Benefits of a Sauna

"The correct pronunciation is sow-na, not saw-na."

If you get the clearance from your doc and are in good health, I have recently learned that a sauna can be relaxing, as well as healing. If you have access to a sauna in a gym or at home, consider spending 5-10 minutes in the sauna a few times a week.

Ideally, a sauna would be best utilized if you could do a detox plan coupled with daily sauna sessions. A detox plan should be administered by a medical professional. Detox plans that are not overseen by a professional can be very dangerous. Consider talking to a clinical nutritionist, chiropractor or holistic doctor for a plan. Once you start to detox, you need to rid your body of the toxins through urine, stool and sweat. That is why people on detox plans are told to drink a ton of water and eat lots of fiber. This is where the sauna comes into play. The sweating speeds up the process of riding toxins from your body. One of the books I am currently reading, Overcoming Thyroid Disease by Dr. Brownstein, talks about how the infrared sauna treatments are extremely beneficial to cancer patients. He has detox saunas in his practice, Center for Holistic Medicine, which is located in West Bloomfield. Certain people should not go in a sauna, especially if you are pregnant. Also, limit your time in a sauna because overheating can cause problems. Read below for some more information from Dr. Weil:

"When you take a sauna, the heat pumps up blood circulation near the skin and stimulates sweating. The Finns say a proper sauna elicits about a quart of sweat per hour. I generally encourage sweating. It helps the body rid itself of unwanted materials and improves general circulation. In medieval times, healers relied on saunas to cure illnesses, and priests used their heat to chase away evil spirits.

In the United States there's a lot of concern about pregnant women taking steam baths or saunas. A study published four years ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association found some association between neural-tube defects and heat exposure from saunas, hot tubs, and fever during the first three months of pregnancy. (Neural-tube defects include anencephaly and spina bifida, both disastrous abnormalities.) The biggest problem was hot tubs, which pregnant women should approach cautiously."