I would say booze rather than liquor. Liquor sounds too fancy.

Less doomscrolling, less bing watching of dumb Netflix series. Sensible working hours. And a society that doesn’t demand constant reachability when being off work.

It is not a luxury. It is living with common sense.

As an American: I soak in a hot tub for 30 minutes or more, at fairly high heat. At least a few times a week.

Sometimes posting on Hackernews.

It’s one of the high points of my day (the soak, not the posting).

This “I wonder” just screams lazy thinking.

Tar?

There’s a saying in Finland that foreign "saunas" are not true saunas at all, but rather just "untypically warm rooms".

The experiments where at 73°C which is a lot hotter than most gym/hotel/spa saunas I’ve been in outside Finland

Ever heard of hamam?

It is hard to study this in a place with less access to saunas.

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?!

Doing nothing for 30 minutes does not release cytokines.

Pine sap. You can get a schnapps of it, obviously.

you can sous vide beef and pork at a lower temperature than that

Also while 73°C is a proper sauna, there are plenty of hotter ones. 90°C is closer to what I'm used to at my apartment building's common sauna. I do take two breaks when I'm there for 30 mims though.

Hammam is not as hot as sauna and not as dry. Sauna's air temperatures can reach above 100 degress Celsius and humidity is usually relatively low (around 20%).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauna

Hammam's temperatures are around 40-50 degrees Celsius and humidity is close to 100%.

These are very different conditions, with very different body response.

Saunas are very cheap to buy and/or build, certainly within the budget of an average research grant.

The sauna at my gym is regularly over 180F and I do 30 minute sessions. It is a dry sauna however, no steam.

I was in a 110C sauna for 20 minutes today. Plus 15 minutes in a 70C one (hybrid infrared sauna). Max is 30 minutes at once at 70C. It does take some getting used to.

+1

"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...

Tar. Specifically wood tar,

I have not, what is it?

People with high socioeconomic status work much more and have less free time. It’s absurd to claim otherwise.

EDIT: please before being outraged at my comment have a look at actual evidence, e.g. Time and income poverty by Tania Burchardt; bottom decile compared with top decile has 12 hours more free time a week!

I nearly made a screen time comment but you are right, its facility availability and travel time issue more than anything

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

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.

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.

I wager you are not Finnish.

It does indeed increase internal temperature. Perhaps an artificial fever is part of it but I believe the science currently around heat shock proteins.

Vishnevski’s Liniment, which contains birch tar, was a common treatment for wound infections and burns in the Soviet bloc. However, this was something that individuals used because there was nothing else at hand.

Now, there are things like Fucidin, Polysporin and silver ointment for infected wounds and burns, respectively, that are safer and more effective.

Some people still swear by it, because “tradition” and probably some element of malignant patriotism too.

I only know how it’s used for psoriasis as part of the Goeckerman method [1] but allegedly there’s some general anti-inflammatory effect.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3735239/

Tar based, (anti)Dandruff Shampoo is still a thing

You "cannot fathom" the privilege your have or life experience you lack to believe this unconditionally.

Are you even living if you're not spending every single minute breathing and shitting your work and/or kids?

But it _will_ reduce cortisol, which is known to increase the likelihood of infections

Yes, if by hot bath you mean submerging yourself to neck level in 40ºC or above water for 20-30 minutes. There's no reason to believe any "heat therapy" modality is superior to another as long as you suffer equal heat stress.

For the record, if you're not acclimated, intense heat exposure is a lot more agonising than 30 minutes of exercise for less benefit. If you haven't experienced a properly tuned sauna in your life you are in for a ride. What's being studied in the literature is nothing like your standard hotel experience.

If you are a man, the hot water has a deleterious effect on your testicles' ability to make sperm. But so do saunas apparently.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23411620/

That one was 80-90C, which is a really hot sauna.

Almost certainly but most people don’t find it as enjoyable. Also the problem of keeping the bath hot enough for 20-30 mins.

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.

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.

Fresh parents without relatives to help out.

Hot tub, onsen, etc...

That's not antiseptic

How are you suffering equal heat stress from being submerged in moderately warm water and breathing very hot air? I could imagine quite different effects on airways and skin, for example. "Exactly the same effect" seems like the unexpected outcome here.

> intense heat exposure is a lot more agonising than 30 minutes of exercise for less benefit

Having to do absolutely nothing other than not leaving is quite different from pushing through a physical activity that can also easily be causing all kinds of discomfort.

Just to clarify - it’s a temporary effect - lasts for 3-6 months

In Finland, they are most likely using birch tar.

A steam sauna originating in Turkey, popular in many Arabic countries.

It's a multi-level sauna though, so it's "choose-your-own-temperature" (due to the hot air gradient), not everybody is there for the 120C experience.

Not even a wager. Just out of ~100C sauna after 20 mins straight. Pretty normal, and I'm not Finnish. In that area though.

Brazilian! XD

Hmm. So what about a 30 to 50 minute run wearing sweatpants / hoodie?

It's all about raising your core temperature, water transfers heat to the body much more efficiently than air, so water at 104F ends up raising your body core temperature as much as a dry sauna at 170F. I did some experimentation on this, I have access to a dry sauna at my gym and I track my HR and exertion levels, I did the same with the hot tub at home making sure the water temperature doesn't go below 104F and im fully submerged to the neck, 30 mins session in both cases. The graphs look pretty much identical, same HR uptrends. So as far as cardio effects and heat shock proteins I do believe they are the same, not sure if there could be any benefit to breathing dry hot air for the lungs, but so far most benefits from sauna come from raising core temp

> How are you suffering equal heat stress from being submerged in moderately warm water

by the rules of this universe, you can't survive being submerged in 40C water for a prolonged period of time (even 37C would kill you as well), because humans produce heat and if you can't dispose of it you'll overheat and be dead soon enough

Have you tried submerging yourself in moderately hot water, I wonder? And have you spent some time pondering the difference in heat transfer between convection and conduction?

Then I’m gonna start doing it on my death bed!

Nah, it's pine.

Finns go to sauna at least once every week and haven't gone extinct yet.

I’m afraid it’s you that’s disconnected from reality. I know it’s unfashionable to actually consider evidence, but please have a look at eg Time and income poverty by Tania Burchardt. Low income people have MUCH more free time.

And Swedish houses, particularly detached houses built or renovated the 70s. Typically used for storing boxes.

My problem with turkish style hammam is that unless it's extremely well maintained it often smells of mold. When I went to some nice hammams in turkey, I didn't have that problem but outside of turkey, it's often unbearable.

Not all saunas are the same though. Traditional hotbox-ed wood burning saunas and modern electrics are the same thing but also kinda not.

110C is not that unusual in the Nordics (although way above average, it's for tougher sauna goers). I've been in one. Not most people's cup of tea though, the experience is comparable to the opposite of a long cold plunge.

Still there are studies that regular sauna does decrease testosterone production. It's not hard to counter though, ice packs applied to testicles ( not direct ice, ice in a cloth) during sauna are effective for that purpose.

And maybe Finns don't go to sauna when they plan to conceive? Does Finland have a lower rate of unwanted pregnancies?

I don't think they used wood burning saunas in this study, basically all saunas today are electric.

110 is only on the top shelf, middle or lower is much cooler. For a dry sauna you really want to be well into the 100s to get a proper kick out of it.

Finland's fertility rate drove off a cliff in the 60's like in so many other countries. If sauna has an overall effect we wouldn't know as we've nothing to compare with -- going to sauna is rather universal and the tradition is ancient.