Can Heat Stress Improve Your Health?

We handle so much stress everyday, whether it's mental stress, stress from exercise, or elemental stress like heat or cold. Thankfully, our bodies are beautifully designed to withstand these stressors, and in many cases become stronger and healthier for it. In fact, there's a particular type of stress that people are using everyday in order to reap the rich health benefits and even extend their lives. You've probably heard of a form of heat stress called sauna before, but maybe you're not familiar with all the benefits it brings.

What Are the Benefits of Sauna?

There are a multitude of benefits of this form of heat therapy that people have been enjoying for literally thousands of years. They are numerous, well-documented, and profound.

Sauna Improves Cardiovascular Function

Sauna is directly correlated with protecting against mortality for people suffering with cardiovascular disease and coronary heart disease. The study listed above shows a direct link highlighting how more frequent the usage of sauna, and the longer the session, the lower their risk of mortality became.

Sauna Increases Release of Human Growth Hormone (HGH)

If you're someone who spends a lot of time in the gym, or fitness is important to you, this is a very big deal. HGH is directly responsible for your body's ability to repair and grow muscle. However, this should be a big deal to anyone as HGH is a major key to slowing down the aging process.

Sauna Is Effective at Combating Cancer

The study listed above shows how heat stress showed a profound ability to shrink tumors and promote cancer cell death. This is an area that needs more research as this has the potential to send tidal waves through the oncology community

How Often and How Long?

The benefits of sauna and heat stress on the body are astounding, so you may be excited to get started. If you're just starting out try going for 3 days a week for 10 minutes at a time and slowly work up to 5-7 days a week for 19-30 minutes per session. This is where the maximum benefits were found in the scientific literature.

Improve Your Health With Heat!

I hope this showed you that not all stress is bad, and in fact, sometimes stress is vital and therapeutic. Our bodies need stress in order to stay strong and healthy, and sauna is one of the healthiest ways to do just that. At Years Restored we like to compliment this with a contrast shower (hot and cold) right after to amplify the benefits even further. Develop a regular sauna habit, and trust me, you'll be feeling younger, happier, and more energetic in no time.

God Bless,
Mercy Ballard

Heat Therapy and Disease Prevention