[Rhonda]: Having been in Finland now for a few days and having the privilege of going
to The Finish Sauna Society and also hanging out with some other friends here in Finland,
I've had a chance to experience the sauna culture, the traditional smoke saunas, and
also the other, you know, dry saunas and the Löyly.
[Jari]: Löyly, yeah.
[Rhonda]: But what I also noticed is that almost a 100% of the Finnish people that use
the sauna, after the sauna, like to go run into a jump into a cold lake or the Baltic
or something cold, very, very cold.
And they do this, you know, several times.
I mean, it seems to be a very normal part of Finnish sauna culture.
Is that accurate, you would say?
[Jari]: Yeah, yeah.
Many people are using.
I know it, yeah, yeah.
[Rhonda]: So I have a question on whether, you know, what is the safety?
Is there any safety issues?
Because I've read a couple of case reports where because you're going from hot sauna
where vasodilation is occurring and then you're going into cold where vasoconstriction is
occurring, norepinephrine is being released and vasoconstriction is occurring.
There have been a couple of documented cases of, like, coronary artery spasm, I think it's
called.
Maybe do you think there is a potential risk of going from hot to cold in terms of people
with maybe a pre-existing heart disease or something?
[Jari]: Yeah, among those patients who have coronary heart disease and, especially if
it's not stable condition then you have to be very careful.
You cannot do that because there can be a spasm in the coronary artery, so it can be
harmful, yeah.
[Rhonda]: But for the most part of the population, it seems to be pretty safe.
I mean, I've done it before, and it feels really good.
I mean, you feel amazing after doing the hot and cold.
Also interested in if it blunts any of the positive effects, but what's interesting is
I've seen that cold also activate heat shock proteins because heat shock proteins are part
of the stress response, you know?
It's called hormetic stress.
Are you familiar with hormesis?
It's like a little bit of good stress where it's not too much stress, but it's enough
stress to activate all of these genetic pathways that help you deal with stress.
Well, heat shock proteins are one of those genetic pathways.
And so cold is also a little bit of a hormetic stress, and exercise activates heat shock
proteins as well.
But heat robustly activates them, very robustly.
It's good to know that both the hot and the cold are activating some of the same good
genetic pathways.
So maybe you're not negating all the good stuff you just did with the sauna, right?
Maybe there's synergy.
[Jari]: We would be really happy to investigate those possible mechanisms between sauna and
memory disease, because we have been thinking through, you know, more like improve cardiovascular
system, and circulation, and these, if they have a effect on the memory diseases because
some cardiovascular diseases and memory diseases are sharing the bit similar risk factors.
[Rhonda]: Yeah, like vascular dementia.
Of course, yeah, blood flow is absolutely linked to dementia.
So there's probably multiple mechanisms by which the sauna...
[Jari]: Multiple mechanisms, yeah.
[Rhonda]: Man, it's great.
We gotta get the word out there, you know, more research, more people using the sauna.
I think that's...
[Jari]: Because I think nowadays there are so many studies showing the positive effects
of physical exercise on these outcomes and vessel function and so on, but there are quite
limited data on sauna use, and warm exposure, and these similar outcomes, so there are space
to do this kind of research.
[Rhonda]: Yeah.
You're like, you know, an explorer in new territory, and no one is really doing this,
you know, and it's really great.
I'm very glad that someone is, you know, so please keep up the good work.
[Jari]: And in the best case, of course, we can combine these positive effects in, like,
exercise and sauna.
[Rhonda]: Exactly.
Are you going to look at that as well?
Are you going to see if there is a synergy?
[Jari]: Yeah, yeah, we try to do something, yeah.
What is also important for public health level that also we have to emphasize that there
many other factors in addition to exercise and sauna, there are other also.
Of course, we have to take care of other risk factors like blood pressure, lipids, smoking,
obesity in addition to that.