You’ve likely heard the term before. Sauna Detox. What may just sound like another health trend bound to be trumped by whatever comes next isn’t that at all. There is a multi-century-long history of using saunas for their detoxifying qualities. It is lucky, then, that the health world is once again beginning to recognize the incredible value of taking on a sauna detox regimen. Not simply for skin health, sauna detox can make a major change in your life from inside to out. Learning about the benefits of sauna detox is the first step on a health journey that won’t simply make your day more relaxing but could just as well make your life more fulfilling. Let’s learn more about the health benefits of sauna detox.
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What is Sauna Detox?
A natural first question when approaching sauna detox is, well, what exactly is it? Lots of regions in several different languages use the term detox in reference to the sauna but luckily just about all of them refer to the same thing. Sauna detox means using the sauna for the benefit of detoxifying your body. Real detoxification, however, comes about after sauna use becomes a good and long-lasting habit. This means that someone who takes a sauna once isn’t fully taking advantage of all of the benefits that sauna detox can give the body and the mind.
So, as long as you are using the sauna regularly and getting your body sweaty, congratulations! You are already using the sauna for detoxification. It’s really that simple. The detoxification process is mainly concerned with shedding toxins from the body by means of sweating. While sweating is the most commonly known method of detox, that doesn’t tell the whole story of sauna detox. As we’ll explore in this article, sauna detox is as much an external as an internal process.
How Can Sauna Detox Improve Your Overall Health?
There are several main ways that sauna detox can boost your overall health and wellness. Depending on the reason you use the sauna or what activities you pair your sauna visit with, certain elements of sauna detox may show up stronger in your body compared to others.
Naturally Release Toxins from the Body
This is the reason most of us are here: yes, using the sauna helps release the toxins in our body that we hold during our daily life. Our bodies can take in toxins for any number of reasons and toxins themselves account for so much of what we interact with on a quotidian basis. Everything that we take into our body from air to water to even food can have traces of toxins which our body will then try to sort out as efficiently as possible. For example, those who live in large cities are exposed to high levels of air pollution and this pollution is processed by the lungs as a toxin.
But in our body’s toxins from our lungs or stomachs to either the digestive tract or sometimes the liver, small particles and molecules of toxin have a tendency to stick specifically to our fat cells. The largest concentration of fat cells is the thin layer that surrounds the skin and is in close proximity to our sweat glands. Each and every time that we get a sustained sweat going, our body lets off some of those toxins.
While the effects tend to start small, by continually flushing those toxins off of your outer layer of skin, you may quickly find that both your complexion as well as your general mood could improve.
Boost Your Immune System
By taking part in sauna detox, you have a real chance to boost the responsiveness of your immune system. This means that more than simply detoxifying your body, you are also preparing your body to hold off any kind of incoming diseases.
Whenever you step into a sauna, your body will instantly start working harder. This harder work manifests in several ways, visible and invisible. One of the invisible ways that our bodies start to insulate themselves from the effects of extreme heat is the creation of heat-shock proteins. The body begins to make these proteins whenever the temperature outside the body goes far above normal body temperature. Heat-shock proteins functionally allow our organs to run for longer and more efficiently during extended times in the heat but these proteins are also incredibly helpful for maintaining the immune system. Heat-shock proteins that don’t naturally get used up by the body’s organs naturally recycle into the immune system and integrate into your body’s natural protection against germs and other outside mal-forces.
The more frequently you use the sauna, the more efficiently your body will make heat-shock proteins. This means that the longer you are able to keep sauna use as a habit, the more likely your body will be able to hold off the next disease that comes your way. But, of course, everything ought to be considered within reason. It is very easy to go overboard with sauna use. While heat-shock proteins are indeed incredibly good for your overall health and internal detox, that doesn’t mean that you should stay in the sauna for longer than you feel comfortable. Remember, heat-shock proteins are your body’s method of protection. As soon as you start to feel noticeably thirsty or too hot, heat-shock proteins won’t be strong enough to help you anymore. The only thing you can do at that point is to step out of the sauna, take a deep breath, and take it easy for a bit.
Flush Out the Pores
Strictly speaking, the most visible benefit to using the sauna is likely the gains in health for your pores. Just by naturally passing the day, our pores either take in or let off natural oils and substances which tend to block them. If pores remain blocked for too long, this is an easy way for blemishes and pimples to pop up out of nowhere. While skin blemishes are clearly a hindrance to beauty, they also constitute a real health hazard. Pimples and blemishes are an example of overexerted pores which is much more likely to suffer further infection compared to normal pores.
So, by spending time in the sauna and detoxifying your body, you are giving your pores the space they need to breathe and aerate their passages. And as explained above, when you start sweating from your pores, it’s not only sweat coming out but also the body’s toxin build-up which also comes streaming out in the heat of the sauna.
While the pores are naturally tuned to clear themselves just by passively existing, it is more than possible for them to function even better when used frequently. The more often you engage your pores with a good sweat, the more prepared they will be for the following session. This means that any other time when you benefit from sweating, like exercise, sauna detox can make a big difference in your ability to reliably get a sweat going.
Sauna Detox is Good for Heart Health
This is another great example of the invisible benefits of sauna detox that happen to all of us after getting a good sauna habit going. Spending time in the sauna is incredibly good for your heart’s overall health and wellness. The logic goes like this: once a person gets into a sauna and their body recognizes that the sauna is far above normal resting body temperature, the body’s several protective mechanisms start working harder. This, however, doesn’t imply that you are in any danger by using the sauna. The body’s protective mechanisms can start working for any reason that you leave your normal resting state. Even taking a brisk walk up the stairs can get your nervous system engaged. But once your body starts to work as it does in the sauna, the heart starts to beat slightly faster compared to its resting rate. This raise in heart rate is incredibly helpful for detox at large. Every time that your heart is engaged and kicks up its rate thanks to either exercise or other healthy efforts like the sauna, this boosts the body’s ability to clear out vessels and veins. The heart is an incredibly strong organ and simply by kicking up its rate of action, it is more than possible to functionally detoxify your veins and vessels from plaque. Of course, it is unreasonable to expect one visit to the sauna to make a lasting difference in your overall heart health. The only way to make a lasting difference in your heart health is through a dedicated regiment of exercise and a healthy diet. But using the sauna is a great way to aid yourself on the journey of detoxing and improving the overall health of your heart.
Using the Sauna for Mental Detox
While all of the benefits and health gains we’ve discussed so far have to do with the health of your body itself, what about the health of your mind and brain? Luckily, there are several high-quality studies which show that spending time in the sauna over an extended period can have trackable and real effects on your outward mental health.
The reason that saunas can lead to a mental detox has to do with the concept of homeostasis. While we’ve talked about it in abstracts thus far, whenever the body heats up like when in the sauna, the body begins to work back toward a concept called homeostasis. This means the optimal and resting temperature as well as the general state of your body to promote good living. The nervous system is usually the first part of the body to realize that we have left homeostasis and it then quickly sends signals to the brain saying exactly that: “We’ve left homeostasis and we need to get back.” Getting back means engaging our sweat glands and very often also means producing heat-shock proteins. All of these efforts go on with the ultimate goal of keeping the body cool. And once your body successfully deploys all of its systems and you are sweating well, this functionally means that your body has completed its function well. In response to this, the nervous system will then send out follow-up signals in the form of dopamine which generally makes our brains feel delighted or even optimistic. Releasing this chemical in a natural way is one of the best ways that we can maintain our happiness and spending time in the sauna is one of the best ways to achieve this homeostasis gain consistently.
Each time that your body chemically resets your mood, this is essentially a mental detox in the world of saunas. So while your body is clearing out toxins on a strictly physical level and equally detoxifying your arteries, know well that your mind is also on the road to quality detox simply by spending time in the sauna.
Frequently Asked Questions About Sauna Detox
Even after learning all about the benefits of a good sauna detox, it’s reasonable to still have some follow-up questions. This is the time and space to address the most common of those questions. The objective above all is to make your detox relaxing and repeatable, so note well these following concerns.
While Type of Sauna is Best for Sauna Detox?
The good news is that each and every type of sauna is great for engaging sauna detox systems. There are, however, one or two benefits that may appear stronger in certain types of saunas. Let’s get into those small differences here.
If you are using a traditional wood-burning sauna, there is a fair chance that your heart as well as your nervous system will be more actively involved in your sauna detox. This is because traditional wood-burning saunas actually burn slightly hotter than other types of saunas like steam rooms. Further, several of the major studies on the mental health benefits of saunas are carried out specifically in saunas and not in steam rooms. So, while the body is engaged in a similar way between saunas and steam rooms, there is still good reason to believe that spending time in a proper wood-burning sauna will have a more definitive effect on your mental outlook.
Steam rooms, however, are not without their key benefits! Specifically, steam rooms are remarkably humid. Some steam rooms can even border on 100% humidity. This high concentration of water vapor in the air does two things to the skin. The first thing is that the body starts to sweat, in fact, more intensely. This means that even though the temperature of a steam room is always lower than that of a traditional wood-burning sauna, you can expect to take fuller advantage of all of the detox advantages tied to sweating directly. For example, you are more likely to sweat more in a sauna and this means it is equally likely for you to give off toxins at a faster rate too. The second key gain that steam rooms offer people seeking sauna detox is that spending time in a steam room also gives your pores more aeration. The water in the air in a steam room reacts very well with our pores and actually restores the moisture will ultimately make the process of releasing toxins more smooth. But, of course, the moisture in the air hydrating our pores is no meaningful replacement for the water that we drink. Just by spending time in a steam room, you aren’t meaningfully restoring the amount of water in your system. The only way to do that is to take a real drink of water.
How Long Should I Spend in the Sauna for Detox?
Like most things in life, everyone arrives at their best point at different times. This means that there, indeed, is not a minimum amount of time that people must spend in the sauna in order to genuinely begin a detox. The key indicator of whether or not your detox has really kicked off is when you start sweating. For some, this may only be a couple of minutes while for others this could be closer to eleven or twelve minutes. The one key number you ought to be well aware of when spending time in the sauna is the upper time limit. People should never spend more than 20 minutes in the sauna for one continuous session without a water break. In 20 minutes, the body has already given off a likely quite significant amount of water.
Conclusions of Sauna Detox
Taking on sauna detox is likely one of the easiest and least-stressful types of detox that you can take on. This is for the simple reason that sauna detox happens without your direct control. Simply by passing some quality time in some of the hot halls of a sauna, your body is detoxing at a level that will have genuine effects on your health and well-being.
