The sauna has become a common luxury that almost everyone in the western world has heard of, let alone experienced. Yet how did it impede its way into common culture, and why are people using them now more than ever?
Sauna – pronounced ‘sow (rhymes with cow) nah’ is the only Finnish word in the English language. This tends to give us an idea into its derivation. Nobody actually knows where the first saunas were built but it is believed to have originated in Northern Europe around 7000BC. Unfortunately there is no hard evidence to be support this theory, only speculative evidence of charred stones and wooden structures from the recent stone-age discovery in Southeast Finland (University of Helsinki, 2018). The earliest written evidence dates back to Saint Nestor the Chronicler (1113, p. 44) on his travels through the Slavic regions. Saint Nestor “noticed their wooden bathhouses” and that “they warm them to extreme heat, then undress.” There is also some evidence that may point towards the use of the sauna in Neolithic Britain. The recent discovery of a wooden henge in East Yorkshire has had archaeologists considering the use of saunas this early in our history (Gibbons, 2018).
The history only deepens, when you consider the remarkable similarity of the ancient saunas and the Native American sweat lodges (MacDonald, 1988, p. 21). Despite being on the other side of the world, these traditions and rituals developed in parallel to one another, again indicating that ‘heat bathing’ would have been an imperative to any tribe living in the brutal and unforgiving climates of the northern hemisphere. The traditional saunas of Finland and Estonia are smoke saunas, which is why people believe these were the first saunas to have been developed (Sood 2012). During the day a fire would be lit inside, below a pile of rocks, then at dusk the fire would be put out and the smoke would be cleared. Leaving the stones to stay hot long into the night (UNESCO, 2014). Even back then these saunas were considered a place of health and wellbeing, thanks to the regular exposure of smoke, the walls would be lined with a natural anti bacterial soot (Aloycius, 2019). Maybe this was why the sauna was also used as a place to give birth, fight off illness and even to store and cure meat (UNESCO 2014). As time passed the sauna became surrounded in folklore, and in some pagan traditions it became a sacred place that became the epicentre of spiritual ceremony. It is understandable that spirituality was intertwined into this ritual of heating the body to extreme temperatures; one can only imagine the scenic, wild locations that these buildings would have been situated in. However it is more likely the biological experience that steered their imagination towards spiritualistic resolve. These profoundly positive effects that the sauna can have on both the body and mind has obviously been known and treasured for many years, however it is only now where we are beginning to understand them.
In recent years accessibility to saunas has increased worldwide, with them being at the heart of any health spa and becoming known as the quintessential for relaxation. The sauna has also had a close tie with sport in recent years, with it being a key tool for muscle recovery and even endurance enhancement (Scoon 2006).
Over the next decade sauna use may very well become part of the standard of care for the prevention and treatment of heart disease and a variety of other heart conditions. Evidence suggests that it may also have a role to play in longevity (Leak 2014). In the past few decades there has been a range of emerging research that has been extremely compelling. Many of these studies have come from Eastern Finland, which have some of the largest data sets thanks to a selection of prospective cohort studies. One particular study (Laukkanen 2015) that started back in the 1980s investigated the relationship between frequency and duration of sauna bathing and how it relates with the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Over a 5-year period a selection of 2315 men aged between 42 to 60 years were studied, all with at least one risk factor for ischaemic heart disease. When looking at CHD and CVD mortality it found that men who use the sauna 2-3 times a week had a 23% lower SCD compared to men who just used the sauna once a week. Men that used the sauna 4-7 times a week had a 48% lower risk compared to men using it only once a week. This shows that the sauna is dose dependant in terms of frequency, yet it was also shown to have a dose dependant effect with duration when looking at sudden cardiac death (SCD). Men spending a time of 11 minutes in the sauna were shown to be at a lower risk, yet men with a 19-minute exposure were found to have a 50% reduction in SC
D. This graph (Laukkanen 2015) shows that the duration of the sauna is also integral.
The same group of men were also analysed for another study that looked at sauna use and its effects of all cause mortality. When sauna bathing 4-7 times in comparison to just once a week it was found that there was a 66% lower risk reduction with Alzheimer’s disease and 65% lower risk of diagnosis with dementia (Laukkanen 2017). Another study (Kunutsor 2018) that spanned over 15 years looked into the association of stroke risk and sauna bathing, this study found that just by using the sauna 4-7 times a week reduced the risk of a stroke by 61% in both men and women. This underlines that frequency of sauna bathing can have profound positive effects when it comes to disease prevention.
Considering that Alzheimer’s, dementia and ischaemic heart disease are some of the leading causes of mortality in the UK (John, S. 2019), these studies are incredible sources of evidence that point towards the sauna being an essential tool for disease prevention and health optimisation.
Reference List
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Gibbons, K. (2018) Did Britons sit in sauna at wooden Stonehenge? The Times [online] 05 January. Available from: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/did-britons-sit-in-sauna-at-wooden-stonehenge-hplnk08nt [Accessed 17 November 2019]
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Laukkanen T., Khan H., Zaccardi F., Laukkanen J.A. (2015) Association Between Sauna Bathing and Fatal Cardiovascular and All-Cause Mortality Events. [graph] JAMA Internal Medicine. 175 (4), pp. 542-548, Figure 1
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UNESCO: Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (2014). Smoke sauna tradition in Võromaa. YouTube [video]. 26 November. Available from: https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/smoke-sauna-tradition-in-voromaa-00951
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