Image via Wikipedia

Today’s New Zealand Herald presents an interesting idea: Monkeys taught us to bathe in the heat.

In an interview with the owner of Bliss Stone Spa, a new ganbanyoku establishment in Auckland, he says the Japanese idea for the ganbanyoku by watching monkeys. Photos of Japanese macaques bathing in the country’s hot springs are extremely common. What is not as widely known is that the monkeys, after leaving the baths, lie and sleep on the flat geothermally heated stones near the pools.

From the article:

“These monkeys live long and healthy lives, so the early Japanese thought lying on hot rocks will be good for people too,” said Mr Sekikawa, who brought the Japanese stone spa concept to Auckland in 2009.

If you aren’t familiar with it, ganbanyoku is a heated slab of stone placed in a humid room. You lie on the stone and the heat causes you to perspire profusely in a few minutes. You can read more about the ganbanyoku in our post “What is a ganbanyoku?”

Ganbanyoku spas have become very popular in Japan, especially with young women. Some of these spas are built as “drop-in” locations in city centers where you can have a quick sweat on your lunch break or while waiting for the train home in the evening. Others are built into elaborate bathing facilities where you can make like the monkeys, alternating between a hot bath and hot stone with a massage in between.

The New Zealand Herald reporter Vaimoana Tapaleao describes her experience at Bliss Stone Spa:

I’m lying face down on a hot stone slab only just covered by a couple of towels.

The room is dark and I’m almost drowning in the heat it’s so overwhelming.

At first you wince as your skin touches the stone, but you soon adjust and it becomes less intense.

I’ve been five minutes on the stone bed and already I’m drenched with sweat.

I’m told it’s not the ordinary sweat you get from exercising – or doing hard work – and you’re encouraged to not shower afterwards, for best results.

Unlike ordinary sweat, which is sticky and has an odour, this feels more as if someone has poured hot water over me.

As you lie on the stone bed, it gently heats you from the inside, spreading the heat around your body before releasing impurities and dead skin cells, leaving the skin glowing.

Sounds good to me. I’m in there for an hour, switching from my tummy to my back now and again.

I notice at the end of the session that the “sweat” disappears within minutes of leaving the spa room and my skin is not only dry but baby-bottom smooth.

Sounds good to me. If you’re looking to try a ganbanyoku, there are a few scattered throughout the world. You can find them in our database.

Source: “Alternative therapies: Japanese monkeys knew about the health benefits of rocks” from the New Zealand Herald

Did we evolve to like the sauna?

photo by whoaitsaimz on Flickr

You can’t search for articles on “steam room” on the internet very long without coming across infomercial style weight loss claims: “Lose weight fast! With our new Super Steam Bath, you’ll be burning up to 600 calories every half hour, all without moving a muscle! Act now! Operators are standing by!”

Meanwhile, the fitness gurus, like Chris Klebba all say “the effects of a steam room on weight loss are due to a loss of water from sweating, not actual fat loss. Bottom line, forget it for fat loss.”

So who’s right? Well in a strange twist, both of them are wrong!

Steam rooms don’t burn many calories. But they do help regulate hormones that drive us to overeat. Interestingly, a steam room also helps those who don’t eat enough to eat more.

Better still, regular steam room users have improved circulation, which can help prevent  atherosclerosis, and reverse the effects of coronary heart disease.

These are conclusions from a 2003 study by Kagoshima University in Japan, where a team of researchers studied the effects of steam bath therapy on lifestyle diseases. The study began as a test to see if steam bathing could be used to improve the health of patients with congestive heart failure. The team noted improvement in both the symptoms and cardiac function of their subjects after a single steam bath, and continued improvement with more, regular steam baths.

When they examined the underlying mechanism of these improvements, they hypothesized that a similar improvement in the health of patients with lifestyle-related diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol, smoking and obesity could also be improved with regular steam bathing.

They tested a group of “at risk” people, who each had one or more of these conditions, and were not receiving treatment for any of these. What they found surprised them. After 2 weeks of daily steam room use, where they raised their body temperature by 2°F (1°C) for 30 minutes, they found that every member of the group had a lower blood pressure. Fasting plasma glucose and body weight also went down for the group.

To study this further, they repeated the study with a group of 5 men and 5 women. For 2 weeks, they all ate a controlled diet of 1800 calories / day, and each took a single steam bath each day. At the end, all 10 had lost weight. Their collective body fat fell from an average of 42% to 37%.

They did not attribute these results to calorie burn in the steam room, but instead to better regulation of the hormones that controlled their appetite. During the study, the subjects did not get hungry as quickly, and did not tend to overeat or snack between meals.

Coronary heart disease patients who were under eating as a result of their disease did the exact opposite: Regular steam baths improved their appetite, and they ate more to get them back to a healthy weight.

So, if you want to drop a few pounds, spend time every day in the steam room or sauna at your gym. You aren’t burning calories, but you should lose weight. Isn’t that what counts?

[Clinical Implications of Thermal Therapy in Lifestyle-Related Diseases] via Stephen Colmant

Weight Loss in the Steam Room

Image by RachelHermosillo via Flickr

I was in a hotel a few weeks ago, and they had one of those magnifying mirrors in the bathroom. As I was brushing my teeth, I got a glimpse of a close-up view of my nose. Gross! I’m not typically a vain person, but I changed my morning plans and headed out to the nearest drugstore to buy a box of nose strips so I wouldn’t offend the client I was about to visit.

Once your eyes open to what your nose looks like at 10x magnification, you can’t ignore it anymore. I noticed that the strips would clean the blackheads out of my nose for a couple of days, but pretty soon, it would be back to its same yucky appearance. Sure the nose strips worked, but they are expensive, and leave a glue-like residue on your nose. There has to be a better way I thought.

There is. The sauna is the best exercise for your skin. If you use it correctly, you can sauna away your blackheads, pimples and other skin blemishes.

Using a sauna to clear your acne

To get started, you need a sauna. If you don’t have one at your gym or spa, you can find a public one in our database, or search for a hotel sauna if you’ll be traveling. Any type of sauna will work for this: A conventional Finnish-style sauna, an infrared sauna, or even a steam room or steam sauna all work well. It just needs to get your body hot enough to sweat.

To do this, you need:

• A bathing suit (or less if you’re comfortable), because you’re going to get wet;
• Two towels: one to sit on in the sauna, and one to dry off with;
• A brush, loofah, or rough cloth to exfoliate your skin; and
• Your preferred soap or facial cleanser.

To begin, take a hot shower and wash your acne problem area with your soap or cleanser. Make sure to rinse all the soap off well when you finish. Many cleansers can leave a residue that can promote acne. After your shower, dry yourself off.

Now head into the sauna. Lay your towel on the bench and relax. If you want, splash some water on the rocks to increase the sensation of heat. Wait until your body starts sweating.

If you’ve never used the sauna before, you may feel a some of moisture on your forehead just after you enter. This is most likely condensation and not sweat. Depending on the heat of the sauna, it may take 5-10 minutes before your body starts really sweating. You will know when, because sweat will be pouring out of every square inch of your skin.

Now that your sweat is flowing, take your exfoliating device of choice, and gently rub at the surface skin of all your problem areas. All that sweat will mobilize your sebum and mobilize all the dirt, dead skin and other contaminants that might be in your skin. When you are done exfoliating, stay in the sauna for another minute or two and let your sweat continue to do its magic.

Once you finish in the sauna, or if the heat gets to be too much for you, head back to the showers. Start with a warm shower and rinse your skin clean. When you have done that, turn the shower to as cold as is comfortable, and stand under it until you feel like the deluge of sweating has stopped. Don’t use soap or other cleansers.

When you are done, towel dry again and take a break until you have stopped sweating. Take a drink, go for a walk, just sit and relax or even go for a swim if there is a pool available. Your body needs to recover from your first sauna round.

Once you feel like you are back to normal, head back into the sauna again. You should start sweating more quickly this time. Again, once your whole body sweat starts, exfoliate that problem area another time, sweat it out and shower off to cool down. When you are showering, resist the temptation to use soap. If you typically put on lotion after a shower, resist that temptation too. You will find that after a sauna, all of your skin’s natural oils have done the job for you.

When you look at your problem area in the mirror, you will find that your skin is more clear than ever before. A sauna session like this at least twice a week will keep your skin clear for a lot less money than some of those fancy cleansers will.

Your skin: close up

To understand how a sauna removes acne, it helps to take a closer look at your skin. There are two major types of glands in your skin that secrete substances to help it: Sweat glands and sebaceous glands.

Sebaceous glands surround your hair follicles and secrete a waxy substance, called sebum, onto the surface of your skin. Sebum is unlike any other substance your body secretes, and all of its purposes are still not well understood by the medical community. Sebum helps protect your skin by moisturizing it and providing nutrients directly to the surface skin cells. It also helps repel water from your skin when you are cold, but also keeps your sweat from rolling off when you are hot. Some even believe it has antibacterial properties that protect your skin from disease.

The problems come when your sebaceous glands get blocked. There are many things that can block them: dead skin, cosmetics, bacteria, even a poor diet. If the blockage is at the surface of your skin, you get a blackhead. If the blockage is underneath, you get a whitehead, pimple or a boil.

The Sauna and Sebum

When you heat up your skin with a sauna, it does several things for you that can help get rid of your acne. Raising the temperature makes sebum more fluid causing it to flow. Also, when you start sweating, the sweat released softens your skin and mixes with the sebum to make it more fluid.

When you exfoliate your skin in the sauna, the sebum helps lubricate whatever device you are using, making it easier to get rid off all that stuff your skin doesn’t want on it, while your sweat mobilizes it and carries it away.

Some risks:

A few words of warning before you try this treatment:

If you are on a prescription medication, talk to your doctor before you go in the sauna. The heat of the sauna can cause your medicine to be absorbed more quickly than normal, potentially giving you a short-term overdose. Some medications affect your body’s response to heat, putting you at risk of overheating while in the sauna.

While you are in the sauna, listen to your body. If you feel lightheaded or nauseous, leave at once and get yourself into a cool shower to lower your body temperature. When you do go to leave the sauna, stand up slowly to reduce the risk of fainting.

Some types of acne do not respond well to a sauna treatment. For instance, if your acne is cystic, this regimen can complicate things. Keep an open mind, and if things don’t work the way you expect them to, speak to a medical professional.

Sauna Your Skin Clear

Image by Xavier de Jauréguiberry via Flickr

In the upcoming issue of The American Journal of Physiology – Heart and Circulatory Physiology, a team of Japanese physicians is publishing that regular sauna use may be a recovery method for heart attack victims.

The team induced heart attacks in two groups of rats. One group was allowed to recover normally. The other group was given two sauna baths a day in an infrared sauna. They found that the rats who were given the sauna baths were less likely to see heart tissue get re-purposed after the heart attack. They attribute this to the sauna helping to increase the amount of blood flow to the non-affected areas of the heart post-attack.

The sauna sessions the rats were given were very gentle: First a 15 minute session at 106°F (41°C) followed by a 20 minute session at 93°F (34°C).

With results like this, your doctor might soon be prescribing a daily sauna along with a baby aspirin every day. Personally, I’m waiting for the day when I can deduct a new sauna as a qualified medical expense.

For the full abstract, see “Repeated Sauna Therapy Attenuates Ventricular Remodeling After Myocardial Infarction in Rats by Increasing Coronary Vascularity of Non-infarcted Myocardium.” on PubMed.

Saunas Boost Heart Attack Recovery

Image by Trendmatcher via Flickr

Some people say they just can’t stand being in the heat. Heat saps your energy and makes it impossible to work hard goes the conventional wisdom.

As usual, it looks like science has proved conventional wisdom wrong. A new study in the European Journal of Applied physiology shows that people, if deceived about the temperature, perform as well in the heat as they do in temperate conditions.

In the article “Deception of ambient and body core temperature improves self paced cycling in hot, humid conditions” the team from the University of Bedfordshire in the UK details a test that they ran with seven different male cyclists.

The cyclists were tested once at a comfortable 71°F (22°C) and 40% humidity and twice at a sweltering 88°F (31°C) and 65% humidity. In one of those hot tests the temperature and humidity displays in the room were offset to show the room conditions to be 79°F (26°C) and 60% humidity. Each cyclist was given the tests in a random order.

They found that the cyclists performed the same when they thought the temperature was 79°F as they did when the temperature was actually 71°F. When they temperature was accurately displayed at 88°F, they did not travel as far, and exerted 10% less energy.

So how hot you think it is has more to do with how you perform than how hot it really is. Keep that in mind the next time you think you can’t stand the heat of the sauna.

via Lifehacker.

Can’t Stand the Heat? Maybe its all in your head.

Thermal camera image of Timo Kaukonen (left) and Daniel Browning Smith (right)after 1 minute in a Sauna over 140 C (284 F) from Stan Lee's Superhumans

Timo Kaukonen — a multiple-year winner of the Sauna World Championships — is “Heat Wave” in the second episode of the series “Stan Lee’s Superhumans.” Stan Lee is the comic book creator who made characters like Spider Man, The Incredible Hulk, The X-Men, Iron Man and Thor household names, hosts of this series shown on the History Channel in the USA. The series has just been released on iTunes, Amazon and DVD. Mr. Kaukonen’s segment begins at the 12 minute mark and goes about 10 minutes.

They test Mr. Kaukonen to see his reaction to different forms of heat stimulation. What they find is that he has superior blood flow to his skin, that is able to keep his skin temperature well below the hazard temperature for burns much longer than the show’s field host, Daniel Browning Smith. In laboratory tests, his threshold of thermal pain registers higher than the safety cut-off of the heating device they use.

The show talks about genetic differences for Mr. Kaukonen, but leaves out his training regimen. In interviews, he has spoken about how for years he has spent extended periods of time in the hottest saunas that he could find. Saunas stimulate blood flow to the skin. This, combined with his innate ability to withstand thermal pain helped him to develop this extreme temperature resistance.

Unfortunately, history proved that Mr. Kaukonen is vulnerable. On August 7, 2010 — Five days before the original air date of  this episode — Mr. Kaukonen was severely burned while competing in the final round of the Sauna World Championships. Mr. Kaukonen was placed in a medically induced coma for several months and remained hospitalized until after Christmas. Nine months later, Mr. Kaukonen is still recovering from his injuries. The organizers have vowed never to run another competition.

His rival in the finals, a Russian man, died during the competition. An investigation after the event revealed he was using pain killers to increase his resistance to the heat. These were forbidden by the organizers. Mr. Kaukonen did not use any banned substances.

However, when the safety team ended the round, Mr. Kaukonen, even in his burned condition, walked out of the sauna under his own power. His rival had to be extracted by the medics on site.

The show is fascinating to watch. Other superhumans profiled on the episode include the fastest gunslinger in the west, a monk who can execute the famous one inch punch, and a high diver who can jump from a 35 foot (10.6 m) high platform into a pool with only 1 foot (30 cm) of water.

This episode, “Killer Punch” of Stan Lee’s Superhumans can be downloaded from iTunes or Amazon. You can occasionally catch it in reruns.

Sauna Champion on Stan Lee’s Superhumans

Image via Wikipedia

The news is abuzz today with Gwyneth Paltrow’s hangover cure, “I take a cold shower in the morning and then I go into the sauna and drink a lot of water throughout the day. Green tea also helps!”

Despite Ms. Paltrow’s endorsement, medical evidence recommends against using a sauna to recover from a hangover. A study conducted in Finland in 1988 (where they know a lot about saunas and alcohol) found that “The hangover phase exposes a person to cardiac arrhythmias, and sauna may further increase the arrhythmia-risk due to enhanced adrenergic activity. Sauna bathing and heavy drinking, and also sauna bathing during hangover phase undoubtedly create real health risks.”

The Brits also stuied hangover cures and found that “The most effective way to avoid the symptoms of alcohol induced hangover is to practise abstinence or moderation.”

What fun is that?

One thing that is true is not all hangovers are created equally. We can tell you that the nearly nonexistent hangover you get after a night of heavily drinking beer that conforms to the Reinheitsgebot is much different than the feeling after even just a few drinks of the less pure alcohols — like Miller High Life, Jagermeister, or the Korean Soju.

I first personally experienced the Korean bath experience after a night of especially heavy drinking while on a business trip to Korea. After achieving an important project milestone, I was invited to a banquet by my hosts to celebrate our success. During the dinner, countless bottles of soju were brought by the waitress. As the guest of honor, my glass was always kept filled to the brim, and each of the many people seated around the table toasted me individually with “Gambai.” When I said I had too much soju, they brought me beer. Ooof.

After stopping the taxi to leave my dinner several places throughout that city, we arrived at our hotel. Before going to bed, I stopped at a convenience store and bought what I thought was a large bottle of water. Halfway through chugging the bottle I found out that it was cheap soju.

In the morning, after being seen by my host, I was delivered to a local sauna. I spent close to two hours moving between the baths. As I did, little by little, I felt the haze lifting from behind my eyes.

Since then, I have personally repeated this sauna treatment on several continents.

So what about the cardiac arrhythmia risk? Well in that 1988 study, they found that alcohol was a  contributing factor in 20-25 deaths in Finland that year. That works out to about 1/2 a death per 100,000 people —lower than the death rate for hernias.

Dr. Stephen Colmant expresses his opinion at Sauna Times that it is not about if you should use a sauna for your hangover, but when. He feels it is best later in the day, after you have had time to eat and drink something, and preferably work out a little.

Since most hangover cures have been proven to be ineffective, keep the sauna warmed up Gwyneth. We’ll see you there after our next night on the town.

Saunas for Hangovers

How long and how often can I safely sit in the Sauna? Image via Wikipedia

Reader Alex writes:

Dear Saunascape:

I’ve heard a lot about the benefits of using a sauna. When I take a sauna bath, is there a recommended amount of time I should spend in the sauna? How many days a week can I safely go in the sauna?

Thanks

Alex, we’ll start with the easy one first.

The sauna is safe to use every day.

Many people in Finland and Korea use the sauna every day. The safety of the sauna is backed up by numerous medical studies that have tested different populations, both healthy and ailing. All these studies have found that daily sauna users are at least as healthy as the control group who did not use the sauna. In many cases, the daily sauna users had measurable benefits over the non-sauna using group. These ranged from improved feelings of well being, to better sleep, to lower chances of catching a cold, even to lower blood pressure and weight loss and lowered blood insulin levels.

These tests have been made in many different types of sauna: From traditional Finnish-style saunas to gently-heated steam saunas and even in infrared saunas. All showed a benefit.

There are a few risks in the sauna: If you have heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes or are on any type of medicine, you should talk to your doctor first. The sauna can put a strain on your system and can make your body react differently to any medicine. There are reports of lowered sperm counts after a sauna. However, the Finns and Koreans have not gone extinct yet, so this should not be a huge concern for you or your partner. There is also some evidence that recovering from a strength-building workout in a warm environment can inhibit muscle growth.

Now for your second question, which is more difficult to answer:

How long can I stay in the sauna?

There are many different types of saunas out there, and all feel different. You want to stay in long enough that your body starts to really sweat, but not long enough that you begin to feel lightheaded or uncomfortable.

In my experience, this is about 5-20 minutes per round. It depends on the temperature of the sauna, the air movement inside the sauna, the humidity of the sauna, and even how you are feeling that day. Some people keep their saunas cool, and as long as you stay hydrated, you could spend the whole day in there. Others are blazing hot and spending five minutes inside feels like a lifetime.

A sauna should best be enjoyed in rounds, so you don’t want to just go in the sauna once. You will not get as much benefit from a single sauna session as you will from multiple rounds.

When you leave the sauna, you want to cool down. If your heart is healthy, the best way is to jump into cold water or stand under a cold shower. This contrast from hot to cold really sends your body into overdrive.

If the cold isn’t your thing, you can cool down in a warm shower, take a swim in a pool, or even just sit, relax and drink a cool beverage.

Once your body has stopped sweating, it is time to head back into the sauna or steam room. If you are using a Finnish sauna, the second round is a good time to sprinkle some water on the rocks to generate some steam in the sauna. This increases your feeling of the heat.

Conventional wisdom for many cultures says that you should take no more than three sauna rounds in a day. Any more and the sauna spirits who live behind the stove will think you are greedy. We have not seen any medical studies that explain this. However, like a lot of folktales, we can only assume that there was some basis in fact for these. Three sauna rounds feels better than two or four to us.

Good luck and enjoy the sauna!

How Often and For How Long Can I Safely Sit in the Sauna?

"Probability" from the web comic XKCD

Cancer: the most feared word in medicine. It should be. According to the World Health Organization, in 2008 cancer became the leading cause of death worldwide, claiming 7.6 million lives that year. They predict that by 2030 cancer will be claiming more than 11 million lives per year.

Cancer starts with one single cell that, through a range of internal and external processes, becomes a tumor cell. What was once a vital part of your body now begins attacking you from the inside. If not caught early, that cell will reproduce quickly, interfering with the rest of your body’s functions.

We started thinking about cancer this week when we read this article in Japan Today about Tamagawa Onsen in Akita Japan. The hot springs in this area are some of the most acidic in all of the world and the rock in the area has high concentrations of naturally occurring radium. Japanese cancer sufferers believe that laying on the rocks and bathing in the springs can help cure cancer. Some use the onsen to augment a western medical treatment program. Others who cannot get access to medical treatment use it as their own version of radiation therapy. Even the area’s rocks, which are not supposed to be removed from the area, can sell for thousands of dollars for people too ill to make the journey to the onsen. The blog Only For Lonelies has a nice writeup on the background of this spring.

The Japanese are not the only ones who believe that heat bathing can help mitigate cancer.

IR Lamp Sauna by Bela Lampenfabrikation

One alternative is Kelley Metabolic Cancer Therapy. In addition to taking large numbers of supplements, the program calls for daily use of a near-infrared lamp sauna to help rid the body of the cancerous cells. The thought is that there are two mechanisms at work: Cancer cells cannot tolerate high temperatures as well as healthy cells, and some cancer cells are affected by certain frequencies of visible light.

Cancer cells not tolerating high temperatures is a proven medical fact. American Cancer Society has a large article on hyperthermia to heat a tumor up to 45°C (113°F). The heating can sometimes destroy a tumor by itself, or make the tumor more vulnerable to chemotherapy or radiation treatments.  The heating is done using special machines that heat just the tumor and little of the surrounding tissue or by elevating the whole body temperature of the patient.

Light therapy is another commonly discussed advantage for using a near-infrared sauna. Proponents claim that certain wavelengths of light can help the body destroy cancer cells. These wavelengths are present in the heat lamps used in a near infrared sauna. Unfortunately, the American Cancer Society cannot find any evidence to back these claims. Light therapy is used in professional cancer treatment, but only as an activator for certain photosensitive drugs.

Saunas can have another benefit for cancer sufferers: Pain management. Heating the body in a sauna and cooling it gently has been shown to help sufferers of chronic pain ease their symptoms without medication.

If you are suffering from cancer, and are looking for alternatives, the sauna may be a benefit for you. However, like all alternative therapies, you should discuss what you plan to do with your doctor first. Many medications are heat sensitive. Others can interfere with your body’s natural cooling mechanisms. What may seem like a harmless addition could cause serious complications for you.

Saunas and Cancer

"Worn Out" by Chris Fritz on Flickr

In our review of the news this morning, we happened across Sherie Bourg Carter’s January article on Psychology Today, “Energy Zappers: 10 Everyday Things That Drain Our Energy and Steal Our Time.” She talks about how to change these in your everyday life, but we see that you could change many of these with a regular sauna. She acknowledges this by closing her article with a quote made by Aulus Cornelius Celsus, the Roman physician and scientist in 25 BC:

Take massage, baths, exercise, and gymnastics. Fight insomnia with gentle rocking or the sound of running water.

Ms. Carter has several items on her list of energy zappers that can be cured by a sauna.

Tight Clothes are energy zappers. According to Ms. Carter, the restrictive fashions of today with their slimming panels and form-fitting designs restrict your ability to breathe freely, limiting your oxygen supply. At SaunaScape, frequent readers will know we advocate using the sauna naked, yet we frequently read stories from locker rooms of the modest refusing to enter a locker room sauna without their swimsuit or workout clothes. Leave your modesty and binding clothes behind and do something for yourself. When you are free of your clothes take some deep breaths and replenish your body’s oxygen supply.

Working Without a Break. Ms. Carter talks abot how the career-minded routinely work 10 or more hours without a break. This leads to energy zapping burnouts. Taking a gym break in the middle of the day, and using your gym’s sauna as a few minute refuge can help you reinvigorate yourself and have a more productive afternoon.

Negativity. If through our own thoughts or brought on by other people, negativity is a huge energy drain. The sauna, through a variety of mechanisms, has been proven to improve the moods of those who use it regularly.

Irregular Sleep Cycles. If you don’t have a consistent sleep-wake cycle, you can throw your internal circadian rhythm off, making you feel tired even on days when you had a good night’s sleep. One of the benefits of a good sauna session with a few cycles of heating and cooling  is that you sleep incredibly well after the session is over.

So to keep yourself energized, try out that sauna in your health club, at a hotel when you are traveling, or at a sauna establishment near you. Your body will thank you.

For more information, you can read  Sherie Bourg Carter’s blog on Psychology Today, “High Octane Women“, or read her book, “High-Octane Women: How Superachievers Can Avoid Burnout.”

Energy Zappers via Lifehacker.com

Boosting Your Energy With a Sauna