Luke O'Neill

It's possible that those men were also taking more exercise.

And we know exercise is good for you as well.

But they factored that in.

They tried to control for it, as we call it, these confounding variables.

And they put the beneficial effects on the heart down to the sauna.

which is a really, really important exercise.

It's good as well.

There was also a risk that they'd better diets because people who use saunas, maybe they're a bit healthier with their diet and that will help the risk factors for heart disease.

They control for that as well.

So they did their best to control for confounding variables and they conclude that it was the sauna that was actually...

a big part of the beneficial effect for decreasing the risk of heart disease.

Another study I came across that we liked was they had a group of Finnish men again, God bless them, being studied extensively.

Some would exercise and some wouldn't, and both took saunas.

They tried to factor in exercise.

And guess what?

The ones taking the saunas were seeing the same benefit as the ones exercising with the sauna.

So again, the sauna was shown to be important.

Exercise was a part of it.

Now, the other bit, though, is if you jump in the cold after the sauna, that turns out to be really good because you get what's called vasoconstriction.

So now all your blood vessels now are constricting to try and keep the heat in.