Are Saunas Good for You?

Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago

Anon84

19 points

14 comments

economist.comSciencestory

calmmixed

Debate

60/100

Sauna BenefitsHealth ResearchWellness

Key topics

Sauna Benefits

Health Research

Wellness

The article discusses the potential health benefits of saunas, sparking a discussion on the need for more research and the complexities of interpreting existing studies.

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01Story posted
Aug 23, 2025 at 11:28 AM EDT
4 months ago
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Aug 23, 2025 at 11:28 AM EDT
29s after posting
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4 comments in 12-24h
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Aug 28, 2025 at 1:03 AM EDT
4 months ago
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Discussion (14 comments)

Showing 14 comments

Anon84Author

4 months ago

1 reply

https://archive.md/aRRVl

CRConrad

4 months ago

Heh, I went and found this equivalent https://archive.is/jE4mr before seeing your comment.

nabla9

4 months ago

3 replies

I'm a Finn so I'm biased.

From general systems biology perspective everything that moves body metabolism away from it's normal state for short time seems to give benefits, exercise, cold, heat, hunger, ... allostatic load that is not chronic is generally good.

pcthrowaway

4 months ago

1 reply

> everything that moves body metabolism away from it's normal state for short time seems to give benefits

Sleep deprivation? Extreme stress?

helpfulfrond

4 months ago

They did say short time and non chronic. Is sleep deprivation really something one can experience in a short time? In my definition, doing something very difficult like lifting a heavy weight qualifies as extreme stress and would be beneficial; some other things would not. Maybe it would work better for you if they added the word "moderate" to their definition, but generally I would agree with their assessment.

djmips

4 months ago

1 reply

That's rationalization.

dang

4 months ago

1 reply

Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.

djmips

4 months ago

I apologize.

xkcd-sucks

4 months ago

My hot take hopeful guess is that heat shock causes upregulation of protein degradation / chaperone activity, thereby disrupting protein aggregation involved in AD, PD, et all. One can hope

zonkerdonker

4 months ago

1 reply

Agreed that more studies are required. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25705824/ This and some others studies correlate a 40% reduction in all cause mortality (that is, 40% reduction in risk of dying from anything) with sauna use. Even if the correlation is proven to be weak, still seems worth it to get a shvitz whenever you can.

rendx

4 months ago

> "We performed a prospective cohort study of a population-based sample of 2315 middle-aged (age range, 42-60 years) […] During a median follow-up of 20.7 years […] A total of 601, 1513, and 201 participants reported having a sauna bathing session 1 time per week, 2 to 3 times per week, and 4 to 7 times per week, respectively."

They are comparing the health differences of the number of sessions, using only people who claim to do sauna at least once a week over 20 years. They have nothing to say about lower frequency or no sauna at all.

CRConrad

4 months ago

1 reply

End of TFA:

> The only way to get to the bottom of the issue is to do more and bigger RCTs until reproducible findings emerge. Until then, expect some heated debates.

Added the emphasis on that penultimate word. I'm pretty sure the word wasn't chosen accidentally.

rkomorn

4 months ago

Are you suggesting they were hammaming it up?

metalman

4 months ago

saunas feel good, especialy in the winter, and the local indiginious population swear by the use of traditional sweat lodges, the inuit also build sauna shacks , but forget what they call them, but up there you would only need to step outside to get your pores to snap shut, no need for a pool the migimach people have two types of "sweats" one is just a sauna, the other is for cerimonial purposes

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