In the Nordic countries, the sauna is little less than a religion, since, more than a luxury, it is considered a necessity for daily well-being as it is attributed all kinds of healing properties. These spaces in Spain have little by little been gaining strength and there are now many gyms that include this service for their members and in spas it has also become one more.
Its properties. Here common knowledge tells us that it is good to spend a few minutes in the sauna enduring humid heat, but the question we must ask ourselves is: does it really have healing properties? And the reality is that science supports the impact that thermotherapy has on our own brain.
A Finnish study. When talking about the neurological benefits of the sauna, almost all roads lead to the same point, which is the KIHD cohort study carried out by the University of Eastern Finland. This is considered the “crown jewel” of thermotherapy and with good reason, since researchers followed 2,300 middle-aged Finnish men for 20 years to see the real impact of the sauna on their health.
The results They pointed out that those who went to the sauna between 4 and 7 times a week had a 66% lower risk of developing dementia than those who only went once a week. But also, in the specific case of the disease Alzheimer’sthe risk was reduced by 65%.
These data are not a simple statistical accident, since the researchers adjusted the results taking into account multiple risk factors, such as smoking or BMI. Furthermore, subsequent reviews have expanded on these findings, noting that the benefits of passive body warming remain independent of other risk factors and they are not exclusive to the male sex.
Beyond memory. The impact of the sauna is not limited to neurodegenerative diseases, but we also have evidence that tells us that heat baths lead to improvements in depressive symptoms. And although the evidence here is more mixed and is based on observational studies and smaller trials, neurobiology offers us a fascinating explanation of why this happens.
The most relevant thing in this case is that heat activates certain proteins in our body that are responsible for repairing other damaged proteins and protecting cells from stress. But in addition, the alternation between intense heat and subsequent cooling trains our “fight or flight” and “rest and digest” responses. If we go more recently, we know that depression has an important inflammatory component and the increase in body temperature paradoxically reduces these inflammatory markers in the long term.
The small print. What these studies tell us right now is that taking saunas frequently makes the brain age more slowly, but it is not an absolute coincidence. That is to say, we cannot categorically affirm 100% that it is the heat itself that ‘stops’ dementia.
The reason for this is that going to the sauna 4 or 5 times a week is usually associated with a particular lifestyle, since it can be accompanied by several exercise sessions in a gym. Even having the time and resources to do so is usually linked to lives with lower stress levels, greater social interaction and better habits that can have a lot to say in Alzheimer’s.
Images | HUMM
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