Sauna and Hypertension: What’s the Deal?

by Bennett Stahl

Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine

Master of Biomedical Sciences 2023

Mentor: Dr. Gabi Waite, PhD

Have you been hearing a lot about wellness and healthy living throughout the
podcast-o-sphere in the last few years? Everyone and their brother have piled onto the Joe
Rogan wellness snake oil money train since it left the station about five years ago. It is tough to tell what useful advice is and what is trying to sell you ONNIT brand supplements. I think the hardest part to parse is that there IS a kernel of truth, to some degree, to almost each
of the claims made on these shows, but the only important thing is the “to what degree” aspect.

Luckily, I can provide some level of certainty that at least one thing that is often talked
about in these shows is the real deal. I’m talking about the Finnish dry sauna. No, I am NOT
talking about the plastic bag-gown thing you can put on and go for a run with, nor am I talking
about the steam room- a decidedly “wet” experience if you have ever decided to (heaven forbid)
sit down in one. I am talking about that wooden box tucked somewhere in the back of the local
gym, usually near the pool or in the locker rooms, usually occupied by a few older
gentlemen.

This wooden box is the dry sauna that I mentioned previously. Wooden boxes much
like these, with a heater, nowadays usually electric but traditionally a wood-fired stove, have
been used in northern European countries for centuries. Traditionally, they have been used to do anything from treating arthritis, heart disease, and depression. While I am not going to claim that there is strong enough evidence to say that it “cures” ANY of those things, what I am going to say is that there IS strong evidence to support that a few 20-minute sessions in the dry sauna
per week can lower your blood pressure.

Hypertension is a major problem in America - more than 45% of people have it - and it is a
major contributor to heart disease, stroke, and as we have seen recently, COVID-19 morbidity
(1). One of the many ways that the dry sauna works to reduce this high blood pressure in
people with high blood pressure is the body's natural response to being hot, it opens your
blood vessels to get blood to the limbs. This action- known as “vasodilation”, allows the limbs to
become heat sinks for the body. Consequently, opening the blood vessels also lowers blood
pressure. You might experience a similar phenomenon if you’ve had one too many drinks, are
sitting, and trying to stand up quickly... you get a little dizzy. Ethanol, the alcohol in booze, is also a potent vasodilator, but please don’t use it to try to lower your blood pressure long-term! I
promise you it doesn’t work!

So, if you are a person living in the US with high blood pressure, how do you get started?
Well, I have yet to mention this, but I am one of the 45% of people with high blood pressure in
America. I wouldn’t say that I have completely exhausted non-pharmaceutical interventions, but
I am very active, eat a healthy diet, and am... sort of?... good at managing my stress.
Regardless, I was looking for another method of managing my blood pressure that didn’t involve
a drug that makes me pee more or blocks a critical enzyme in a metabolic pathway. That’s
when I found out about the sauna. For me, it has been critical to managing my blood pressure.
Take this with a huge grain of salt, however- my discussion is not scientific, this is an anecdote, and we have now entered the n=1 section (1 participant in the “study” taking place in Bennettsville population 1) of the programming.

It is simple to get started. I started at a cheap gym near my house - I think it was only around 20 bucks a month. I would go to the gym, sit in the sauna, and sometimes after a workout, for 20 minutes every other day. Sometimes I would do more, sometimes I would do less. Little did I know that this was a well-studied way of “using the sauna.” Within a couple of months, my blood pressure went down from the “eh, I'm pretty big it shouldn't be a problem” 135/85 (which is a problem - stage 1 hypertension is 130/80 or higher) to the “oh, maybe this actually isn’t a problem” 125/75. The numbers I’m referencing here are systolic and diastolic blood pressure numbers- this is how blood pressure is measured, and I am sure it is the format that the Doc or nurse gave you your blood pressure in during your last checkup. So where does this leave us? I didn’t get into this here, but there is a large clinical literature on the effects of sauna on blood pressure, so you can rest assured, I’m not trying to sell you some supplements. Nor is there a BennettHeat™ brand at-home sauna you can buy from a “link in the description.” I think that it is a good place to go if you have high blood pressure and you don't want to get on drugs. It worked for me, so maybe it will work for you.

More on my video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpV2cwjtZi0 

 

Ref:
1) Nwabuo CC, Yano Y, Moreira HT, Appiah D, Vasconcellos HD, Aghaji QN, et al.
Prevalence of Hypertension and Controlled Hypertension — United States,
2015–2018. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2020;69(33):1073-1080