Passive heat treatment

The many benefits of passive heat treatment

First, what exactly is passive heat treatment? Simply put, passive heat treatment includes:

• Saunas
• Hot baths / steam baths
• Heat packs or wraps

During the colder months you may find yourself wanting to seek out a warm sauna or hot bath. Luckily, it feels great and it comes with many benefits for your health!

• Some of the benefits of passive heating include:
• Muscle relaxation / stress reduction
• Cardiovascular health
• Weight regulation / loss
• Increase blood circulation

If you’ve never done any form of passive heat treatment, it may be something to put on your to-do list. Heat therapy, as it sounds, is the use of any form of heat to treat the body, generally used in reducing pain and/or swelling.

The most notable types of heat therapy used are saunas, steam rooms, and hot baths. While they may be based off of similar concepts, the functions and benefits of both are somewhat different. So first, let’s cover what they are and why they’re so great.

Hot baths

Hydrotherapy is something that’s been practiced for centuries. Whether hot or cold, bathing offers many significant benefits. But here, we’re going to focus on heat as a method of treating various ailments.

Besides sitting in the comfort of a warm tub, hot baths are actually great for the body. Here are a few reasons why [1]:

1. Helps to improve circulation
2. Improves respiratory function
3. Helps to lower blood pressure, both systolic and diastolic
4. Improves cardiac function
5. Increases parasympathetic nerve activity
6. Helps reduce exercise-induced muscle damage
7. Improves immunity

It’s important to note, however, that depending on the temperature of the water (warm or hot), the effects will different, with the latter often producing more significant effects.

Steam rooms

Steam rooms are pretty much as they sound — a room, usually made from tiles, that produces steam to 90-100% humidity. Since heat rises, sitting at a higher level in a steam room will provide greater benefits than sitting at a lower level. Like hot baths, steam rooms offer several of the same benefits:

1. Increases skin moisture
2. Relieves congestion and improves respiratory function
3. May help to improve circulation [2]
4. Decreases production of cortisol, the main stress hormone
5. Reduces severity of DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) after exercise when compared to dry heat [3]
6. Boosts immunity

That said, like any other form of passive heat treatment, steam rooms can be dangerous if used improperly, for example, exceeding the recommended time limit.

Saunas

Now that you’ve learned about a couple other forms of passive heat treatment, we can get to one of my new favorites — saunas. Touted for their wide range of health benefits, saunas have recently become a common thing to incorporate into a daily routine. If you’ve ever been to a Scandinavian country, you’ll see that saunas are extremely popular — and for good reason!

Saunas are essentially a wood lined room that emits either dry heat or wet heat. Perhaps the most well known is the Finnish sauna — a room heated with a sauna stove and filled with stones that are heated by either electricity or fire.

While being popular within northern Europe countries initially, saunas are a regular practice throughout the world. If you’re wondering why they’re so highly prized, here are some reasons:

1. Improves cardiovascular health — The heat from saunas is associated with an increased heart rate, similar to that of moderate intensity exercise. A study from the University of Finland found that people who frequent saunas over a long period of time have decreased risk of sudden cardiac death and fatal cardiovascular disease [4].
2. Helps muscle recovery — Sitting in heat for an extended period of time helps to dilate blood vessels, meaning that greater blood flow and oxygen are diverted to muscles helping them recover faster from exercise. Frequenting the sauna has also been shown to decrease delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) [5].
3. Detoxification — As the skin is the largest organ in the body, sweating helps to remove toxins and waste through the skin. Several compounds can be released through sweat including trace heavy metals like arsenic, lead, and cadmium [6], as well as prescription drugs like amphetamines, methadone, and metabolites [7].
4. Pain relief — Studies have shown that regular sauna use may help to reduce severity of chronic pain [8].
5. Boost the immune system — Visiting the sauna regularly may also help to boost immune function. In a study published in the Journal of Human Kinetics, trained (athletic) subjects that frequented the sauna had higher counts of white blood cells, a marker of immune strength, than untrained subjects [9]. This may also be a good reason to get moving!
   Improve skin appearance and health — Heat helps to open pores and increase blood flow, as well as aid in the detoxification process and removal of toxins, which helps to cleanse the skin and improve its appearance.
6. Improves blood pressure — A study conducted on the effects of sauna use found that even a single use has favourable effects on markers of blood pressure [10].
7. May help with weight loss — Regular use of a sauna can help to elevate metabolic rate, which in turn helps to burn more calories [11].

So while having a hot bath may seem more relaxing than sweating it out in a sauna, the benefits may outweigh some of the discomfort or grossness (if you’re not into sitting in a pool of sweat).

But why heat therapy?

Thermotherapy is a great option to help heal non-inflammatory body pain. This is because heat is great for inducing relaxation of muscles and dilating blood vessels through raising nitric oxide levels, a potent vasodilator, to promote greater blood circulation.

Conditions that a sauna might be beneficial for include:

• Acute muscle soreness — If you’ve ever gone a little too hard at the gym, you’ve probably experienced sore muscles for the next few days. Visiting a sauna may help reduce the pain and stiffness associated with muscle overexertion.
• Specific localized stiffness and pain — Frequenting a sauna may help to reduce the pain and stiffness associated with specific health conditions like osteoarthritis or simply just muscle spasms or cramps.

It’s crucial to remember that heat is not good for certain conditions and may make them worse. This includes things like severe injuries or infections and acute inflammation as in the case of an arthritis flare up. For conditions involving inflammation, it’s best to use ice. If you’re using a sauna to help release tension in muscles, it’s also imperative to know the different between muscle strains and ‘knots’. Strains indicate an actual injury to the muscle (a small tear) that a sauna will not fix, while knots are small patches of tender tissue usually caused my micro-spasms that often need pressure to be released.

Heating Up

Passive heat treatment is an excellent way to help relieve and treat several conditions. While hot baths are the cheapest and likely most convenient method, a sauna, whether it be infrared, Finnish, or electrically heated, offers numerous health benefits both externally and internally. So next time you visit a gym or spa that offers a sauna, be sure to strip down and hop in!

BY COURTNEY LANDIN
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POSTED: JANUARY 29, 2019