SaunaScape

I’ve been a Lifehacker fan since its beginning. While some of their topics are obscure geekdom, the occasional tip about a new piece of software or website that ends up saving me hours makes it a daily stop on my morning review of the news. I was really interested this morning when I saw their new post “How to Hack Your Bathroom into a Home Sauna.”

I had to check the calendar to make sure today isn’t April 1. It isn’t.

Holy sh*t Lifehacker. What will you stoop to for linkbait?

The post is chock full of lots of crazy ideas and very few concrete details, like:

If you plan to install a wood-burning stove, you’ll need to fire-proof the walls and roof around the stove. Particle board isn’t cheap, but this is one area you don’t want to skimp on.

If you don’t have an air vent in the bathroom, don’t make one: the gap under the bathroom door will work just fine.

Um, NO NO NO NO NO!

If you’re putting a wood burning stove anywhere enclosed, you need to make sure you have proper ventilation. If you don’t you’ll end up at best poisoning yourself and at worst asphyxiating yourself and your whole family in your project. Especially if you follow their instructions to build a sauna stove:

A wood burning stove can easily be made from a junk yard gas canister. Use a cheap angle grinder to lop off the top, then just find a metal bucket, cut a hatch and fit the flue.

Those are the instructions. All of them. Now go forth and build one of these and put it in your house!

Please don’t follow these instructions. We value you as a reader too much to have you kill yourself in a home-made deathtrap.

If you’re really set on building your own sauna in your home, buy a good book like How to Build Your Own Sauna & Sweat by Mikkel Aaland, The Sauna: A Complete Guide to the Construction, Use, and Benefits of the Finnish Bath by Rob Roy, or Hot Tubs, Saunas & Steam Baths: A Guide to Planning and Designing your Home Health Spa by Alan Sanderfoot.

If you don’t want to shell out the dollars for a book, then visit Sauna Times or Kalle Hoffman’s Sauna Pages. Both offer plenty of free advice and detailed plans for building your own saunas and sauna stoves.

And unless you really, really know what you’re doing, build your first DIY wood stove sauna in a shed, far away from your home and anything else flammable.

Meanwhile, watch for these exciting posts coming soon to Lifehacker: “Improve your mood: Hack your bathtub and a toaster into your own electro-convulsive therapy system” and “Hack your own Botox from cans you fish out of your grocer’s dumpster!”

I've been a Lifehacker fan since its beginning. While some of their topics are obscure geekdom, the occasional tip about a new piece of software or website that ends up saving me hours makes it a daily stop on my morning review of the news. I was really interested this morning when I saw their new post "How to Hack Your Bathroom into a Home Sauna." I had to check the calendar to make sure today isn't April 1. It isn't. Holy sh*t Lifehacker. What will you stoop to for linkbait? The post is chock full of lots of crazy ideas and very few concrete details, like: If you plan to install a wood-burning stove, you'll need to fire-proof the walls and roof around the stove. Particle board isn't cheap, but this is one area you don't want to skimp on. If you don't have an air vent in the bathroom, don't make one: the gap under the bathroom door will work just fine. Um, NO NO NO NO NO! If you're putting a wood burning stove anywhere enclosed, you need to make sure you have proper ventilation. If you don't you'll end up at best poisoning yourself and at worst asphyxiating yourself and your whole family in your project. Especially if you follow their instructions to build a sauna stove: A wood burning stove can easily be made from a junk yard gas canister. Use a cheap angle grinder to lop off the top, then just find a metal bucket, cut a hatch and fit the flue. Those are the instructions. All of them. Now go forth and build one of these and put it in your house! Please don't follow these instructions. We value you as a reader too much to have you kill yourself in a home-made deathtrap. If you're really set on building your own sauna in your home, buy a good book like How to Build Your Own Sauna & Sweat by Mikkel Aaland, The Sauna: A Complete Guide to the Construction, Use, and Benefits of the Finnish Bath by Rob Roy, or Hot Tubs, Saunas & Steam Baths: A Guide to Planning and Designing your Home Health Spa by Alan Sanderfoot. If you don't want to shell out the dollars for a book, then visit Sauna Times or Kalle Hoffman's Sauna Pages. Both offer plenty of free advice and detailed plans for building your own saunas and sauna stoves. And unless you really, really know what you're doing, build your first DIY wood stove sauna in a shed, far away from your home and anything else flammable. Meanwhile, watch for these exciting posts coming soon to Lifehacker: "Improve your mood: Hack your bathtub and a toaster into your own electro-convulsive therapy system" and "Hack your own Botox from cans you fish out of your grocer's dumpster!"

This week has been a flurry of activity at the James Ray trials for the deaths of three participants in a sweat lodge in late 2009. New evidence, commissioned by the state, has surfaced proposing that the cause of at least one of the deaths was brought on by lack of air exchange in the sweat lodge – a possibility we first proposed here in March.

In April 2010, Rick Haddow, an environmental consultant, emailed a report to Ross Diskin, a detective investigating the case, detailing his investigation into the possible causes of death for one of the victims, Liz Neuman.

According to Mr. Haddow’s report:

• The high relative humidity and temperature in the lodge created a condition where Ms. Neuman’s body could no longer regulate her internal temperature.
• The rock pit was not centered in the lodge, but was offset. Ms. Neuman was seated in the area that was closest to the rock pit, the hottest section of the lodge.
• The area of the lodge where Ms. Neuman and most of the others who were injured or succumbed in the lodge was affected by what Mr. Haddow calls a radiant heat barrier, limiting the air exchange in the area, greatly increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide.
• The lodge’s construction was nearly air tight and the heat from the rocks would make it difficult for outside air to enter the lodge, except through the door.
• The area between the door and the rock pit, where Mr. Ray was seated, would have been the only area in the lodge to get a good air exchange. The conditions experienced there would have been completely different than those in the area where most of the victims were seated.

The contents of the report this week were just discovered by Mr. Ray’s legal team. They filed a motion for mistrial on the basis that the prosecution willfully withheld this evidence. They argued that this was a constitutional violation of Mr. Ray’s rights. Yesterday afternoon, that motion was denied, but it will change the strategy of Mr. Ray’s defense as the trial resumes today.

The full text of Mr. Haddow’s report can be found on page 15 of the mistrial motion filed by the defense team.

The sweat lodge was built by Angel Valley, the resort where Mr. Ray’s seminar was held. Mr. Ray’s defense strategy throughout the trial has been to point to flaws in the design of the sweat lodge structure as the cause of the deaths, not his endurance endurance sweat session after several days of fasting and little sleep for his participants.

For updates on the trial, we have been following Lynne LaMaster’s reporting at the Prescott e News. For those interested, her articles on the case go into much more detail.

This week has been a flurry of activity at the James Ray trials for the deaths of three participants in a sweat lodge in late 2009. New evidence, commissioned by the state, has surfaced proposing that the cause of at least one of the deaths was brought on by lack of air exchange in the sweat lodge – a possibility we first proposed here in March. In April 2010, Rick Haddow, an environmental consultant, emailed a report to Ross Diskin, a detective investigating the case, detailing his investigation into the possible causes of death for one of the victims, Liz Neuman. According to Mr. Haddow's report: The high relative humidity and temperature in the lodge created a condition where Ms. Neuman's body could no longer regulate her internal temperature. The rock pit was not centered in the lodge, but was offset. Ms. Neuman was seated in the area that was closest to the rock pit, the hottest section of the lodge. The area of the lodge where Ms. Neuman and most of the others who were injured or succumbed in the lodge was affected by what Mr. Haddow calls a radiant heat barrier, limiting the air exchange in the area, greatly increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide. The lodge's construction was nearly air tight and the heat from the rocks would make it difficult for outside air to enter the lodge, except through the door. The area between the door and the rock pit, where Mr. Ray was seated, would have been the only area in the lodge to get a good air exchange. The conditions experienced there would have been completely different than those in the area where most of the victims were seated. The contents of the report this week were just discovered by Mr. Ray's legal team. They filed a motion for mistrial on the basis that the prosecution willfully withheld this evidence. They argued that this was a constitutional violation of Mr. Ray's rights. Yesterday afternoon, that motion was denied, but it will change the strategy of Mr. Ray's defense as the trial resumes today. The full text of Mr. Haddow's report can be found on page 15 of the mistrial motion filed by the defense team. The sweat lodge was built by Angel Valley, the resort where Mr. Ray's seminar was held. Mr. Ray's defense strategy throughout the trial has been to point to flaws in the design of the sweat lodge structure as the cause of the deaths, not his endurance endurance sweat session after several days of fasting and little sleep for his participants. For updates on the trial, we have been following Lynne LaMaster's reporting at the Prescott e News. For those interested, her articles on the case go into much more detail.  

Photo of James Ray's sweat lodge, shown at his manslaughter trial. Photo from Prescott E-News

In the opening arguments in James Ray’s trial for the manslaughter of three in a sweat lodge at his 2009 Spiritual Warrior workshop, more details of the event have come to light. According to the Prescott E-News, part of Mr. Ray’s defense is the deaths of the participants were from toxins — not heat stroke as the Prosecution alleges.

Mr. Ray’s defense might be right: Toxins seem to us to be the cause of this tragedy.

Unfortunately for Mr. Ray, it looks like he was the prime creator of the toxins, not others as his defense team alleges. It sounds to us like his participants suffered from lack of oxygen in the sweat lodge.

The evidence in this case hasn’t been given yet, but Connie Joy, who attended more than 20 of Ray’s seminars, including his 2007 Spiritual Warrior workshop, wrote about the experience in her book Tragedy in Sedona:

We formed a line behind James. As the Native American drummed and chanted, we headed into the lodge.

We circled around clockwise, James stopped at the right side of the door, then told us to sit as close as possible to each other and to the tent wall, but not to put any weight on the tent itself. After the outside row filled up, the inside row formed with people packed tightly next to each other, their backs just in front of our knees, which we pulled up against us. No one could move. …

After everyone was in and seated, James called for [eight to ten] super-heated stones, which we called grandfathers. … [They brought them in on pitchforks] until all of the requested stones glowed in the pit. Then Joan took a five-gallon white painter’s bucket filled with water and poured it all onto the stones. As soon as she backed up to her spot and sat down the people outside dropped a cover over the doorway.

About halfway through the first [twenty-minute] round, I started to grow dizzy. … When the first round was finally over and they opened the tent flap, I grew more nauseaous by the second. Concerned I would get sick on the people packed tightly around me, I covered my mouth and got up and worked my way through the bodies to the door. …

After a couple of more rounds, the tent flap opened. A group of people rushed out. What I saw alarmed me. They were disoriented, throwing up, and after they were sprayed with water, a couple of people were shaking on the ground.

Several people who were there told me later, from start to finish, our group spent a total of three hours in the sweat lodge.

Wow. Let’s break this down:

From the photos and the description there was only one entrance to the sweat lodge. It is reasonably air tight, and it was packed full of people. While those people were in there, they were dumping 5-gallon buckets of water onto superheated rocks to fill the lodge with steam.

According to CNN, the sweat lodge was 5 feet tall and 23 feet around. That’s an internal volume of 58,000 liters. There were 60 people inside of the lodge in 2009. Each person takes up about 81 liters, leaving 53,100 liters of air inside the lodge. Let’s say half of that 5 gallon bucket of water turned to steam when it was poured on the rocks. That would displace another 16,200 liters of air, leaving 36,900 liters of air in the lodge.

Fresh air is 21% oxygen — the element we need to survive when we breathe. Looking at the volume of air in the lodge, there would be 7,700 liters of oxygen in there, reducing the oxygen concentration to 14.5% just after the water turned to steam and the door was closed.

All of those people in the sweat lodge are breathing, and consuming oxygen. The base rate is about 3.5 ml/min per kg of body mass. The average maximum rate for non-athletes is around 35 ml/min. Say that those people are consuming at about halfway to maximum, and we find that those 60 people in the lodge are consuming 92 liters of oxygen each minute. By the end of the first 20-minute round they would have consumed another 1800 liters of oxygen, bringing the average oxygen concentration to just 11%.

In a still situation, there would be areas with higher and lower concentrations of oxygen. Some areas, like Mr. Ray’s position near the door, would have a higher percentage of oxygen. In the middle of the mass of bodies, like where Ms. Joy was sitting, the concentration could be several percentage points lower.

According to Argonne National Lab, most people can function relatively normally in an environment down to 15% oxygen. As the concentration decreases from 15% to 10%, the pulse quickens, breathing rates increase, and people’s coordination and judgement decreases. Below 10% we start to see symptoms like Ms. Joy reports: nausea, vomiting, fainting, ash colored face and bluish lips. An 8% or less oxygen concentration is 100% fatal in 8 minutes. As the concentration decreases below 6%, it can put someone into a coma in as little as 40 seconds.

Reports by participants in the 2009 event talk about paramedics suspecting carbon monoxide poisoning — an easy mistake because carbon monoxide replaces oxygen in your bloodstream.

If you are going to run your own sweat lodge, there are some things you can do to learn from Mr. Ray’s mistakes and keep all of your participants safe:

• The sauna should be an appropriate volume for the people you are going to put inside of it. With all of the people and the steam you’ll be generating, you should be sure that there will still be enough oxygen for everyone to breathe during each round of the sweat.
• Between rounds, the sweat lodge should be emptied, and ventilated to ensure there is fresh air before each round. In a German sauna, they swing a towel in the doorway to force this changeover.
• The keeper of the lodge, with the most experience should be in the worst position to best monitor the conditions in the lodge. Mr. Ray, sitting near the door, had no idea what the conditions were really like: He was in the coolest spot with the most oxygen. He had no way of knowing what the conditions would be like at the far end of the lodge.
• Between sweat rounds, people should be encouraged to leave the sweat lodge and cool their bodies before the next round.
• If people are feeling ill, they should be encouraged to leave immediately, and be examined by medical personnel if they show any abnormal symptoms. They should not be pressured to stay in the lodge or be encouraged to return to the lodge.

  [caption id="" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Photo of James Ray's sweat lodge, shown at his manslaughter trial. Photo from Prescott E-News"][/caption] In the opening arguments in James Ray's trial for the manslaughter of three in a sweat lodge at his 2009 Spiritual Warrior workshop, more details of the event have come to light. According to the Prescott E-News, part of Mr. Ray's defense is the deaths of the participants were from toxins — not heat stroke as the Prosecution alleges.   Mr. Ray's defense might be right: Toxins seem to us to be the cause of this tragedy. Unfortunately for Mr. Ray, it looks like he was the prime creator of the toxins, not others as his defense team alleges. It sounds to us like his participants suffered from lack of oxygen in the sweat lodge. The evidence in this case hasn't been given yet, but Connie Joy, who attended more than 20 of Ray's seminars, including his 2007 Spiritual Warrior workshop, wrote about the experience in her book Tragedy in Sedona: We formed a line behind James. As the Native American drummed and chanted, we headed into the lodge. We circled around clockwise, James stopped at the right side of the door, then told us to sit as close as possible to each other and to the tent wall, but not to put any weight on the tent itself. After the outside row filled up, the inside row formed with people packed tightly next to each other, their backs just in front of our knees, which we pulled up against us. No one could move. ... After everyone was in and seated, James called for [eight to ten] super-heated stones, which we called grandfathers. ... [They brought them in on pitchforks] until all of the requested stones glowed in the pit. Then Joan took a five-gallon white painter's bucket filled with water and poured it all onto the stones. As soon as she backed up to her spot and sat down the people outside dropped a cover over the doorway. About halfway through the first [twenty-minute] round, I started to grow dizzy. ... When the first round was finally over and they opened the tent flap, I grew more nauseaous by the second. Concerned I would get sick on the people packed tightly around me, I covered my mouth and got up and worked my way through the bodies to the door. ... After a couple of more rounds, the tent flap opened. A group of people rushed out. What I saw alarmed me. They were disoriented, throwing up, and after they were sprayed with water, a couple of people were shaking on the ground. Several people who were there told me later, from start to finish, our group spent a total of three hours in the sweat lodge. Wow. Let's break this down: From the photos and the description there was only one entrance to the sweat lodge. It is reasonably air tight, and it was packed full of people. While those people were in there, they were dumping 5-gallon buckets of water onto superheated rocks to fill the lodge with steam. According to CNN, the sweat lodge was 5 feet tall and 23 feet around. That's an internal volume of 58,000 liters. There were 60 people inside of the lodge in 2009. Each person takes up about 81 liters, leaving 53,100 liters of air inside the lodge. Let's say half of that 5 gallon bucket of water turned to steam when it was poured on the rocks. That would displace another 16,200 liters of air, leaving 36,900 liters of air in the lodge. Fresh air is 21% oxygen — the element we need to survive when we breathe. Looking at the volume of air in the lodge, there would be 7,700 liters of oxygen in there, reducing the oxygen concentration to 14.5% just after the water turned to steam and the door was closed. All of those people in the sweat lodge are breathing, and consuming oxygen. The base rate is about 3.5 ml/min per kg of body mass. The average maximum rate for non-athletes is around 35 ml/min. Say that those people are consuming at about halfway to maximum, and we find that those 60 people in the lodge are consuming 92 liters of oxygen each minute. By the end of the first 20-minute round they would have consumed another 1800 liters of oxygen, bringing the average oxygen concentration to just 11%. In a still situation, there would be areas with higher and lower concentrations of oxygen. Some areas, like Mr. Ray's position near the door, would have a higher percentage of oxygen. In the middle of the mass of bodies, like where Ms. Joy was sitting, the concentration could be several percentage points lower. According to Argonne National Lab, most people can function relatively normally in an environment down to 15% oxygen. As the concentration decreases from 15% to 10%, the pulse quickens, breathing rates increase, and people's coordination and judgement decreases. Below 10% we start to see symptoms like Ms. Joy reports: nausea, vomiting, fainting, ash colored face and bluish lips. An 8% or less oxygen concentration is 100% fatal in 8 minutes. As the concentration decreases below 6%, it can put someone into a coma in as little as 40 seconds. Reports by participants in the 2009 event talk about paramedics suspecting carbon monoxide poisoning — an easy mistake because carbon monoxide replaces oxygen in your bloodstream. If you are going to run your own sweat lodge, there are some things you can do to learn from Mr. Ray's mistakes and keep all of your participants safe: The sauna should be an appropriate volume for the people you are going to put inside of it. With all of the people and the steam you'll be generating, you should be sure that there will still be enough oxygen for everyone to breathe during each round of the sweat. Between rounds, the sweat lodge should be emptied, and ventilated to ensure there is fresh air before each round. In a German sauna, they swing a towel in the doorway to force this changeover. The keeper of the lodge, with the most experience should be in the worst position to best monitor the conditions in the lodge. Mr. Ray, sitting near the door, had no idea what the conditions were really like: He was in the coolest spot with the most oxygen. He had no way of knowing what the conditions would be like at the far end of the lodge. Between sweat rounds, people should be encouraged to leave the sweat lodge and cool their bodies before the next round. If people are feeling ill, they should be encouraged to leave immediately, and be examined by medical personnel if they show any abnormal symptoms. They should not be pressured to stay in the lodge or be encouraged to return to the lodge.

Image from the finals of the Sauna World Championships, 2009. Mr. Ladyzhenski is at the far left. Mr. Kaukonen is at the far right.

This past weekend, the Sauna World Championships in Heinloa Finland ended in tragedy as the two finalists, last year’s third place finisher Vladimir Ladyzhenskiy of Russia and last year’s champion Timo Kaukonen of Finland, stopped responding to the judges during the finals of the competition. Mr. Ladyzhenskiy perished en route to the hospital. At last report, Mr. Kaukonen was in the hospital in stable condition.

According to reports, both men had spent more than 6 minutes in a sauna above 110°C (230°F) where 1/2 liter of water was poured on the rocks every 30 seconds. Medical personnel for the competition knock on the windows at regular intervals, and the contestants are to respond with a thumbs up. In Saturday night’s competition, Mr. Kaukonen began behaving erratically, and paramedics immediately entered the sauna and removed both men. The round began with six competitors in the sauna. The other four had left under their own power before five minutes had elapsed.

Many news outlets are reporting that this was the last running of the Sauna World Championships. Press releases issued earlier today by the City of Heinloa, the organizer of the contest state that nothing has been decided yet. The first official Sauna World Championship was held in 1999.  This year’s competition was the 12th with about 130 participants from 15 countries.

Mr. Ladyzhensky was 62 years old. He regularly competed in sauna endurance competitions. He had been a champion Greco-Roman wrestler and worked as a find administrator in his native Russia. Our heartfelt condolences go out to his friends and family.

We at Saunascape hope the organizers can find a way forward. Despite criticism of the event, it generates a lot of publicity for the sauna culture, and filled a need as informal competitions commonly occurred in Finnish saunas.

Unlike last year’s sweat lodge deaths, this event was supervised by trained medical personnel and each competitor was to be certified by their physician as fit to compete before entering the competition. Is it dangerous? Yes, but aren’t all sports where people push themselves to the limit?

[caption id="attachment_364" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image from the finals of the Sauna World Championships, 2009. Mr. Ladyzhenski is at the far left. Mr. Kaukonen is at the far right."][/caption] This past weekend, the Sauna World Championships in Heinloa Finland ended in tragedy as the two finalists, last year's third place finisher Vladimir Ladyzhenskiy of Russia and last year's champion Timo Kaukonen of Finland, stopped responding to the judges during the finals of the competition. Mr. Ladyzhenskiy perished en route to the hospital. At last report, Mr. Kaukonen was in the hospital in stable condition. According to reports, both men had spent more than 6 minutes in a sauna above 110°C (230°F) where 1/2 liter of water was poured on the rocks every 30 seconds. Medical personnel for the competition knock on the windows at regular intervals, and the contestants are to respond with a thumbs up. In Saturday night's competition, Mr. Kaukonen began behaving erratically, and paramedics immediately entered the sauna and removed both men. The round began with six competitors in the sauna. The other four had left under their own power before five minutes had elapsed. Many news outlets are reporting that this was the last running of the Sauna World Championships. Press releases issued earlier today by the City of Heinloa, the organizer of the contest state that nothing has been decided yet. The first official Sauna World Championship was held in 1999.  This year's competition was the 12th with about 130 participants from 15 countries. Mr. Ladyzhensky was 62 years old. He regularly competed in sauna endurance competitions. He had been a champion Greco-Roman wrestler and worked as a find administrator in his native Russia. Our heartfelt condolences go out to his friends and family. We at Saunascape hope the organizers can find a way forward. Despite criticism of the event, it generates a lot of publicity for the sauna culture, and filled a need as informal competitions commonly occurred in Finnish saunas. Unlike last year's sweat lodge deaths, this event was supervised by trained medical personnel and each competitor was to be certified by their physician as fit to compete before entering the competition. Is it dangerous? Yes, but aren't all sports where people push themselves to the limit?

Photo of a traditional sweat lodge by matthewvenn on Flickr

There is no sacrifice—only greater and more magnificent results, wealth, adventure and fulfillment.

James Arthur Ray – On his Spiritual Warrior signup page.

Last week a tragedy ensued in Sedona Arizona leaving two people dead, three in critical condition and 16 more hospitalized after a sweat lodge experience as part of a multi-day “Spiritual Warrior” self-help seminar. Coverage of the incident has ranged from articles in the New York Times to CNN to TechCrunch.

According to the coverage of the event, up to 60 people took a session in a 1450 cubic foot sweat lodge for about 2 hours on Thursday night. Causes of death are still being speculated upon, and unlike your favorite crime show, may not be known for several months. Some things are known:

• There was no temperature monitoring in the sweat lodge, so no-one really knows how hot it may have been.
• The sweat lodge was constructed from plastic tarps and blankets, and does not appear to be well ventilated. 60 people in such a space could have easily brought the oxygen level below safe limits in under 15 minutes.
• A two hour session is quite long for any kind of heat bath. There is a strong possibility that the participants suffered from dehydration and/or heat stroke in this situation.
• The leader of this ceremony, who should by all rights be responsible for the health and well-being of the participants in the sweat lodge ceremony, had other motives, apparently tweeting after the incident, “JamesARay: is still in Spiritual Warrior… for anything new to live something first must die. What needs to die in you so that new life can emerge?”
• The leader of this ceremony was probably not qualified to run this: “You’ll become privy to techniques that I searched out in the mountains of Peru, the jungles of the Amazon (and a few other places I don’t care to recall).”

How can you avoid being part of this same tragedy? Keep a few things in mind:

• Lots of people are willing to say anything to get you to part with your money, and ritualistic experiences are a part of them. Consult the forums at New Age Frauds & Plastic Shamans before signing up for something like this.
• Does the establishment you are going to use to participate in this ceremony have your well-being in mind? If, as Arizona ABC 15 reports, the event is “meant to push people’s personal limits and transcend pain,” but there isn’t a full physical for each participant and a trained medical team standing by, then you can be sure they don’t.
• Heat baths can give real benefits if used with care. However, like most things, if basic common sense is ignored, they can be very dangerous.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="375" caption="Photo of a traditional sweat lodge by matthewvenn on Flickr"][/caption] There is no sacrifice—only greater and more magnificent results, wealth, adventure and fulfillment. James Arthur Ray - On his Spiritual Warrior signup page. Last week a tragedy ensued in Sedona Arizona leaving two people dead, three in critical condition and 16 more hospitalized after a sweat lodge experience as part of a multi-day "Spiritual Warrior" self-help seminar. Coverage of the incident has ranged from articles in the New York Times to CNN to TechCrunch. According to the coverage of the event, up to 60 people took a session in a 1450 cubic foot sweat lodge for about 2 hours on Thursday night. Causes of death are still being speculated upon, and unlike your favorite crime show, may not be known for several months. Some things are known: There was no temperature monitoring in the sweat lodge, so no-one really knows how hot it may have been. The sweat lodge was constructed from plastic tarps and blankets, and does not appear to be well ventilated. 60 people in such a space could have easily brought the oxygen level below safe limits in under 15 minutes. A two hour session is quite long for any kind of heat bath. There is a strong possibility that the participants suffered from dehydration and/or heat stroke in this situation. The leader of this ceremony, who should by all rights be responsible for the health and well-being of the participants in the sweat lodge ceremony, had other motives, apparently tweeting after the incident, "JamesARay: is still in Spiritual Warrior... for anything new to live something first must die. What needs to die in you so that new life can emerge?" The leader of this ceremony was probably not qualified to run this: "You'll become privy to techniques that I searched out in the mountains of Peru, the jungles of the Amazon (and a few other places I don't care to recall)." How can you avoid being part of this same tragedy? Keep a few things in mind: Lots of people are willing to say anything to get you to part with your money, and ritualistic experiences are a part of them. Consult the forums at New Age Frauds & Plastic Shamans before signing up for something like this. Does the establishment you are going to use to participate in this ceremony have your well-being in mind? If, as Arizona ABC 15 reports, the event is "meant to push people's personal limits and transcend pain," but there isn't a full physical for each participant and a trained medical team standing by, then you can be sure they don't. Heat baths can give real benefits if used with care. However, like most things, if basic common sense is ignored, they can be very dangerous.

Photo posted by Dru! on Flickr

Our news ticker has been lit up recently with the news of the recent settlement of a lawsuit where an Indiana man passed away after collapsing in the sauna of his YMCA. We feel deep sympathy for the man’s friends and relatives, as losing a loved one suddenly is always difficult, especially when you’re not dealing with individuals, but through the American legal / insurance system, as was the case for this man’s poor wife. But that’s a topic for another blog.

This brings the topic to light that heat bathing can be dangerous. According to Wikipedia, raising your core body temperature just 6°F / 2°C can be life threatening. Any additional temperature rise can begin to cause brain damage. For pregnant women, the dangers to their unborn child begin sooner, with a core temperature rise to 102.0°F /38.9°C. Normal body temperature is 98.6°F / 37.0°C.

In 1991, The American Journal of Public Health published a review of “The Health Hazards of Saunas and Spas and How to Minimize Them.” Most of this article is a review of the literature published to date, much of it in the 1998 Annals of Clinical Research special edition on saunas. (We have not been able to find this publication. If you have a copy, we would be grateful if you would share this with us.)

In the study, the author recommends:

Persons with heart disease, hypertension, seizure disorders, diabetes, or significant obesity; persons who have ingested alcohol, narcotic drugs, or medications that can result in drowsiness or interfere with the body’s temperature-regulating mechanism; or persons who are over 65 years of age must limit their stays in saunas or spas to 5 or at the most 10 minutes at a time. Similar precautions should be observed by women in the first trimester of pregnancy.

Even healthy adults would be well advised not to stay in for more than 10 to 15 minutes at a time.

Fainting is the greatest hazard for heat bathers. In a test of 60 otherwise healthy adults, 5% of them fainted after a 20-minute sauna session. The test was repeated with 61 children under 12, and 3% of them fainted after a 10-minute sauna session. The author notes that if you have heart disease, or have used alcohol or drugs your risk of fainting increases.

Falling from fainting while in or exiting the bath can cause injuries by itself, or compounded by the hot stove components. Fainting with loss of consciousness, especially in an unsupervised area,  can cause more severe problems if you are not promptly removed from the heat or water.

Heart arrhythmia can  be caused by sauna bathing. This is especially true if you have heart disease, or arteriosclerosis. What many people don’t realize is that alcohol, cocaine and other drugs that affect the heart, temperature regulating mechanisms, or cause drowsiness, can also increase your risk for cardiac arrhythmia. This carries over into the hangover phase as well.

Sweating out a hangover in a sauna is a bad idea.  Evidence presented in the paper shows that if you are hung over, you are more likely to experience cardiac arrhythmia in the sauna. Even the wild children at Partiers.com admit it is as bad as “Hair of the Dog.”

As part of this study, the author polled US medical examiners about heat bathing related deaths from 1983-1988. Of the 7 sauna-related deaths in that period, 6 were in people who had used alcohol or had heart disease. All were over 12 years old, and 5 of the 7 were over 65 years old.

In that same time period, 47 spa / hot tub deaths were reported.  45% of the fatalities had used either alchohol and/or cocaine. Another 17% of these were people with heart disease.

Other hazards found in the study were:

• Diabetics taking insulin via injection can absorb it more quickly due to dilation of the blood vessels near the body surface.
• Men whose partners are trying to conceive should avoid the sauna: A single 20-minute exposure to a sauna at 176°F / 80°C can decrease sperm count for up to 5 weeks!
• Women who are or may be pregnant should be careful around the sauna: A small temperature rise in your body can damage your unborn baby, especially in the first trimester. In the last trimester, elevated body temperatures can induce labor.

I did a quick study of sauna-related injuries from 2006 and 2007, reported by hospitals to the US Consumer Products Safety Commission. There were a total of 23 injuries in those two years. All injuries were minor enough to allow the patients to be released without admission to the hospital. Most were burns, falls or fainting episodes.  However, their data does not tell the whole story, as a family in Indiana will tell you.

[caption id="attachment_200" align="alignright" width="225" caption="Photo posted by Dru! on Flickr"][/caption] Our news ticker has been lit up recently with the news of the recent settlement of a lawsuit where an Indiana man passed away after collapsing in the sauna of his YMCA. We feel deep sympathy for the man's friends and relatives, as losing a loved one suddenly is always difficult, especially when you're not dealing with individuals, but through the American legal / insurance system, as was the case for this man's poor wife. But that's a topic for another blog. This brings the topic to light that heat bathing can be dangerous. According to Wikipedia, raising your core body temperature just 6°F / 2°C can be life threatening. Any additional temperature rise can begin to cause brain damage. For pregnant women, the dangers to their unborn child begin sooner, with a core temperature rise to 102.0°F /38.9°C. Normal body temperature is 98.6°F / 37.0°C. In 1991, The American Journal of Public Health published a review of "The Health Hazards of Saunas and Spas and How to Minimize Them." Most of this article is a review of the literature published to date, much of it in the 1998 Annals of Clinical Research special edition on saunas. (We have not been able to find this publication. If you have a copy, we would be grateful if you would share this with us.) In the study, the author recommends: Persons with heart disease, hypertension, seizure disorders, diabetes, or significant obesity; persons who have ingested alcohol, narcotic drugs, or medications that can result in drowsiness or interfere with the body's temperature-regulating mechanism; or persons who are over 65 years of age must limit their stays in saunas or spas to 5 or at the most 10 minutes at a time. Similar precautions should be observed by women in the first trimester of pregnancy. Even healthy adults would be well advised not to stay in for more than 10 to 15 minutes at a time. Fainting is the greatest hazard for heat bathers. In a test of 60 otherwise healthy adults, 5% of them fainted after a 20-minute sauna session. The test was repeated with 61 children under 12, and 3% of them fainted after a 10-minute sauna session. The author notes that if you have heart disease, or have used alcohol or drugs your risk of fainting increases. Falling from fainting while in or exiting the bath can cause injuries by itself, or compounded by the hot stove components. Fainting with loss of consciousness, especially in an unsupervised area,  can cause more severe problems if you are not promptly removed from the heat or water. Heart arrhythmia can  be caused by sauna bathing. This is especially true if you have heart disease, or arteriosclerosis. What many people don't realize is that alcohol, cocaine and other drugs that affect the heart, temperature regulating mechanisms, or cause drowsiness, can also increase your risk for cardiac arrhythmia. This carries over into the hangover phase as well. Sweating out a hangover in a sauna is a bad idea.  Evidence presented in the paper shows that if you are hung over, you are more likely to experience cardiac arrhythmia in the sauna. Even the wild children at Partiers.com admit it is as bad as "Hair of the Dog." As part of this study, the author polled US medical examiners about heat bathing related deaths from 1983-1988. Of the 7 sauna-related deaths in that period, 6 were in people who had used alcohol or had heart disease. All were over 12 years old, and 5 of the 7 were over 65 years old. In that same time period, 47 spa / hot tub deaths were reported.  45% of the fatalities had used either alchohol and/or cocaine. Another 17% of these were people with heart disease. Other hazards found in the study were: Diabetics taking insulin via injection can absorb it more quickly due to dilation of the blood vessels near the body surface. Men whose partners are trying to conceive should avoid the sauna: A single 20-minute exposure to a sauna at 176°F / 80°C can decrease sperm count for up to 5 weeks! Women who are or may be pregnant should be careful around the sauna: A small temperature rise in your body can damage your unborn baby, especially in the first trimester. In the last trimester, elevated body temperatures can induce labor. I did a quick study of sauna-related injuries from 2006 and 2007, reported by hospitals to the US Consumer Products Safety Commission. There were a total of 23 injuries in those two years. All injuries were minor enough to allow the patients to be released without admission to the hospital. Most were burns, falls or fainting episodes.  However, their data does not tell the whole story, as a family in Indiana will tell you.