SaunaScape

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?

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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.

The CBC reports of a new law just passed in China: The “Female Sauna Safety

Bath non-users at a Spa in Shanghai. Photo by Thomas Tribe on Flickr

Regulation.” According to their report:

Last month, certain inspectors informed western hotels, which offer luxurious spa and sauna services, that women were no longer allowed to take baths.

Showers? No problem. Baths? No way.

Officials explained that once a month women are afflicted with a certain bodily metamorphosis that could result in “undesired excretions.”

The rules, instituted as China prepares to celebrate its 60th birthday, are seen by the author as the old ways of New China. Other newly established regulations include license requirements for fresh squeezed orange juice, and a prohibition on showing any western news in a public area of a hotel. Keep in mind that TVs on exercise equipment in a public gym are included in this regulation.

[CBC News]

One of Finland's new Sauna Stamps

For those of you who are enthusiastic about both saunas and philately, Finnland Post has just issued the stamp set for you. Rather than rewrite it, we’ll let their press release do the talking.

“When I chose the pictures for the Sauna booklet, I aimed for Finnishness and the authentic sauna atmosphere,” says the designer of the booklet, Päivi Vainionpää. “The first stamp shows a moment before a sauna. The sun is going down, there’s a fresh birch whisk in the bucket on the jetty, and soft towels await the bathers,” as she describes the scene. The second stamp shows the bathers actually in the sauna, and the third stamp depicts an idyllic shoreline sauna in its natural setting. The fourth and fifth stamps show sauna atmosphere inside and out: a sauna whisk bathes in the sunlight on a log wall, and inside the sauna the sunshine lights up the bathing place through a window.

The Sauna stamps include microscopic scent capsules. When the stamps are rubbed, the capsules burst and spread a pleasing aroma of birch leaves.

Checking their website, the stamps were supposed to have been released on May 6. As of today, we can’t find a link to buy these on their online stamp shop. It looks like the booklet will cost € 4.00 (approx. US$ 5.35)

[Finland Posti] via newstamps.blogspot.com

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.

Utah cops sweating out their toxins from Methamphetamine exposure in a sauna. (Fox News)

The Salt Lake City Tribune this morning reported that the Utah legislature just allocated $100,000 for 20 Utah police officers to undergo the detox program from L. Ron Hubbard’s 1977 book, Clear Body Clear Mind. The program is for officers who have served raiding or dimantling meth labs. The Tribune reports that 39 officers have undergone the treatment already, and there is a waiting list of more than 80 officers.

In the story, they quote several current and former narcotics officers who have undergone the treatment. The officers quoted found that the treatment has been effective: “Lt. Richard Ferguson of the Utah County Major Crimes Task Force estimates he was exposed to 100 meth labs in an eight-year span. He suffered from headaches and acid reflux until he underwent the treatment. ’Scientifically, I guess there’s something to it because I don’t have to take a prescription anymore,’ Ferguson said.”

In November 20007, Fox News reported on the beginning of the program: “Lt. Al Acosta of the Utah Department of Public Safety blames his muscle tremors, headaches, chest pains and difficulty breathing on the more than 300 labs he’s raided in his nearly 20-year career. He said one whiff of his sweat [while in the sauna]- with bouquets of ammonia or cat urine, depending on the day – is enough to tell him he’s expelling those chemicals. ‘Whoever the skeptical people are [should] come here and just take a whiff of the odors that we’re putting off,’ Acosta said. ‘I don’t think we normally smell this way.’”

One interesting note in the story is their quote of a state-funded study looking for a link between the detox program and meth contamination. They note that “science has yet to determine whether the saunas, exercise and improved diet are simply making cops generally healthier, or are actually tackling illnesses caused by meth exposure.

The Utah program, administered by the American Detoxification Foundation, uses a 36-day regimen for their detox program.

The Scientology Connection. The Tribune reports that there is involvement between practitioners of Scientology and the use of this detox program. Private donations have raised funds for the 5 officers currently undergoing the program, and “plans are underway for two ‘Hollywood stars’ to hold fundraisers to treat more Utah cops.” They also reported “actor Tom Cruise, also a Scientologist, raised money for New York City firefighters to undergo detoxification after the Sept. 11 attacks. ”

The Utah legislature, despite the criticism, sees its benefits. “[This detox program] was portrayed as a medical cleansing of contaminants that they picked up doing their public service,” said Utah Senate President Mike Waddoups. “If somebody had pointed it out as the Hubbard program and it’s some sort of a spiritual cleansing, I think it would have died on the spot.”

[More state funds quietly budgeted to help cops sweat to health] The Salt Lake City Tribune

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today’s New York Times reports on this study performed by a team of Austrian researchers that studied the incidence of common colds in a population of 50 people over six months. Half of the population took saunas regularly, the other half was the control, and were not permitted to use the sauna during the test period.

The study concluded that the sauna bathing population had significantly fewer cases of the common cold than the non-sauna bathing population. After three months, the sauna bathing population had half as many incidents of the cold as the control. Both groups, after they contracted a cold, had no difference in the duration and severity of the symptoms.

If I can cut my colds in half, can I deduct my sauna addiction as a qualified medical expense? The IRS says no.

[PubMed.gov] via the New York Times