Saunas have been famous for their healing and relaxation qualities for centuries and scientific research continues to find more and more incredible health benefits for those who use one on a regular basis.
Nothing is more relaxing yet more invigorating than a deep sweat achieved via a good sauna or steam room session. After a long tiring day, nothing helps your muscles relax, body unwind, and mind de-stress quite like a sauna.
All it takes is a few minutes every so often and your body and mind will never have felt in better shape. Home saunas, from incaukltd.co.uk, are fantastic for long-term health, with the benefits of regular exposure to gentle penetrating heat renowned by experts across the world.
Here are the top 7 reasons why saunas are so beneficial to human health:
Improve cardiovascular performance
Sitting in a sauna will raise the core temperature of your body and the surface temperature of your skin, causing blood vessels to dilate and cardiovascular output to increase. Lifting your heart rate in such a manner before it is slowed again once your body cools down, often below normal levels, will help reduce the risk of cardiac events as well as all-cause mortality.
Reduce stress
Saunas are a blessing for the mind as much as the body and there is little that compares when it comes to unwinding and forgetting about the stresses of the day than coming home to your very own home sauna.
As if the heated luxury alone wasn’t enough to help you de-stress, the heat of a sauna actually helps to regulate the level of cortisol in our bodies, the hormone that we release when we are overly stressed. Lower cortisol levels results in better sleep quality and you will find it easier to relax outside of your sauna sessions.
Saunas help to cleanse the skin
Over the course of our day-to-day lives, our skin accumulates a layer of grime and toxins that clog our skin’s pores and can lead to illness and poor skin quality.
Saunas cause our bodies to produce a deep sweat, opening up our skins pores and washing away many of the impurities that have gathered there. Sweating also rinses bacteria from the epidermal layer and cleans out our sweat ducts, giving you a vibrant healthy looking glow.
Saunas help us lose weight
Whilst weight lost in the sauna itself over a single session is probably just water weight lost via sweating (make sure to rehydrate properly after a sauna session and take a bottle in with you to sip on throughout) it can be a valuable tool to help you along your weight loss journey.
Sauna use puts your body into calorie burning mode, in a similar manner to exercise and you may find that you burn a higher number of calories in the hours following a sauna session as a result. Sweating itself also requires a certain amount of energy that is gained through the burning of calories so you will certainly use more sitting in a sauna then you would sitting around anywhere else.
Note that saunas should be used a as supplement to and not as a replacement for regular exercise and good diet.
Saunas reduce the risk of cold and flu
Exposing your body to the heat and steam of a sauna or steam room prompts the production of white blood cells that are crucial to fighting off illnesses and killing viruses.
If you already have a cold, steam inhalation is a god-send as the steamy environment will help to clear congestion, clear sinuses, and soothe your sore throat. This is one of the many great things about having a steam room or sauna in the convenience of your own home as you wouldn’t want to attend your local spa or gym with a cold or the flu.
Lower risk of dementia
One of the more remarkable findings of scientific sauna study is that regular sauna use (47 times a week) for sessions of around 20 minutes a time, resulted in a significant reduction in the risk of Alzheimer’s and Dementia.
This is just one of the studies that demonstrates the power of saunas for both body and mind health.
Soothing sore muscles
There is a reason that all top end gyms have a sauna. Heating the body after a tough workout will dramatically reduce muscle aching by removing lactic acid that has built up.
Sending blood flowing around the body will also help to speed up the healing process for strained and pulled muscles as well as any other minor injuries that you might have picked up whilst exercising over the last few days.