GrowtikaFinnish sauna heat exposure induces stronger immune cell than cytokine responses
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23328940.2026.2645467#abstract
> A total of 51 adults (...) were exposed to a 30-minute session of acute FSB at a temperature of + 73°C
Woah, that seems like a lot for me. I can usually stand maybe 60ºC for like 10 maybe 15 min. I don't think I'd be able to stand 30 min under 73ºC.
73°C is a bit unusual cold for a Finnish sauna. Wikipedia says:
> The temperature in Finnish saunas is 80 to 110 °C (176 to 230 °F), usually 80–90 °C (176–194 °F)
And with that temperature, I think 10–15 minutes are pretty standard.
Humidity is the key, Finnish style sauna is low humidity+ high temperature (85-115C is OK i think), while Russian banya-style is low temperature (60-80C with high humidity). Both of them produce about the same load on a human
Right, and Turkish-style hammam is 50C at 100% humidity. It's the only one I cannot stand.
That's interesting. I don't have much the habit of doing sauna, as you can likely tell, so I might have tried only high humidity saunas. I'll give it a try one day with low humidity if I find one.
This is one of the most famous public saunas in Finland: https://www.kotiharjunsauna.fi/en
If the temperature there is not close to 120°C, we are kind of disappointed.
The sauna at my gym is regularly over 180F and I do 30 minute sessions. It is a dry sauna however, no steam.
In Finland we have old saying: "If liquor, tar and sauna won’t help, an illness is fatal"
Tar?
"Tar, acclaimed to have been formed from the sweat of Väinämöinen, a central character from the Finnish national epic Kalevala, was an important medicament to the former-day Finns. Tar actually did bear antiseptic features, which worked as a cure for infections. Lately tar has been recognised to include parts that can cause cancer, and the European Union has urged that its use should be avoided." [1]
I personally dont know how tar was used for health, but it was big export item of Finland during medieval times.
[1]https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/themes/themes/health-a-wellbein...
I think you can just replace it with Vaseline (Petroleum jelly) for 99% of the benefits
Pine tar is used in topical medicine for dermatology around the world I don't think it's limited to anywhere particular.
>mitigate the adverse effects of low socioeconomic status
Makes me wonder how much of it is Sauna, vs just the luxury of having the time to go do nothing for ~30 minutes.
I nearly made a screen time comment but you are right, its facility availability and travel time issue more than anything
I just cannot fathom comments like this. I’m preeetty sure that the vast majority of people spend half an hour a day doing nothing, in front of a screen of some type. How many people do you think there are there who don’t have thirty minutes of leisure time once per week?!
Check out the screen time log for fresh parents.
I remember the first few months being so crazy. Feedings every two hours, and each feeding took an hour.
But still time for naps, short walks, etc. part of the survival was to work in little microbreaks when the baby was sleeping.
There's a world of a difference between being able to carve out 30 actually uninterrupted minutes (and realistically more; most people don't have a sauna in their home, so they'd need to spend some time getting there and back) and being able to zone out and stare at a screen for 30 minutes in bed or on public transit.
Not having an hour of uninterrupted leisure time per day, never mind per week (most Finns don’t go to sauna every day) still sounds pretty unfathomable, except maybe in some specific circumstances like being a fresh single parent or similar. In any case, in Finland people go to sauna together with even fairly young kids (like 3+ years old), with breaks as needed of course, even most adults don’t usually spend thirty continuous minutes in a 80°C sauna.
All of these studies are always performed by Finns (or SE / DK / NO + maybe Russia).
I'd love to see this (and other sauna studies) replicated by someone somewhere to the south or hotter climates in general (southern Europe, Africa, hotter parts of Asia and the Americas).
Sample size is tiny fwiw.