauna your skin clear

5. The sauna boosts your energy

We’ve already told you that the sauna is a type of exercise, and exercise always gets your heart pumping to give you an energy boost. The sauna does more than that. If you rid yourself of your tight clothes, and use your time in the sauna to clear your mind, it can reboot you from your busy day and give you that boost you need.

Regular sauna use can have longer term effects that boost your energy too, lowering your stress levels and helping you sleep better. These are two of the largest drains on your energy according to our article Boosting your energy with a sauna

4. The sauna helps you recover from a workout

There is a reason most good gyms have a sauna: It’s a great way to recover from a strenuous workout. Sweat is one of the ways your body eliminates its metabolic wastes. Sweating in a sauna while your muscles are at rest quickly mobilizes all the waste products your muscles just generated and gets them out of your skin. This cuts way down on the stiffness many people experience later in the day after they’ve worked out.

Other post-workout benefits include increased blood flow. Blood flowing to your tired and strained muscles helps them recover more quickly. The heat itself helps as well. Just applying heat to sore muscles can block their pain messages for a half hour or more.

See our post Heat – It’s good for your health for more information.

3. The sauna makes you look younger

Our skin is the largest organ on our bodies, but how can you exercise it? In the sauna of course.

As we age, our skin gets less elastic, and more likely to hold onto dead skin cells. A few sessions in the sauna every week gets blood flowing to your skin. This spurs new skin growth and helps exfoliate all the dead cells that are building up. The heat of the sauna also mobilizes the oils in your skin which are natural moisturizers and antibiotics.

2. The sauna lowers your stress level

When you’re sitting in a hot sauna, it’s hard to concentrate on anything else other than your immediate environment. Spending time in a sauna is like meditation: It clears your mind of all the little things that are bothering you while you’re inside. When you emerge, your mind has been “rebooted,” letting you start fresh with a new focus on your tasks.

Dr. Stephen Colmant, a licensed psychiatrist, talks about this and other psychological benefits of the sauna in his sweat rituals video

1. The sauna makes you feel great

Spending a half hour every few days in the sauna is going to leave you relaxed, refreshed, healthier, ready to lose weight, and looking radiant. Those things alone should make you feel great, but there is more to it than that. The time you spend in a sauna reboots your brain, and actually can change your mood. People who use the sauna on a regular basis are happier than people who don’t.

So what are you waiting for? Find a sauna near you and get started. There are too many reasons not to.

“I like the sauna, but does it have any real benefits?” is a popular question we hear on SaunaScape. The answer is yes! In recent years, a number of studies...

 Water retention. It happens to us all. You may just get that bloated feeling, see it in your ankles, or have a little pouch of thick skin in your belly that’s keeping you from looking like The Situation. If you follow the right procedure, you can use a sauna to sweat out that water weight and feel and look slimmer.

However, just throwing on a sauna suit or spending a marathon session in a sauna could cause you to retain more water. We’re going to look at why you retain water and how to safely eliminate that extra water from your body.

Why am I retaining water?

The simple answer is, because your body thinks it needs it. Your body is a finely tuned machine. It has a number of processes that are constantly regulating and adjusting themselves to deal with all the inputs to your body.

The simplest cause for water retention is dehydration. If your body believes it is going to need more water than it is getting, it will lay in supplies that it can draw upon in times of need. This is most common in pre-menstrual women as your body prepares for the blood it will lose during your period.

Another common cause is ion storage. Your body needs a certain amount of sodium and potassium ions to survive. However, if you consume more than your body needs, it will store those for later. So if you have a diet high in salt, your body takes those extra sodium ions, dissolves them in water and tucks them away in the cells of your legs, arms or belly until it needs them. If you’re serious about dropping some water weight, start by cutting down on the salt in your diet.

While we’re talking about your diet, there are a number of other corrections you can make to your diet that will help cut down on the amount of water you retain. Eating more fiber is a big one. This helps keep your digestive tract working in the best order. Improper digestion can be a trigger for your body to retain water. A protein or vitamin B deficiency can  trigger your body to retain water. Eating healthier can fix this. Another big one is artificial sweeteners. Yes, your diet soda may actually making you fat. Finally, some food allergies will trigger water retention. These are harder to figure out and you may need to enlist your doctor’s help in finding them.

Lack of exercise can be a contributing factor to swelling. While it’s not actually water retention, excess fluid can pool in low areas like your ankles at the end of a long day at work or cause puffy eyes when you wake up in the morning. Working your leg muscles to strengthen them will help, as will getting up to move around several times throughout your workday.

There are a few more serious medical causes that can cause water retention. If your body is burned, you will retain water as your body prepares for extra fluids it need to heal the burn.  Certain medications will cause water retention, especially estrogen-containing hormones, blood pressure medications and NSAID pain relievers. Some people have “leaky” capillaries that can cause you to retain water. Increased water weight can also be a symptom of a very serious disease like heart disease, lung disease, cancer, or liver or kidney failure.  If you’ve tried some of the techniques and nothing seems to work, consult your doctor. This may be an early warning sign of something very serious.

Getting rid of that excess water

Okay, we’ve figured out where your water is coming from, and this is a sauna blog, so it’s time to jump into the sauna and sweat out that water, right? Wrong. If you want to get rid of that water weight, there are other changes to make first.

1. Drink more water.

Really. If you want to stop retaining water, you need to show your body that it’s going to get plenty of it. It’s also going to help your body flush out some of the excess sodium in your system. Drink up, you’ll actually slim down.

2. Cut out the salt.

In general, we eat way too much salt. According to new research, we should consume less than 1500 mg of sodium daily. A single can of soup or noodle bowl can contain over 1000 mg of sodium! If you’re not cutting the salt from your diet, none of the other techniques will help you. Your body will need to retain water to deal with all the salt ions you’re throwing at it.

3. Eat more fiber.

Everyone says it, but it really will help. Adding fiber to your diet will help your body get rid of those excess ions and water you’re carrying around.

Sweating out the last of it

Now that you’ve made those changes to your diet, you can work on sweating away the stubborn water that won’t come out any other way. This is not an everyday routine, but a once in a while tune-up. If you try this and the water is coming right back, you’ve got a different issue. Take another look at your diet or talk to your doctor to see if there is a medical problem that is holding you back.

Find yourself a comfortable sauna and get a nice large bottle of water. You can use a traditional sauna, an infrared sauna or a Steam Room for this part. Even a ganbanyoku bed will work. You just need something hot that will get you sweating and mobilize those stored ions under your skin. For this technique, a cooler sauna is better than a really hot one.

Since you’ll be really sweating, make sure you sit on a towel. You’ll also want to make sure you’ve showered and dried yourself off before going in the sauna. For this technique to work best, your problem areas should not be covered with any clothing.

Sit inside the sauna until sweat starts pouring out of your body. Drink water at the same rate that you feel like you’re losing it to replenish the fluids you’re sweating out. If you get dehydrated in the sauna, your body is going to start retaining water and you’ll be worse off than when you started.

Now taste your sweat. Yes, taste it. If it tastes salty, then the sauna is working. You’re sweating out the ions that are causing you to retain water. You want to keep sweating and drinking until you can no longer taste salt in your sweat.

If you feel uncomfortable, make sure you take a break and cool down for a while. It’s especially helpful if you occasionally rinse yourself off with cold water periodically. This will flush away all the stuff that’s come out of your pores and clean your skin off. A cold rinse also helps keep your skin from burning in the sauna. Remember, burns will also cause you to retain water.

What about a sauna suit?

Sauna suits are completely worthless for losing retained water. They are worthless for a lot of other reasons too.

Sauna suits have one purpose: They temporarily dehydrate you. Athletes use them to cut weight before a weigh-in so they can gain an advantage over a lighter opponent.

Of course, if you remember above, when your body is dehydrated, it is going to retain more water as a defense. So while you might lose a little water weight today from your workout in a sauna suit, you’re going to end up retaining a lot more water tomorrow since you’ve just put your body into survival mode.

Conclusion

Yes, your body does retain water and if you’ve got a really low body mass index and you need to get rid of a stubborn pocket of bloat, a sauna can help you. However, if you’ve got an average amount (or more) of body fat, a sauna isn’t going to help you. You are better off changing your diet first.

 Water retention. It happens to us all. You may just get that bloated feeling, see it in your ankles, or have a little pouch of thick skin in your belly...