Dr. Rhonda Patrick

Pregnant women, oh yeah, I definitely avoided saunas when I was pregnant.

So for those healthy fit people out there already exercising, there's a synergistic effect by also adding a sauna into that routine.

And to me, that's great.

And there's so many beneficial things

happening with the heat stress.

In addition to mimicking aerobic exercise, there's the heat shock proteins that we talked about earlier.

Many animal studies have been done looking at Alzheimer's disease, a human-like Alzheimer's disease in a rodent and heat shock proteins protecting from it.

So heat shock proteins are robustly activated in humans.

And this has been shown to even 50% higher over baseline levels after just 30 minutes at 163 degrees Fahrenheit in the sauna.

And they stay activated at least in rodents for 48 hours at least.

So, you know, having these heat shock proteins around, making sure they're properly taking care of our proteins so they're not aggregating in our brains and in our plaques could be another potential way that sauna is protecting from Alzheimer's disease and other, you know, cardiovascular health, as well as longevity.

Yeah, so there's been some studies looking at, for example, activation of heat shock proteins, also brain-derived neurotrophic factor increases with heat stress.

And so the hot bath at around 104 degrees Fahrenheit, which is typically what studies will use for temperature, and it's 20 minutes from the shoulders down.

And that is like a very robust activation in heat shock proteins and in brain-derived neurotrophic factor.

And then...

Heat shock proteins are also protecting against muscle atrophy.

So that's also having to do with the protein structure and the muscle tissue as well.

And this has been studies in animal data as well as some recent human data as well.

It was local hyperthermia or local heat treatment, but essentially it showed that it protected... I mean, it was like...

there was a study where they were looking at muscle disuse and it was, it was something like the local heat treatment prevented like almost 40% of the muscle atrophy from disuse.