Study: Infrared Saunas as a Treatment for Lifestyle Diseases

Did you know that using an infrared sauna can effectively treat the hardening of arteries that accompanies high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, and obesity?

A lot of great information is buried inside scientific reports that are difficult to understand. We came across just such a study yesterday, performed at Kagoshima University in Japan in their Department of Cardiovascular, Respiratory and Metabolic Medicine.

While the study actually began with an effort to find out whether saunas could be an effective treatment for congestive heart failure (congestive heart failure simply means that your heart no longer has the ability to properly pump blood throughout the body), after finding out that a whole bunch of good things happen to people with weak hearts if they use an infrared sauna, they decided to try saunas on people with "lifestyle diseases" as well, since they all have a common factor: problems with the lining of the arteries. (When too much plaque builds up in your arteries, they respond by becoming inflamed and stiff, making it more difficult for your heart to pump blood through your body. This condition, called atherosclerosis, ultimately causes heart attacks, strokes, aneurysms, and poor circulation.)

Unfortunately, most scientists do not speak plain English in published reports. For example, here are the first three sentences of the study’s overview:

Systemic thermal therapy, such as taking a warm-water bath and sauna, induces systemic vasodilation. It was found that repeated sauna therapy (60°C for 15 min) improved hemodynamic parameters, clinical symptoms, cardiac function, and vascular endothelial function in patients with congestive heart failure. Vascular endothelial function is impaired in subjects with lifestyle-related diseases, such as hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes mellitus, obesity, and smoking.

The meaning of this is actually very simple: Taking a hot bath or sitting in a sauna causes your blood vessels to expand. Doing so over and over again (at 60° for 15 min) also improves the way your blood flows, how effective your heart pumps blood, and the way the outer lining of your arteries function (this is the lining that gets hard and clogged when you have high blood pressure, get too much fat in your blood, become diabetic or obese, or smoke).

Then they begin the study. This part is easy to understand:

We adopted sauna therapy as a thermal therapy for lifestyle-related diseases. Patients were placed in a 60°C sauna for 15 min using a far infrared–ray dry sauna system, followed by warmth with a blanket for an additional 30 min. In this condition, deep body temperature rises about 1°C and maintains during the treatment. To evaluate endothelial function we used a noninvasive ultrasound method.

So, they put the patients in a sauna for 15 minutes a day for two weeks. And what did they find?

Improved endothelial dysfunction… Since endothelial dysfunction represents an early stage of atherosclerosis, we think that sauna therapy could prevent atherosclerosis

And thus we have our conclusion. Just like with the congestive heart failure patients, when people with lifestyle diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, and smoking began using a sauna for 15 minutes a day, their hardened, plaque-filled arteries began to perform much better, suggesting that regular use of an infrared sauna may actually help prevent the hardening of arteries which causes heart attacks, strokes, aneurysms, and poor circulation.

[Study: Clinical Implications of Thermal Therapy in Lifestyle-Related Diseases]

*Hat tip to SaunaScape for pointing out this study