Luke O'Neill

Very good.

Luke O'Neill, Professor of Biochemistry at the School of Biochemistry and Immunology at Trinity College in Dublin.

Thank you very much for joining us.

Hello, Luke O'Neill here and welcome to my weekly podcast, Show Me The Science.

Now this topic, it's the science of saunas.

You might wonder, why is he talking about the science of saunas?

Well, there is a lot of science that's been done on the beneficial effects or otherwise of taking a sauna.

And I spoke about it recently in a different media context and it caused a lot of interest.

So I thought I'd cover the podcast and a couple of extra things have come up actually since I began looking into this.

And it was partly triggered as well by I happen to be in Finland.

A couple of months ago, I've got a visiting professorship at the University of Turku, of all places.

And they're in the sauna all the time, it seems to me, in Turku.

And they seem very happy because of it.

And the Finns are great for saunas.

Also, recently, a big study has confirmed yet again

the happiest people in the world are the Finns.

You wouldn't think to look at them or talk to them, but that seems to be the case.

And they reckon it's partly because they take so many saunas.

So it's been an area that's been sort of investigated, a bit lighthearted, but there is good evidence that taking a sauna can actually be very, very good for you.

And in Ireland, there's a boom going on.