Exercise promotes the release of insulin-like growth factor-1 and its downstream targets, growth hormone and brain-derived neurotrophic factor, to drive muscle and neuron growth. Sauna use increases these factors, too, and when used post-exercise, may have a synergistic effect to improve cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, and neurological health. Strength training, however, may have deleterious effects on arterial compliance, a critical aspect of cardiovascular health. Sauna improves arterial compliance and may provide a means to counter some of the negative effects of training. In this clip, Drs. Rhonda Patrick and Jari Laukkanen discuss the advantages of sauna use post-exercise.
Rhonda: Do you have any thoughts on whether or not, like, someone who is doing physical activity like doing some kind of a workout exercise, whether they should use the sauna before or after their workout?
Jari: This is very interesting question to see if there's even more clear effects on vessel function and so on if you have an exercise before and then you go to sauna. Actually, we're normally doing that quite often in Finland.
Rhonda: So you normally do the sauna after exercise, after a workout?
Jari: Yeah.
Rhonda: Yeah, that's what I do as well, you know? And if you think about it too, it's also the perfect time to get that growth hormone boost, you know, because you've just worked your muscles, so you need that repair, and also the exercise primes your muscles to take in the growth hormone, take in actually IGF-1, which is downstream of growth hormone. So your IGF-1 goes in muscle tissue and also into the brain. So the exercise sort of primes that IGF-1 that's released downstream of growth hormone from the sauna to go into the brain, where it plays a role in actually helping BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, in growing your neurons. So it's always sort of a question, like, do you do it before a workout or after? And I've always been inclined to do it after a workout, but it would be interesting to know if there's, you know, specifically, if it's affecting, you know, vessel function or things like that.
Jari: Yeah, yeah. We're very interested to see the effects on vessel function after exercise which is combined with sauna and what are the parameters, what are the values after that? And because there are also some evidence that maybe after a strength training, you know, it can be even that the arterial stiffness may increase a bit maybe in some cases.
Rhonda: Oh, really, after strength training?
Jari: So if you go to sauna, you can relax and improve your vessel function also.
Rhonda: Wow, that's interesting. So maybe better to do the sauna after strength training also because...
Jari: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, this is, we have no...
Rhonda: You're speculating.
Jari: Speculating, yeah, yeah.
Rhonda: You're speculating, of course.
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