Does contrast therapy reduce the benefits of sauna? | Rhonda Patrick

On the sauna side of things, is there anything new to report on research-wise? And then also, when you do the sauna, are you doing it with a hat or without a hat? Again, have you thought about, does the exposure of the heat to the head cause any benefits? And then also, what are your thoughts on cold showers in between, like doing, say, 15 to 20 minutes on, do a cold shower, and then hop back in? Does that— is that a good thing or bad thing? Okay. So, the sauna, the newest stuff that I'm excited about is, you know, there have been so many studies showing that frequent sauna bathing has a positive effect on a variety of different heart-related diseases, you know, where it's like, it can— doing it 4 to 7 times a week can lower fatal heart disease by like 50%, you know, stroke by 51%, 60% lower sudden cardiac death, just on and on, right?

Multiple studies have shown that. There's been some intervention studies showing that like a single 30-minute sauna session can improve your arterial compliance which is like the ability of your arteries and stuff to respond to stress. And we're talking about 175 or so degrees Fahrenheit for this, right? Exactly, for about 20 minutes. And— and so this— and there's a dose-dependent effect on, you know, the effect on cardiovascular disease. Also there's effect on all-cause mortality. Also lower— like 60% lower Alzheimer's and dementia risk with— with 4 to 7 times. That's amazing. Right. And of course cardiovascular health is very related to Alzheimer's disease by also think there's another mechanism like heat shock proteins that also could play a role.

Basically, staying in the sauna for longer than 19 minutes, there was— there's a much more robust effect on these lowering of the cardiovascular and all-cause mortality than staying in the sauna for like 11 to 18 minutes. Here's the question. Let's say I hit my 20 minutes. When I leave the sauna, am I just doing a normal cooldown slowly, or can I do the cold shower right afterwards? I'll get to that. Let me get to that. Okay. Okay, so let's continue on with the new stuff and then— because, well, that— to answer that question, I'll say I don't know.

I will say there have been some studies that have done a cold— so they've done like a protocol where they'll do sauna for like 15 minutes and then they'll do cold water or something like cold shower, I think it was, and then back into the sauna again. And there were still like some of the same benefits on different parameters of like mitochondrial function and things like that. That's a very Finnish thing to do. It is. Yes, it is a very Finnish thing. So that's good news, right? Because that's kind of like— and again, a lot of these studies that I just cited come out of Finland, where a good 10 to 20% of the population, they're doing the sauna to cold, sauna to cold, sauna to cold, right? So they're doing that. Not everyone does it, but a lot of them do.