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.
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.
In a dry sauna, does the 175°F (79°C) or higher temperature kill bacteria and viruses that some one else has brought into the public sauna? Are there other cautions that you would have for the public sauna?
The short answer is no.
The most common disease that can be transmitted by contact with an surface that has been contaminated by someone is the Hepatitis virus. Research shows that Hepatitis can survive for more than 10 hours at temperatures as high as 140°F (60°C), and as long as six months at lower temperatures. To kill hepatitis, you need to bathe it in steam for two minutes at 250°F (121°C) or for four minutes in dry heat at 320°F (160°C). Complete sterilization to kill all pathogens requires 15 minutes in steam or two hours in dry heat.
Inside that sauna, the thermometer may read a high temperature, but that thermometer is usually placed near the ceiling. As you know, heat rises, so the temperature near the ceiling can be much hotter than the temperature at the benches or floor. Human skin will burn after contact with a surface at 130°F (54°C) for 30 seconds, and in less time at higher temperatures. So if you can walk unprotected on the sauna floor or sit on that sauna bench, you know that the temperature can not be hot enough to kill germs.
So how can you protect yourself from germs in a sauna?
The proper technique for using a towel in the sauna in Germany.
The easiest way is to put a barrier between yourself and others by always sitting on a towel. In Germany, proper sauna etiquette says that you should drape a large enough towel to prevent any part of your body from touching the wood of the sauna benches or walls. However, even sitting on a small gym towel will protect the most sensitive areas of your body from what has been left behind by others.
Steam rooms must be cleaned more regularly and vigorously with disinfectants, since there is more danger. Hot tubs need to have their chemistry checked regularly and daily water changes to keep them safe.
The smoke sauna or black banya is the cleanest of the saunas. This hard to find sauna bath that had an open stove had a natural disinfectant in the wood smoke and ash that covered all the surfaces inside of the sauna. Every time the sauna was heated, it got a full cleaning and disinfecting. Modern sealed or electric stoves do not have this same advantage.
Of course, as we have reported if you are sick, you should stay out of the sauna. If you get into the sauna and see someone hacking up a lung, it might be better to give them a few minutes by themselves.
Will I get sick in the sauna?
Even though the sauna does not kill germs, it is not a place that is known for causing illnesses. As we have reported before, people who use the sauna regularly are less likely to catch a cold. Millions of people use saunas every day, and it is very rare to find someone who was infected with a disease from using a sauna.
To be sure, rely on your senses. If the facility does not look clean or well maintained, it probably isn’t. If there are signs of mold or mildew, that should be a warning sign to find a different place. If they aren’t taking the time to clean the place, are they also taking shortcuts on other safety precautions like temperature controls or electrical connections? Those types of problems are more likely to hurt you than a disease.
Of course, if your immune system is compromised for any reason, you should discuss whether using a public sauna is right for you with a doctor.
Sauna Suits, those silvery plastic jumpsuits that are touted everywhere on the internet as one of those “secret weapons” to lose weight quick. Why not? Boxers use them all the time. Buying a sauna suit is cheap, and the benefits are fast and easy to measure, and their makers claim that they are great tools for fat loss, detoxification and increased circulation, as well as other benefits that a traditional sauna gives.
No surprise here: Those marketers are lying to you.
“Sweating while wearing a sauna suit may help eliminate toxins that have accumulated in the body!” is text lifted from one breathless claim. Using a traditional or infrared sauna to remove toxins from your body is a popular, but dubious claim. However, extending the detox claim to a sauna suit, is an outright lie.
Higher-end sauna suits are made from neoprene. Neoprene is much more stable then vinyl, but it too has its problems. Neoprene is a known allergen, and there are certain lead compounds used in the production of neoprene that may or may not be cleaned out of the fabric before it is shipped to you.
Sweat is a two-way street: It will move toxins in whichever direction they are lower. So though you might be removing some toxins from your body, how many new, more dangerous toxins are you introducing?
Fat loss is another point. Traditional and infrared saunas have been shown to help improve weight regulation by the brain —They do not burn fat directly. It is probably related to the psychological benefits that the ritual of sitting in the sauna gives that you would not get doing your daily chores while wrapped in Saran Wrap.
The whole idea of the sauna suit is dangerous if not used in the right hands. These were originally developed for one purpose: To help combat athletes lose weight before their official weigh-in for the event. If done right, a heavier athlete can weigh into a lighter weight class and have a tremendous advantage in the ring. Their weight loss is done to a predetermined target, and as soon as they’ve stepped off the scale, they begin to rehydrate for their match the next day, otherwise their performance in the ring will suffer. If you do not recognize this, you can end up severely dehydrating yourself.
The whole premise of the sauna suit is to interfere with your body’s cooling mechanism to increase your sweat output. Even professional athletes can overdo it in a sauna suit and end up with heat stroke or heat exhaustion. For the truly misinformed, this process can be sped up by wearing your sauna suit into the sauna.
The Gout - A 1799 Caricature by James Gillray via Wikipedia
Gout — commonly referred to as the disease of kings — is a painful swelling of a joint due to the build-up of uric acid in the bloodstream. It is commonly associated with eating food high in purine, a type of protein. Foods like beer, meats, some fatty seafoods, and even some beans and vegetables are all high in purine and can bring on a gouty attack.
Gout is a type of arthritis. It has been shown that arthritis sufferers can benefit from a sauna treatment. The heat from the sauna helps reduce the perception of pain in the area, and can also help with the inflammation. However, unlike arthritis, a gouty attack is usually temporary, relieving itself in a day or two with medication and diet change.
In 2004 the Hyogo College of Medicine in Japan conducted a study of five healthy subjects and the effect on sauna bathing and beer consumption. With sufficient time between tests, each of the subjects took a sauna, drank a beer, then took a sauna and drank a beer immediately afterwards.
Beer is a known high-purine food. When they tested the subjects who drank a beer, they found that the level of purines in the blood increased, and the amount of uric acid excreted also increased.
After the sauna alone, they found that the concentration of purines in the bloodstream had decreased, with more being converted to uric acid. However, the amount of uric acid excreted from the body was also lowered.
With the sauna and the beer together, the subjects experienced significantly elevated uric acid levels in the blood, and decreased excretion of uric acid.
Their conclusion: People prone to gout should not drink beer and other alcoholic beverages after their sauna.
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.
The trial against self-help guru James Ray has begun in Yavapai Superior Court in Camp Verde AZ,. As part of his “Spiritual Warrior” seminar in October 2009, he held a sweat lodge session that resulted in the deaths of three participants and hospitalization of seventeen more. He is being tried for both manslaughter and negligent homicide. If convicted, he could face up to 21 years in prison for each count.
Mr. Ray’s seminar was a week-long affair taking place on a resort in Sedona, Arizona. Participants paid as much as $9,000 for the seminar which promised to “push people’s personal limits and transcend pain.” As a capstone event for the seminar, Mr. Ray held a two-hour long sweat lodge session inside of a huge structure that held all 60 participants.
According to the Prescott E-News, Mr. Ray’s defense will be that he was unaware of the condition of the people inside of the sweat lodge, and all had been briefed and were well aware of the dangers. The prosecution will argue that Mr. Ray did not adequately inform the participants of the dangers, and some of Mr. Ray’s assistants forced participants to remain inside of the sweat lodge against their will, in one alleged case, dragging a participant who left back into the lodge.
In the proper hands, the sweat lodge ceremony is an event that can give its participants the feeling of being reborn or “rebooting” their psyche in modern terminology. Communal sweating rituals have taken place for thousands of years. When facilitated by a trained leader with the group’s well-being in mind, these rituals can result in a great benefit to their participants.
Dr. Stephen Colmant, a licensed Psychologist for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, talks about the proper use of sweat rituals in his recent book, Sweat Therapy: A Guide to Greater Well-Being:
Sweat rituals promote group cohesion and put people in a state of readiness for change. I use this power to promote healing and growth. …[S]weat rituals are much more than just intense heat exposure. Intense heat exposure unchecked can result in heat disorders like heat stroke, heat exhaustion, heat collapse and death. In my fifteen years of avid use of sweat lodges and saunas including lengthy research projects, I have never experienced a participant suffer a heat disorder.
Mr. Ray did not appear to be running a therapy session, but an endurance competition, which have a history of ending badly. His tweet, as his clients were being pronounced dead says it all: “for anything new to live something first must die. What needs to die in you so that new life can emerge?”
We will keep you updated as more information emerges on the trial.
According to the article, heat therapy is being used to treat all sorts of ailments:
Cancer is one we had not heard before. Apparently, heat allows the body to more easily determine that cancer cells are not normal, and it encourages the body to attack them.
Heat for treating heart disease is one that specifically mentioned the sauna. A Japanese team found that after two weeks of sauna use a group of men with heart disease had significantly improved their blood flow. The researchers believe the heat from the sauna helped widen their arteries.
Athletes have long known that heat can help muscle injuries more than 48 hours old to heal faster. Applying heat to the area causes the blood vessels there to dilate, bringing more oxygen to the area. This allows the body to heal itself quicker.
Sufferers of aches and pains, whether it be from a backache, arthritis or even menstrual pains can get relief by heating the area. Applying heat for 20-30 minutes at a time will block pain messages from being transmitted, just like taking a painkiller. Longer periods of heat application creates what is called “rebound” which makes all of the areas stiff and sore.
Of course, heat, especially steam, can help people who are suffering respiratory problems from a cold or allergies. As we have reported here before, a regular sauna can help you avoid catching a cold in the first place. Unfortunately, once you have a cold a sauna won’t help you get over it more quickly.
So now you know, taking a sauna not only helps you feel better, it helps you get better too.
Of course, heat can also have a number of negative impacts on your body and may cause medications to behave much differently. Before starting to use heat therapy on your own, consult your doctor to fully understand what your risks and complications may be.
We’ve already covered how regular sauna visits can help keep you from getting sick, but what happens when you’ve succumbed to that cold? A trip to the steam room might be just what you need to clear the creeping crud out of your head.
Not true according to Spa Week.
Rapid temperature shifts going into and out of hot rooms like saunas and steam rooms are just going to weaken you further than the cold already has. Possibly to the point where you might faint.
The idea that you can “sweat out a cold” is a myth. Germs don’t respond to it, so why tempt them?
Finally, if you’re going to a public sauna, with your weakened immune system, your body is more likely to catch other germs that other people are carrying around the facility. There are thousands of viruses that are floating around out there. Nothing is worse than getting one strain of cold after another.
And of course, don’t forget the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” If you’re sick, you don’t want to be spreading your germs around to all the other patrons there.
So when the sniffles strike, stay home, rest and use a steaming bowl of chicken soup to help clear your head. Save the sauna for after you’re better.
Another contribution from Dr. Stephen Colmant of PsychSymposium.com, this time a 6½ minute video.
Dr. Colmant guides us through his research on sweat therapy, and how using this centuries-old practice of bathing in heat, you get tremendous physical, mental, and psychological benefits. In his words:
People have used sweat rituals around the world for thousands of years to gain greater physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. Examples include the Finnish Sauna, the American Indian Sweat Lodge, the Russian Banya, the Jewish Shvitz, and the Islamic hammam to name a few. The work of my research team in developing Sweat Therapy in counseling psychology focused on using this powerful technique to promote health, psychological healing, and human growth.
Sweat rituals are much more than just intense heat exposure. Sweat rituals developed over centuries through human intelligence, creativity, and wisdom to optimize the experience to promote health. Like many holistic practices, sweat rituals are multidimensional. In addition to cultural priming, our theoretical model focuses on four factors that contribute to the therapeutic effects of sweat rituals.
If you’re looking for a place where you can get your own sweat ritual started, look at our databases of public saunas and hotels with saunas for one near you.
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