Luke O'Neill

And again, that's a bit like getting the pump opening and closing, you know.

And again, that brings benefits to the heart.

So all that blood rushing in, rushing out, keeps your heart in good order.

So they reckon if you combine it with a cold dip...

Or in the case of the fins rolling around in the snow, that's really good as well.

The combination effect seems to be especially beneficial.

And then what they also showed very nicely was either the sauna on its own or combined with the cold dip, they could measure a decrease in inflammatory factors in your blood.

A thing called CRP is a marker of inflammation.

And over a big population, they can measure decreases in CRP through all this.

And that means there's less inflammation, which means less risk of heart disease, which is inflammatory.

But secondly, other diseases are inflammatory.

So there may be beneficial effects for other inflammatory conditions by doing all of this.

Now, again, I can't emphasize enough.

You've got to be careful.

If you're in the sauna for too long or you're in the cold for too long or you hate getting into the cold and get a real awful reaction, be careful.

because these things can be a bit harmful.

So follow your body, follow whatever your body is telling you.

You will suffer a bit, but try and not suffer too much, because otherwise you put your system under stress and that counteracts the whole beneficial effect.

They looked at not just in Finland, the socialising aspect.

That seems to be really important.