Should I assume a steam room has the same effect? I prefer it over sauna
that would be interesting to study - let me follow up on this
Sauna effect on heart rate
231–240 of 244 posts
Re: Sauna effect on heart rate
#232Re: Sauna effect on heart rate
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the article: "..promotes sweating and therefore the elimination of toxins,.." That false statement really makes me unsure about the quality of the article. And I'm saying this as someone who uses sauna daily, when possible (I have one at home, and I grew up with saunas). "De-toxification" by sweating is a myth. Sweat glands are very simple organs (think salt on one side, which results in pressure, i.e. osmosis)…
Actually, this is why one shouldn't believe HN comments about medicine. The quality is this low. This is simply laughable and very easily checked out. Here is one random study: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00244-010-9611-5 > Many toxic elements appeared to be preferentially excreted through sweat Here is another quick one https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1155/2012/184745 > Sweating deserves c…
First, you don't need to go through any kind of "detox" regime. That's myth 1. The liver is where natural detoxing occurs, and the kidneys filters the rest. Don't focus on detox, instead focus on keeping your liver healthy (alcohol, fat..)
Secondly, the sweat glands don't have any kind of functionality outside of pressing water out of the body. The water may happen (depending on how small the molecule is) to bring other stuff with it, but that's hardly "detox". Just pee instead!
The whole "detox" trend is just that - a trend, a meme. Focus on other elements of health instead, eat healthy, and don't interrupt that with some tiktok "detox" scheme.
Re: Sauna effect on heart rate
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like we need an acronym for this kind of comment. I am pretty sure approximately 100% of HN posts now include at least one comment where someone, somehow, knows that an article is written by AI and resents it. For Claude we have the ever present "you are absolutely right" and this is like it's human mirror. Something like TLDR; but meaning "uhg, written by AI".
This article is a brilliant skewering of the 'em dash means LLM' heuristic as a broken trick deployed by those too-clever-by-half. 1. https://www.scottsmitelli.com/articles/em-dash-tool/
In fairness it's more than the em dash with this article. Read the first 3 bullet points.
Re: Sauna effect on heart rate
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, this is why one shouldn't believe HN comments about medicine. The quality is this low. This is simply laughable and very easily checked out. Here is one random study: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00244-010-9611-5 > Many toxic elements appeared to be preferentially excreted through sweat Here is another quick one https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1155/2012/184745 > Sweating deserves c…
First, you don't need to go through any kind of "detox" regime. That's myth 1. The liver is where natural detoxing occurs, and the kidneys filters the rest. Don't focus on detox, instead focus on keeping your liver healthy (alcohol, fat..) Secondly, the sweat glands don't have any kind of functionality outside of pressing water out of the body. The water may happen (depending on how small the molecule is) to bring ot…
Looking further into it, it seems that we simply don't know much about it, but as I pointed out earlier there is measurable waste disposal. You can imagine that precise knowledge is difficult to measure as it probably must be done separately by each waste product.
This review from 2019 states:
> However, the effectiveness of sweat glands as an excretory organ for homeostatic purposes is currently unclear as there are no comprehensive reviews on this topic.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23328940.2019.1...
It also mentions stuff similar to the things you wrote:
> The role of sweating to eliminate waste products and toxicants seems to be minor compared with other avenues of excretion via the kidneys and gastrointestinal tract; as eccrine glands do not adapt to increase excretion rates either via concentrating sweat or increasing overall sweating rate. Studies suggesting a larger role of sweat glands in clearing waste products or toxicants from the body may be an artifact of methodological issues rather than evidence for selective transport.
However, the problem here is that normal sweating is taken into account, but discussion here is about sauna/exercise in which case sweating waste products approach kidney flux rates (which is why people do those things to detoxify) - human can easily sweat 1.5L per hour in that case, which is comparable to daily pee volume, and there are measurements regarding sweat composition that show comparable waste excretion:
| Substance | Sweat (1h) | Urine (24h) |
| --------- | ---------- | ----------- |
| Urea | ~0.3–1.2 g | ~20–30 g |
| Lead | ~5–50 µg | ~10–50 µg |
| Arsenic | ~10–60 µg | ~20–200 µg |
Otherwise, I agree with you regarding focus - liver should be treated as sanctuary.
Re: Sauna effect on heart rate
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
PSA: if you like saunas but don't have easy access to one, those IR sauna bags you can buy online work great. Some people find it gross to basically sweat inside a powered sleeping bag, but if you don't mind that you can get the same effects of a sauna while lying on your (covered) couch and watching YouTube.
Wow, they look really quite dangerous. I wouldn’t want to pass out in one. Yeah you can pass out in a sauna too, but it feels easier to lurch for the door than to fight with a sleeping bag.
There's a timer shutoff. I know I can sit in mine for the full hour at the highest setting, so it's not anything my body can't handle. You can set it for less time at a lower heat setting, too.
Re: Sauna effect on heart rate
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm not arguing that excercise is unhealthy, it's just that its contribution to eventual longevity, is currently unknown I see numerous studies indicating that exercise contributes directly to eventual longevity, e.g.: https://www.ama-assn.org/public-health/prevention-wellness/m... https://www.acc.org/latest-in-cardiology/articles/2025/07/02... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3395188/
Thank you for the resources. I do wonder what the correlation is: is it only because of excercise, or at least partially also due to the fact those who can set aside time and effort (and often, money) to exercise, have a "better" life than those who don't? For example, high life expectancy in Madrid, and Switzerland are often attributed to having broad access to great healthcare and stress-free lifestyle(both), despi…
The equation is not simply "exercise" -> "live longer" via some unknown correlation.
Exercise increases cardiovascular health, mental well-being, etc. It should be pretty obvious that someone with less risk of heart failure will live longer on average (considering the #1 cause of death in the US...) I don't think you need to factor for every possible life circumstance to deduce that known-healthy activities improve longevity
Re: Sauna effect on heart rate
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually like them that hot. I look for 90+ saunas, and once was in one that claimed to be over 100. Although I have no idea how accurate that is. They're very bearable to me. But if they're not bearable, of course you should look for a sauna that's not quite as hot. Or at least stay low; the higher you sit, the hotter it is.
You can have over 100°C. The amount of steam is a crucial factor. Even over 100°C doesn't feel that hot if it's dry, but at higher temperatures the "löyly profile" often becomes quite harsh.
In my case 95°C was without any steam; it caused me burning skin sensation and I almost collapsed after just 5 minutes, whereas pre-covid I could do 3-4 rounds of steam with towels pushing steam at me at the topmost place and last up to 20 minutes before I needed to leave.
Re: Sauna effect on heart rate
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
If this was a peer-reviewed paper, it won't pass. - Is the wearable accurate enough to be sure that 3bpm is not a measurement fluke? - Why did you use the minimum heart rate value (which could be a measurement glitch) and did not compare a percentile (e.g., 2.5th lowest percentile)? - Were all assumptions for paired t-testing valid? How did you account for likely temporal correlations in the data (e.g., sauna could h…
> Is the wearable accurate enough to be sure that 3bpm is not a measurement fluke If the statistical tests show significance (and are valid), the answer to this question is yes. If you have enough data you can make strong conclusions even witwith imperfect hardware.
Not at all, if you have a lot of data coming from imperfect hardware (which can mean both a fixed bias and unknown variance), and you don't know the variance for plenty of practical reasons, you are left with a result that is statistically significant, but wrong
Re: Sauna effect on heart rate
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is contested by a significant number of contemporary running coaches (see, for example "Training for Uphill Athletes" by Steve Johnson or any of the life work of Phil Maffetone. HIIT is quite effective at something ; it's not clear that it is effective at all possible exercise goals (including, but not limited to, endurance running). Johnson in particular says that unless you've already narrowed the gap between…
Only z2 is for complete noobs. UA actually recommends 80/20 split between z1 and upper z3
What (or WHo) is UA ?