[flagged]
Sounds like it doesn't have to be wet to be a sauna.
> A sauna is a room or building designed as a place to experience dry or wet heat sessions or an establishment with one or more of these facilities.
Sauna effect on heart rate
11–20 of 244 posts
Re: Sauna effect on heart rate
#12Author here. Methodology upfront because I'd ask the same things: Data: daily records from wearable users who logged sauna sessions via connected apps. Within-person design — each user is their own control, comparing their own sauna-day nights against their own non-sauna-day nights. No cross-user comparisons. Stats: paired t-tests, FDR-corrected p 0.2 threshold for "meaningful effect." Anything below d=0.2 we don't r…
The most important thing you didn't measure: does this affect long term health in the same way exercise it known to. That is can I put a TV in my sauna and watch that for an hour every day instead of getting out and exercising - yet get the same better long term health outcomes? My current guess is no. That is this improves a marker for good health without improving health. However this is a guess by someone who isn'…
I don’t think the TV in the sauna will have long term health outcomes.
Re: Sauna effect on heart rate
#13[flagged]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauna#Modern_saunas
> In a typical Finnish sauna, the temperature of the air, the room, and the benches are above the dew point even when water is thrown on the hot stones and vaporized. Thus, they remain dry. In contrast, the sauna bathers are at about 60–80 °C (140–176 °F), which is below the dew point, so that water is condensed on the bathers' skin. This process releases heat and makes the steam feel hot.
Re: Sauna effect on heart rate
#14Author here. Methodology upfront because I'd ask the same things: Data: daily records from wearable users who logged sauna sessions via connected apps. Within-person design — each user is their own control, comparing their own sauna-day nights against their own non-sauna-day nights. No cross-user comparisons. Stats: paired t-tests, FDR-corrected p 0.2 threshold for "meaningful effect." Anything below d=0.2 we don't r…
The most important thing you didn't measure: does this affect long term health in the same way exercise it known to. That is can I put a TV in my sauna and watch that for an hour every day instead of getting out and exercising - yet get the same better long term health outcomes? My current guess is no. That is this improves a marker for good health without improving health. However this is a guess by someone who isn'…
Agreed - one is muscular/metabolic demand, the other (sauna) is thermoregulation.
Agreed on the long-term effect too: doing a study on long term health is a completely different story
Re: Sauna effect on heart rate
#15[flagged]
There are different kinds of saunas. Nobody gets into a 90c humid sauna, that would just kill you.
Oh I can assure you, millions people in the northern europe do exactly this ;)
EDIT: I guess it depends on your definition of "humid". But 90C and regular water infusions are pretty common sauna conditions.
Re: Sauna effect on heart rate
#16> Motivated to understand the immediate physiological response to saunas, we looked at the same-day effects across ~59,000 daily records from 256 users.
Editorialized title is wrong. n=256
Re: Sauna effect on heart rate
#17Re: Sauna effect on heart rate
#18Author here. Methodology upfront because I'd ask the same things: Data: daily records from wearable users who logged sauna sessions via connected apps. Within-person design — each user is their own control, comparing their own sauna-day nights against their own non-sauna-day nights. No cross-user comparisons. Stats: paired t-tests, FDR-corrected p 0.2 threshold for "meaningful effect." Anything below d=0.2 we don't r…
It would be very interesting if lowering night heart rate only happens with certain sauna type. > What we can't control for: - Sauna type (dry / infrared / steam), duration, temperature. Not captured Could probably capture humidity/duration/temperature using a sensor in wearable device...
we agree - but thats not that simple :)
Re: Sauna effect on heart rate
#19n= traditionally refers to the number of participants, not the number of data points.
The headline claim is very misleading for anyone who thought there were 59,000 people in this data set.
The absolute difference is also small. Small enough that the effect might be attributable to something secondary, such as sauna users consuming more water in recovery and being more hydrated. Heart rate has a relationship with hydration status.
Re: Sauna effect on heart rate
#20[flagged]
No, it seems saunas have very low relative humidity except for briefly after you splash the hot rocks. "Relative" is the key term there: the absolute humidity is high, but the hot air can accept much more H20 and it will suck moisture off your body. So it is a dry environment according to humans.
According to this company plus some sketchy math I just did, the relative humidity can swing between 15% and 40%: all over the place, but generally pretty dry. https://www.vaisala.com/en/blog/2024-12/can-you-handle-heat-...