Ian Sample

speaker

2,123 appearances 29 recordings 3 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 4d ago

Ian Sample’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 29 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 8.

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Science Weekly · Revisited: Saunas and cold plunges, where does the evidence stand? · 30 Jul 2026 podcast

So it's helping you to cool down. voice-verified

Even though your heart is pumping faster, the dilation of your blood vessels usually leads to an overall drop in your blood pressure. voice-verified

But after a while, and it's going to depend on things like how often you have a sauna and how hot it is, you are going to start feeling uncomfortably hot and you'll need to get out to cool down. voice-verified

Yeah, I mean, I may be one of the few people who does it without talking about it very much. voice-verified

At least I try not to talk about it very much anyway. voice-verified

Look, I love both of these, especially having a sauna after a voice-verified

a really cold swim. voice-verified

But, you know, cold water immersion, as you'd expect, your body, of course, reacts differently because there's different threats that it has to respond to. voice-verified

People have probably heard of the cold shock response, which is triggered in water below around 15 degrees Celsius. voice-verified

Dr Heather Massey is Associate Professor at the University of Portsmouth's Extreme Environments Laboratory, and she explained a bit more. voice-verified

Exactly and that does seem to be due to this release of things like noradrenaline just coursing through your body and those things are released pretty damn rapidly and in large quantities when you get into cold water you feel that response pretty profoundly. voice-verified

Well, it's quite interesting, actually, because there isn't the sort of gold standard data from large randomized controlled trials that we'd really like to see for any health benefits of saunas or cold water immersion. voice-verified

There are a lot of small studies, and these take all sorts of different approaches. voice-verified

And they show some correlative effects to some health markers, but it's quite hard to really infer from those things any kind of robust evidence or robust proof that if you do these things, then these are the benefits you can expect to see. voice-verified

But here's Heather with some of the benefits that sauna has been linked to. voice-verified

One of the possible reasons you might have better heart health after saunas is that there are some studies that suggest that the blood vessels become more elastic because you're sort of exercising them, you're getting this vasodilation. voice-verified

So there's a theory that these frequent sauna sessions will keep your heart healthy for longer. voice-verified

Well, again, the evidence is pretty mixed on this. voice-verified

Some studies find correlations with cold water immersion and improved symptoms of mental health issues like depression and anxiety. voice-verified

But really, the studies haven't been large enough. voice-verified

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