Sauna effect on heart rate(tryterra.co) |
Sauna effect on heart rate(tryterra.co) |
Editorialized title is wrong. n=256
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 < 0.05, Cohen's d > 0.2 threshold for "meaningful effect." Anything below d=0.2 we don't report as a finding.
What we measured: minimum nighttime HR, max and average HR, HRV, activity minutes and distance, menstrual cycle phase (for female subset).
What we found: - On sauna days, minimum nighttime HR drops ~3 bpm (~5%) vs. the same user's non-sauna days. - Effect survives controlling for activity level. It's not "sauna users just exercised more that day." - Strongest hypothesis: elevated parasympathetic tone from the post-sauna cooling phase carries into sleep. Consistent with heat-stress physiology literature. - Sex difference: for women, the nighttime HR effect only crosses the d > 0.2 threshold during the luteal phase. No meaningful effect during the follicular phase. We didn't expect this; worth replicating.
What we can't control for: - Sauna type (dry / infrared / steam), duration, temperature. Not captured. - Dose-response. We don't know session length per user. - Timing of sauna relative to sleep. - Reverse causation: people may sauna on days they already feel recovered. - Selection: wearable users who bother logging sauna are a health-conscious cohort.
What surprised us: the effect is larger than what we see for comparable-intensity exercise days. If you treat nighttime HR as a parasympathetic recovery signal, sauna beats a moderate workout on the same user. Not what I'd have predicted.
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't in the medical field and so could be wrong.
My take is that your heart and lungs are working out, even if your body is not. Do you get the same benefits as going for a run or bike ride for a comparable amount of time? no, since your limbs don't get fit, but your heart and lungs do.
Agreed on the long-term effect too: doing a study on long term health is a completely different story
There is a substantial body of existing research to peruse about the impact of regular sauna use on health outcomes, much of it from Finland given the prevalence of sauna usage there allowing for larger sample sizes. It's a body of evidence rather than one knock-out experimental design.
For example: body temp increases, heart rate increases, and we sweat. But the muscles aren't "engaged", consuming stuff (glycogen, etc.) while doing sauna.
There could also be sauna benefits that exercise does not impart, or is less likely to do so: sweating greater than exercise could lead to excess excretion of plastics, carcinogens, etc.
Running in mild/cold temps we do little sweating (unless long duration exercise), whereas every darn sauna at sufficiently high temps we are going to be sweating.
Nordic people tend to live a long life even though they historically didn't have access to fresh vegetables or fruit and brutal winters (and darkness) prohibited excercise.
ps. I'm not arguing that excercise is unhealthy, it's just that its contribution to eventual longevity, is currently unknown. Whereas anectodal evidence of saunas (being around longer than "excercise"), seems to work.
When I'm in my dry sauna and really pushing myself with the heat and steam off the hot rocks, I basically have to mediate to stay in beyond 15 minutes because every part of my mind starts telling me to get out and cool down.
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) and can't do anything of the sort. You'll be much better off peeing.
Saunas probably have good health effects. I'm certainly happy as a sauna user. But there's no de-toxification in this.
Actually, the rate of blood filtration by kidney glomerulae is pretty constant and independent of the amount of urine in your bladder. Except if you overflow to the point of drowning your kidney of course.
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 consideration for toxic element detoxification.
Its even observable directly - just go next to the heavy smoker during exercise.
While it might be less than dedicated organs, the skin is the largest organ by far.
Ofc, the topic is debated like every single thing in medicine, but calling it a myth is nonsence.
How did you control for activity level? Do you have similar BPM plots for the different situations (sauna+exercise, sauna+no exercise, no sauna + exercise, no sauna + no exercise) for a visual representation?
> minimum nighttime HR drops ~3 bpm (~5%)
What wearables were used? These devices don't usually have enough precision to reliably detect ~3bpm changes. Also, the measurements are sensitive to skin, blood flow changes and temperature. How do you know the difference doesn't come from different sensor behavior after sauna?
For large sample averages this doesn't really matter.
- 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 have an effect also on a night 2 days after it, same for exercise)? - How can you define a "comparable-intensity exercise day" if you don't know the characteristics of the sauna?
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.
- How was the controlling for the other factors done? A linear model?
- What were the sauna vs non-sauna baseline HRs in fig 1? Could you plot raw averages?
- Was the min HR explicitly computed during the night (in Fig 2), or was it assumed min HR occurs during the night?
- Reporting only significant results is not prudent even with multiple comparisons corrections, please report all tests made
> 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...
I know n=1, but when I started sleeping with only a sheet, my heart rate was at my lowest - my Apple Watch would ping multiple times a night because it was below 40.
Can’t comment about being cold anymore because these days I sleep on top of a spiked mat which makes my back feel like it’s on fire for the whole night.
Exercise, over time, should lower the baseline (to a point). I’d think this would have the more desirable long term benefits.
One can do both, of course, but when people see headlines like this they often jump to the conclusion that sauna can replace exercise, because that’s what they want to believe.
WAT? As far I as know there is no such connection between workouts and saunas in Finland, nor in Japan
The sauna might be acting like any other drug. There are a lot of drugs that will lower nighttime heart rate. Does that mean those drugs are healthier for you?
Drugs lowering your resting heart rate do not indicate this in the same way.
So a hot shower before bed is actually great for sleep, because you get the increased skin temp, relaxed muscles from the warm water, and general relaxation because showers are (for many people) relaxing.
Conversely, when the temperature drops, your body directs blood away from your hands and legs because core has higher priority for survival
It increases blood flow in your legs, which lowers your blood pressure -> lights out faster.
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.
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.
Over how long of a time period?
Is having a lower night time heart rate the core goal of exercise? Is it even a goal at all? Or is it just an indicator of other goals being reached? I'm genuinely curious, I wasn't aware that the number mattered, more than what that number actually represents.
From the author, "Strongest hypothesis: elevated parasympathetic tone from the post-sauna cooling phase carries into sleep"
AKA, they use it as a proxy to infer a deeper state of rest and improved recovery state. Says nothing about the fatigue generated from using a sauna.
Maybe the conclusion is correct, or maybe not, but as written the methodology is under specified, statistics are not supported, and there too many confounders not addressed. One should not take anything from this without a better write up. Just misunderstanding what n= means is a huge flag.
Since the author is here, I have to ask: Why a blog post and not an actual paper? Why spray this onto the internet without validating the work? Or, conversely, why not caveat the work as exploratory data science?
Also, my samsung watch can measure stress (whatever it means). It always shows the very, very minimal stress for me. The only time that I have been stressed was the day that I spent a bit too much on the steam room.
Zone 2 is great but the best health outcomes are from people who do high intensity exercise interspersed with zone 2 exercise.
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 your "first" and "second" (anaerobic) threshold to 5%, HIIT really doesn't make much sense because you're "aerobically challenged" and need to work on that first, which he believes (with significant evidence) is best done almost entirely in zone 2.
He also notes that someone like Eliud Kipchoge can spend 2 hours running 4:30 min/mile pace, so that is clearly within his aerobic range, but that Kipchoge would never and should never spend much time training at that pace because of the load it would put on his system. So the zones that are used for training purposes depend significantly on the current fitness level of the athlete.
I have used HIIT effectively to get myself out of certain fitness/training "ruts", but I think that the zone 2 folks have somevery cogent and coherent observations and advice.
https://cptsd.sites.umassd.edu/bryan-johnson-and-microplasti...
For your benefit: my max is somewhere around 175, maybe 180, which is high for my age.
I'm also unusual in that even my max heart rate doesn't lead to lactic acid buildup, for what it's worth.
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".
Finland life expectancy for 2023 was 81.69.
Norway life expectancy for 2025 was 83.23.
Japan life expectancy for 2025 was 85.27.
Sumo wrestlers in Japan have a life expectancy between 60-65 years or so - significantly lower than the other japanese.
I am not saying that sauna has no positive effect at all, but I would reason that the number one risk factor is ... weight. And I'd also still say that exercise is correlated here, if only secondary, e. g. you may be able to maintain better bodily functions if you exercise, if you can avoid injury. I do not think that going into the sauna rather than e. g. light running for 5 to 10 minutes or so, is anywhere near on the same level.
TLDR: regular sauna seems to have no effect on my resting HR. Extended high HR cardio definitely does.
I became a huge fan of sauna time (15-20 minutes at approx 175F/80C... I would prefer a bit warmer, but I had no control). It was like shower time, or meditation time (which I never took time for). Great thinking time. I'd use it after a workout, but I would also use it on days without a workout.
I've been tracking some stats via my Garmin watch for a few years, and I've identified some patterns - particularly regarding resting HR.
The most significant reducer of resting heart rate for me is running (5k). Periods where my training includes regular 5k runs cause my resting HR to drop by 5-8 bpm.
Most of my training is resistance, although in the last 6 months I've added in a lot more cardio. Stairs and rowing do not seem to noticeably reduce my resting HR. Running definitely does. But to be fair, maybe it's not the running but rather the active HR I'm sustaining. Despite trying to stay in the aerobic zone, running always pushes me to zones 4 and 5. So 50% of my 30 minutes of exercise will be in my max zone. With stairs or rowing, I can keep my HR in aerobic and threshold.
Some stats:
When I'm off my fitness routine, living life as a typical person, my resting HR is 65. When I'm on a resistance fitness routine, my resting HR is 58. When I'm also running, the rHR is 51.
If I eat a heavy meal too close to bedtime, my rHR is +15. If I drink a lot of alcohol before sleeping, rHR can be +20! Food + alcohol = WTF. Probably not good.
Most of the studies I've seen on improvements in blood plasma volume from passive heat are usually done with sessions in saunas with temperatures > 150 degrees F (60 C). Steam rooms usually only get up to 120F (~49C) even though the humidity probably makes it feel warmer.
Copying and pasting some of my reply to another comment above
I've got the opposite problem: saunas don't seem to be able to make me sweat anymore, so I'm looking for the hottest saunas I can find.
For example, if I've been totally sedentary for the whole day (and my feet are chilly+blue), a body temperature as low as 101F is unbearable. But if I've been actively moving around all day (and my feet are warm and pink), I only start getting uncomfortable at a body temperature around 103.5F-104F.
This also seems to correlate over a longer timespan re: exercise habits, consumption habits, sickness, etc.
If your skin feels hot my guess would be that the steaming effect might be disrupted by the water getting evaporated faster than before, and the circulation of air also affects the skin feel (that’s why a certain seating position can make sauna unbearable). You could also try to just turn it on at the lowest setting and see if it changes anything. Maybe the stones have gotten so old that old heat settings have sneakily turned unbearable.
Also IMO your body fat/water/lean muscle ratio may play a role. I once lost 5 kg due to Influenza A and all my sport achievements as well as sauna endurance were gone
It's possible that Covid had nothing to do with it, and your body is simply changing with age. It's depressing, but it happens!
I think where I read about this was Why We Sleep from Matthew Walker. But he suggests just washing your face with warm water, as opposed to a shower.
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.
For example, if I do a week of 3x30 minute swssions at Zone 2, my fitness is going to plummet. But if I do one at Zone 2, one at tempo, and one set of intervals, I'm at least maintaining fitness.
Would 5 hours at zone 2 be better? Absolutely. But I dont always have the time.
If your long term average is 180 minutes a week of cardio, you're not an advanced endurance athlete. You're probably middle of the pack in the fun run.
No offense, that's still admirable, but you can use your time much better than just doing only zone 2.
It seems you ask participants to log if they went to sauna. Out of curiosity, why is it not simple to also ask for a type?
Precision (inverse of variance) of estimate of mean increases directly proportional to number of samples (given some assumptions that very likely hold here). If you have measurement standard deviation of say 10 bpm, with 100 measurements you have mean estimate standard deviation of 10/sqrt(100) = 1 bpm.
But you can't really assume that the estimate of the mean represents the real value. For example, if the sensor is equally likely to show 80 or 81 BPM when the real heartrate is 80.7, the mean estimator will be biased.
> with 100 measurements
Also, wearables aren't taking 100 measurements of the BPM at a given point in time. I think the highest frequency they usually have is 1 second measurement interval. So they don't really have a lot of measurements for each point in time.
> mean estimate standard deviation
That's the standard deviation of the mean of the values. Doesn't imply that the standard deviation of the values themselves will go to zero.
> I don't understand what you mean by that.
That as a rule of thumb, you should not assume that repeating measurements will give you more precision than what the tool can offer. E.g., trying to measure down to milimeters with a ruler that has only 1cm marks will not really work well.
Research from Earric Lee and/or Jari Laukkanen from this past decade will have clinical trials with controlled groups rather than just long-term population tracking. There are within-Finland studies comparing high-risk Finns who use the sauna 4 to 7 times a week against high-risk Finns who use it only once a week, showing a clear effect (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25705824/). Here is a non-randomized experiment showing a dose-response (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29048215/).
Those are just indications of information available. I would also argue that while of course randomized experiments are ideal, it is a mistake to dismiss all other forms of evidence so readily, especially with such preponderance of it.
Also, the fact that there are practically no sauna related studies outside of Nordic populations is suspicious too. I bet that with those hazards ratios a lot of people have tried to study the effects more, it’s suspicious there’s practically nothing out there.
Edit: to put it into some numbers, per one study[1] Finnish sauna sessions were on average at 75.9°C with SD 9.9°C. If we assume normal distribution, that means that more than 97 % of sauna sessions are at < 95°C.
Bias is different from precision. If both conditions have the same bias, their difference is still unbiased.
> Also, wearables aren't taking 100 measurements of the BPM at a given point in time. I think the highest frequency they usually have is 1 second measurement interval. So they don't really have a lot of measurements for each point in time.
I did not mean taking multiple measurements in succession. Those are likely to have correlated noise, meaning the assumptions do not hold. But between participants measurement noise is very unlikely to be correlated.
> That as a rule of thumb, you should not assume that repeating measurements will give you more precision than what the tool can offer. E.g., trying to measure down to milimeters with a ruler that has only 1cm marks will not really work well.
If you quantize so much that you have no variance in the measurements, then sure. But watches typically have 1 bpm quantization, which is fine at the scale of variation in HR.
If you have independent error in measurements and quantization that gives you variance in measurement, you very much can assume repeating measurements will give you more precision than the tool can offer. This is how e.g. particle physics (and many many other fields of science) is done.
Not really, and I wouldn’t assume that when the condition under study can also affect how the measurement is taken.
> If you quantize so much that you have no variance in the measurements, then sure. But watches typically have 1 bpm quantization, which is fine at the scale of variation in HR.
At the scale of variation in HR in general yes, but not if the difference you’re trying to measure is in the range of 3 BPM.
> If you have independent error in measurements and quantization that gives you variance in measurement
That’s a big if. I am not confident we can claim that the errors are independent in this case, using sauna or not can affect how the sensor measures BPM.
Put differently, relying on self reporting for any sort of status from people is just not a reliable methodology.
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...
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), despite living a relatively "unhealthy" lifestyle, at least in Madrid. Eating fried food everyday, little exercize among elderly (at least if you don't count walking to the bar). Those 85 year+ Madrileños probably had their last formal exercise when they had to do their military service back in the day.
As in the case of top athletes, in your second article, is their longevity due to heavy exercise, or kind of, "despite it", and at least partially due to their accumulated wealth, health-conscious mindset plus the ability to afford a stress-free life?
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
Not exercising as in sports and not exercising, period, are very different. If you look at the American blue zone, those people are certainly exercising; daily nature walks are baked into their theology.
So it could be that exercise helps keep this elasticity, the same way maybe sauna does? Also antioxidants from vegetables etc.
So it could be that it is a _factor_, but definitely needs way more study.
I am also not in the medical field, but I think arteriosclerosis is a well known link for cardiovascular disease.
That's to say, many cultures from around the globe have developed similar activities that heat the body.
https://www.science.org/content/article/do-blue-zones-suppos...
Endurance athletes obsessively track VO2 max, basically your body's ability to consume oxygen during workouts, and it certainly doesn't improve with sauna training.
It's like asking "if you only did puzzles, would you be smarter?" Well, in a way, yes, but if you actually want to compete with someone with a good education you have to read.
Same with physical exercise. It puts a lot of different stresses on your body that saunas don't. The question isn't "do saunas make you physically fit," because they don't. The question is "for people who don't want to exercise, does sauna training alone meaningfully extend your healthspan?" I'm guessing the answer is "a little but not enough," but I'm not sure.
Yucatan is not the same as Dubai in Summer.
Your body is under heat shock trying to keep up in a Sauna (that isn't considered warm until 60°). Versus a healthy body CAN keep up in 40°.
The Yucatan equivalent of a Sauna is more like doing hard labor on a roof on a sunny day with no breeze.
Please ignore my comment, though I will leave it to make the below comments less confusing.
Original: You don't want to "work out" your heart though. Cardiac hypertrophy is a bad thing.
The benefit of exercise is that your muscles become more oxygen-efficient. Your heart endures some stress now, so that it can work less in the future.
If heat training is better than another interval session remains to be seen but it seems a lot of smart people believe it's worth it nowadays.
Smoke saunas a bit less, electric or wood stove saunas no issue. It's nice to take a breather once in a while but I'd honestly have no issues sitting in a 80-90 deg sauna for an hour as long as I have enough to drink with me.
One time I sat in the sauna for six hours with a few breaks between with a group of friends shooting the shit. I had a headache the next morning but I blame it on the Jallu and not the sauna.
Eccentric hypertrophy (athlete's heart) is the positive adaptation resulting from training the heart. The heart has a lower resting rate and is more efficient at pumping blood. It returns to normal size if training stops.
You'll never reach a state of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (the bad kind of hypertrophy) with exercise. Its cause is usually genetic.
That additional oxygen needs to come from somewhere. Endurance training at the same time trains the heart to deliver more oxygen to the periphery; the primary mechanism is increased cardiac stroke volume.
Cardiac hypertrophy isn't a "bad thing". This is completely contextual. What you don't want, for example, is pathological hypertrophy from things like hypertension, or exclusive left ventricular hypertrophy without associated increase in chamber size.
The heart is very complex. You 100% should exercise it.
Afaict, the grand parent poster is just very wrong. You do want to cause acute stresses to your heart (cardiovascular exercise) to get it work better.
Sources?
(attributed to Bertolt Brecht)
If 10mins feels too much, do less.
Will fixing up your radiator fix your car? Maybe, if the radiator was the problem, but there's a lot of other stuff inside a car to work on, too.
Your body evolved under the expectation that it would be stressed in numerous different ways, but those stressors can all be avoided in the modern era. If you want to most reliably recreate those stresses you need to do cardio and resistance training.
Tamales, Cochinita (roasted pork with herbs), salbutes, trancas. Everything of course cooked in Lard. With CocaCola on the side.
So yeah, that's a strong point.