Sweating. Freezing. Sweating. Freezing. That’s the “nordic cycle,” or alternating between a sauna and cold water. More spas are offering both hot and cold therapies as part of their services, and at-home sauna tents and ice baths are becoming more and more popular. But how beneficial are these methods of extreme temperature exposure for your health? And are they always safe?
On this episode of Health Matters, we talk with sports medicine specialist Dr. Amy Beacom about the sweating, the shivering and whether this should be part of your routine.
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Read the transcript:
Read the transcript:
Kristen Meinzer:
This is “Health Matters,” a podcast from Mayo Clinic where we discuss the latest medical advice, news, and research to help you live a happier and healthier life. My name is Kristen Meinzer. I’m a writer and journalist and in this episode we’re talking about hot saunas and cold plunges.
I got exposed to it because we were at a hockey tournament in Northern Minnesota and Duluth and this hotel had a sauna and then they cut out a little part of the dock in Lake Superior in May, which if you’re familiar with, that’s a really cold Great Lake. You would go and you could pay a fee, sit in the sauna and then literally run to the lake and plunge, and it was peer pressure. They’re like, “Come on.” I did it and I felt great the whole day. I probably went back and forth three or four times. I felt great. That’s how I started.
Cold plunges and saunas are having a moment as broadly applicable therapies to boost health and longevity. But intentional exposure to heat or cold is not necessarily new. Indigenous cultures, Russians, Romans, and the Japanese have long had their own versions of communal sweat therapies, and people from the nordic countries have been ice swimming for generations.
While it may sound like an exercise in utter discomfort for some, it’s clear all of these traditions provide value to those who practice them. But, how effective are saunas and cold plunges in eliciting helpful physiological responses in the human body and should they have a place in our health care regiments?
To find out a little more, we’re speaking with Dr. Amy Beacom, an expert in sports medicine in Minneapolis, Minnesota, specializing in diagnosing and treating sports and recreational injuries. Dr. Beacom, welcome to the show.
Dr. Beacom:
Thanks for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks. I’m excited.
Kristen Meinzer:
This is such a hot topic right now. It is everywhere. It’s on TikTok, it’s on Instagram, it’s all over YouTube, and all the podcasts are covering this. People are saying this is going to cure all things, this heat therapy, or this cold therapy, or the two in tandem are going to do that for us. We’re going to get into if those promises actually are valid or not. But first, just let’s start with the basics.
A lot of people may know the word sauna or may know the words cold plunge, but can you give us an overview of what these therapies actually are?
Dr. Beacom:
Absolutely. I think one thing to keep in mind is that they are two separate things. I think they do get lumped together, but I think it’s better to at least start thinking about them as separate. Two separate things, heat versus cold, because they are, they’re distinct, and absolutely different. Sauna, there’s several different kinds. There’s dry sauna or infrared, and then there’s steam.
Steam is really not part of this. I think that it’s a dry sauna where all the data is like a really good dry sauna, and then they want it to be a certain temperature in general. The people that do it for real, it’s hot. It’s uncomfortable. It’s an uncomfortable place to sit.
Kristen Meinzer:
How hot are we talking?
Dr. Beacom:
170 degrees.
Kristen Meinzer:
Ooh.
Dr. Beacom:
That’s what they’re doing in Finland. Those are what the Finnish studies are.
Kristen Meinzer:
When you say dry, there’s no water involved in it.
Dr. Beacom:
Right. You’re not putting the steam over the rocks and letting up. It’s just a dry heat.
Kristen Meinzer:
For a lot of us, that’s what we think of when we think of saunas. There are these hot rocks and then we pour scoops of water on it. But you’re saying no.
Dr. Beacom:
Absolutely. They’re saying, actually, no, it’s more of a dry sauna that is really like what they would consider the gold standard, but infrared saunas are great as well. Infrared saunas are the ones that you see advertised, like the barrel saunas for the most part where you can just step in and those, hit a button and it’s ready to go.
A dry sauna takes a while to get going. You have to stoke the wood, but it takes a while to get those up to the right temperature. One benefit is you push a button that’s there. You can come home from work, turn it on, and then go about your evening if you’d like.
Whereas with cold therapy, true cold therapy, that can be so many different things. It can be taking a walk outside. Put some ice in a bathtub. That works. You can go into your waist. You can go all the way down to your neck. A cold shower is a great way to do it. You can make the last few minutes of your shower cold, and that’s technically cold immersion. It doesn’t have to be scientific. It certainly doesn’t have to be fancy at all.
Kristen Meinzer:
Me going on my brisk morning walk this morning in 30 degree Fahrenheit weather, was that a form of cold therapy?
Dr. Beacom:
Technically, yes. However, it has to do with what’s most sensitive to the cold. In general, it’s your upper torso that’s most sensitive to it. Where you’re going to get the most benefit is if it hits your torso, your neck, and the front of your body. That is the most thermosensitive area of our body. That’s the part that’s going to react the most.
Because then what happens is that’s where your breathing changes. Everybody knows that feeling of when you jump into something cold, it takes your breath away.
That’s an absolute mammalian reflex. It’s called the mammalian dive reflex because you have a really hard time controlling your breathing as a result. If you want to have the true benefits, you probably aren’t going to go walk around the neighborhood where your torso is getting exposed to the cold weather, that’s uncomfortable, but in my snow pants with no shirt on.
Dr. Beacom:
Exactly. Like pants are good, but nothing else is okay. Absolutely not possible. Nothing like that at all. Then of course there’s the other extremes. There’s people that are doing cold plunges in Arctic waters. There’s so much experience, but technically it’s all considered cold therapy.
Kristen Meinzer:
Got it. Now you alluded to possible benefits, and I think this is what is being pushed hard and heavy to us now on social media. This is going to cure all of your problems, and then there’s a list of about 50 things that it’s going to fix. Then there are, of course, the skeptics who are like, “Really? Is it going to fix all those things? What are the promises? What are these things that supposedly cold therapy or heat therapy can treat?”
Dr. Beacom:
In general, a lot of things that come up are going to be based on things like, what’s the data, what’s the research and if you actually parse it out and try to look for the data, it’s hard to find, there’s not great science.
We’ll tackle cold first, because I think that’s under one dynamic umbrella, if you will, first and foremost. The thing they’ve really looked at that’s their true benefit is delayed onset muscle soreness or “DOMS.” The way you feel two days after a hard workout where you’re like, “Oh, I’m so sorry. Like I didn’t know I was sore.” That’s not new. I used to run way back in the day and I would always like to hose my legs off with a cold hose in the garage or a lot of people jump into a cold lake after they’ve gone on a long run. [They] put their legs in it [and] wade out into the cold waters. That’s been around forever. They found that ice baths will reduce that sense of soreness.
You don’t have to be a huge athlete, [you could do it in your] daily life. [Are you] pretty active? depending on where you live, are you walking through a city? Are you climbing up stairs? How many kids are you lugging to and from places? Are you gardening? Gardening is super active. There’s a cost to life in general in terms of just being active. I think it would be, it would apply across the board.
The second thing is it really does improve how you feel subjectively. There’s some mood stabilizing in very small amounts where you feel better, just mentally you’re better. Peter Attia talks about this really cool study where they did blood draws on these people where they would check like what was your dopamine level? What was your norepinephrine level? Which are the neurotransmitters that make you feel better, and they were significantly higher. I think about recovery and mood. Those seem to be two of the biggest ones.
In terms of saunas, this is what I think. Sauna’s data is way better. They did this huge Finnish study with 2, 300 men. It was over 20 years. They followed them for 20 years. No one can do that. It was amazing. They found in general across all these men that overall, there was an 18 percent reduction of all causes of death, all causes of mortality. Anything that’s going to kill you, these guys that did this had an 18 percent reduction. There’s probably nothing in medicine that can promise you that. Almost 20 percent of you won’t die as young if you do this. That’s crazy.
Kristen Meinzer:
Is it not the case that in Finland a lot of the saunas, the heat and the cold therapy settings are communal? Could any of the benefits have been because the community does so much to lower stress, to create a sense of psychological safety, to build connection, to bring out our happy feelings and so on?
Dr. Beacom:
You hit it. You could not have said it more perfectly. It’s so hard to tease it out because they actually said for you to do it, you have to do it 20 minutes a day, at least four times a week for it to be beneficial. If you’re doing something like that, you’re going to typically do it with people you enjoy and you’re enjoying the process. It’s like you said, it’s probably going to lead to something else. It’s going to become very communal. Also, there’s a bias that’s inherent in it and that you can actually do that.
Kristen Meinzer:
You have the mobility? Do you have the resources?
Dr. Beacom:
There’s a healthy bias to it. You have to be of a certain health and mobility and awareness and all sorts of factors to allow you to even do it. Not everybody can. Is that population healthier? Possibly—cold plunges and saunas, they talk a big game, but is there sufficient data to back them up? It sounds like there’s still work to be done there. Anecdotally, people seem to feel better after a quick roast or a flash freeze, and studies have shown regular sauna use correlates with a lower rate of morbidity and improved heart health.
It’s also possible that those of us with free time and disposable income to dedicate to regular sauna trips might just have less stress in our lives, which can result in better overall health. Whether or not we can definitively attribute improved health to these therapies yet, one thing we can say for sure is that our bodies will react when exposed to heat or cold. Let’s find out what’s going on there.
Kristen Meinzer:
I want to get a little bit more granular here and talk about how our bodies respond to these hot and cold environments, and why those reactions might be beneficial.
Dr. Beacom:
Sauna, the reason why it’s helpful is because it simulates or mimics cardiovascular exercise. it gets your heart rate up, it gets you hot, it does all those things.
Kristen Meinzer:
You start breathing more. Yes.
Dr. Beacom:
Like growth hormone goes up, different things that we like to track in medicine, things that seem to be like, “Ooh, that’s going to make muscle growth hormone, cortisol that stimulates you, that’s going to make you work. Other hormones, things that increase blood flow to your kidneys, all sorts of wonderful side effects of it.
In terms of cold therapy one of the things that’s interesting is whole mammalian dive reflexes. This is because of the vagus nerve and the vagus nerve is what controls your diaphragm. When you get the hiccups, which are a contraction of your diaphragm, that’s the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is pretty superficial, and I suspect that area, like on your chest, which is where the vagus nerve runs, is responsive to the cold. Take a deep breath in when you’re struck by cold water.
That’s what’s interesting is, the vagus nerve is a parasympathetic nerve. We have the parasympathetic system and the sympathetic system. The sympathetic system is what really gets you going. It gets your sympathetic tone, makes your blood pressure go up, and makes your heart rate go up. It’s the stress. It’s a stress response. What if you do something that turns on the opposite, the parasympathetic tone, maybe that’s balancing this out a little bit. Maybe that’s why it’s beneficial. If you go cold, your parasympathetic tone goes up, counteracts the sympathetic tone. Maybe that’s part of it. I don’t know. That’s also not been studied, but it’s a pretty cool study. If you could,
Kristen Meinzer:
It’s such an interesting thing to think of also that fine line between this is good stress or this is bad stress.
Dr. Beacom:
It is.
Kristen Meinzer:
Because we’re all told to reduce our stress, but maybe certain kinds of stress are actually good for us.
Dr. Beacom:
Hundred percent. Then cold is also going to reduce the inflammatory process. It’s gonna bring down your blood vessels constrictum, so there’s less blood flow, and there’s less swelling.
Kristen Meinzer:
For those who don’t really understand, what does inflammation mean?
Dr. Beacom:
Boy, that’s a great question. We say the word all the time.
Kristen Meinzer:
We do say it all the time.
Dr. Beacom:
Take an anti-inflammatory. Inflammation is when there’s more blood flow and then tissues become swollen. and things don’t like being swollen. They’re painful when they’re swollen. Inflammation is painful. There’s some thought that maybe there’s some protective form to inflammation Like when you build muscle. When you’re lifting weights and you’re sore after pushing your limits, your muscles hurt. That’s inflammation. To build the muscle up you have to sort of tear it down, so to speak.
Some of that inflammatory change that happens is actually part of the process of building muscle. I think you have to sort of experiment as you go because it does matter. It’s interesting, there does seem to be kind of a detrimental, beneficial aspect to it where you’re trying to figure out what works. I don’t think it’s clear cut.
If you’re someone that really wants to get strong, like strength training, if you do cold therapy after that you’re going to blunt that hypertrophic response. You’re not going to make those muscles because it decreases the ability to rebuild them because you restrict the blood flow.
If your goal is “I’m going to get huge,” you probably don’t want to do a lot of cold therapy because it’s going to offset the muscle that you’re trying to really make. I think there’s a lot of trial and error. If you look at athletes, even recreational athletes, there’s a huge difference in what people do.
Kristen Meinzer:
I have to bring up something that I’d be remiss to ignore, which is, we live in a diet-obsessed world, and a lot of the pushing of heat therapy and cold therapy these days seems to be tied to the diet industry, fat burning or, conversations about brown fat.
Dr. Beacom:
Brown fat. We all have it. When you’re a little kid you have more of it and as you age it’s a protective piece. The reason why it’s called brown fat is because it has tons of mitochondria in it.
It looks different microscopically, and with that mitochondria, that’s an energy production part of your cell. The mitochondria are the powerhouse. It’s really pumping out the energy. If you have fat that has more energy produced in it, it’s going to be more consumptive.
It’s going to burn more. Cold exposure is going to activate that brown fat. The thought was like, if you sit in the cold and you increase your brown fat, you’re going to increase the amount of heat you make, you’re going to increase the amount of calories you burn and you don’t have to exercise, just get cold. It’s actually sadly not true.
Kristen Meinzer:
What? The diet industry lied to us?
Dr. Beacom:
It would be really nice if that was going to work, but it’s really not. I don’t really think that cold exposure is going to be like this true blue thing for weight loss. It’s not going to work. It’s just a negligible difference. You’re gonna get more from increasing your metabolic health from exercise than you are from trying to make your brown fat work harder, if that makes sense.
Kristen Meinzer:
More often than not it seems that if something seems too good to be true, it’s probably too good to be.
Dr. Beacom:
Probably a hundred percent. A hundred per. Absolutely.
Kristen Meinzer:
We would be remiss not to talk about the fact that there are dangers involved in this. It’s not just, “woohoo, my life is a thousand percent better now that I’m sitting in ice baths every day.” Can we talk about some of the possible drawbacks or dangers?
Dr. Beacom:
Absolutely. Typically the issue is core temperature for cold. You’re going to be great if you’re at 96, 97 for core temperature and core temperature is usually a rectal temperature. Once you plunge down to 92, 93 degrees in your core temperature, that is not okay, and that can happen very quickly, within a matter of a minute or two in water that’s below freezing.
Below 32 degrees, or right around the freezing temperature, 30 to 40 degrees, that’s a dangerous temperature. What will happen is it will offset your heart rhythm.
You can go into a ventricular arrhythmia and, mainly because some of your blood is going to be cold in your extremities, that cold extremity blood is going to circulate back to your core and that’s what’s going to drop your temperature.
When that happens, it’s called “after drop.” It’s very dangerous and can cause a fatal arrhythmia. What you have to do is dry off quickly, right away, get warm right away.
Kristen Meinzer:
There are so many conditions out there that it would be flat out dangerous to do these things.
Dr. Beacom:
There’s other ways to get the effect. It doesn’t have to be making yourself cold, or making yourself really hot.
Kristen Meinzer:
You already pointed to a few of them. I am going to walk around tomorrow in snow pants and no shirt when I’m on my morning walk, for example. Dr. Beacom, what kinds of patients would you recommend giving this a try and which patients would you recommend maybe avoiding these kinds of therapies?
Dr. Beacom:
I’ll start with avoiding first, because there’s some true caveats to this, that make sure I’m being responsible and respectful. Certainly if you’re pregnant, I think that’s something that I always have a high deal of respect about because pregnancy is so different.
Then you’re dealing with two people or maybe more depending on how many babies you’re pregnant with. That’s number one, if you’re pregnant. Please refer to your physician prior to that. The second would be anybody who has an ongoing cardiac issue or a history of abnormal cardiac rhythms.
Dr. Beacom:
That would be something, or if you just happen to be really sensitive to heat or really sensitive to cold. Then anybody with any question with a medical condition, everybody has a board of directors. You have your personal board of directors. I think if you have medical conditions that involve a physician or a physical therapist or a nutritionist, I think it would be reasonable to consult with them before you do for sure.
In terms of other people, I think first and foremost, if you’re curious, if you’re like, “I wonder, this is one of those wonderful things where you absolutely give it a try,” there’s nothing to lose. You’re either going to notice a difference or not.
It’s very unlikely you’re going to be worse, but you’ll certainly learn something and you might find something new along the way. “Wow, I really liked this part, but I didn’t love that part. Oh, where can I take this part that I really liked?”
I think that’s great. Anybody curious, certainly people with injury. My husband actually hurt his wrist recently and his physician said, “put it in an ice tank” because he sprained his wrist. He’ll be fine. But, he swears it’s helpful. I think if you have an acute injury, that’s not an obvious broken bone or something traumatic that you need to see a physician for anything that’s sore, you can cold dunk it.
It’s pretty easy to do. I think for sauna, if you have anything that’s painful or uncomfortable that seems to be in your way, it would be reasonable to try, or if you’re trying to improve your overall health, if you’re trying to get your blood sugar down, if you’re prediabetic and you’ve been cleared by your physician, you could also see if, especially sauna, if it’s increasing your heart rate.
If it’s increasing your metabolic rate, that might act like exercise and lower your blood sugar. It’s hard to say. It might work for you. I think there’s many different conditions you can use to try that.
Kristen Meinzer:
Fascinating. I never thought of it for blood sugar, but that makes so much sense. High heat and bitter cold cause some definitive reactions in our bodies. Like changes in blood pressure. For heat, vasodilation, the widening of the blood vessels, lowers blood pressure by allowing blood to flow more easily.
For cold, vasoconstriction, the tightening of the blood vessels, slows down that blood flow and keeps your internal temperature up. While these can potentially lead to some benefits like reduced pain and inflammation or improved heart health, exposing yourself to extreme heat or cold is not without risk.
If you are someone with heart issues, if you are pregnant, definitely consult with your physician and medical team. If you’re someone who can safely benefit from trying a cold plunge, or sauna, hold off on buying that new tub. Getting some of these benefits might be simpler and more accessible than you think!
Dr. Beacom, assuming we get the greenlight from our personal board of directors – which by the way I love that – how would you recommend getting started? Are there any specific protocols to follow as far as temperature or duration are concerned?
Dr. Beacom:
In general, the colder the temperatures are the shorter amount of time you’re in that temperature. Protocols are all over. Some protocols will say you need to do three minutes at 50 degrees. That’s a lot, and is that keeping your head out, probably but some people take their hands out, some people keep their hands in, some people wear booties.
Some people say the booties blunt the response. It’s really all over. The most beneficial way is what’s easiest and less stressful for the person. I really do. I think certainly for cold. You can start with anything. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. You don’t have to invest in a ton of equipment. You don’t have to go buy a cold tank. You don’t have to join a gym that has a cold tank in it. You can hose your legs down after a cold run, see if it helps.
Runners, cyclists, like any of those endurance athletes, have really been doing this for forever and I think you have to experiment as you go. Wade into a cold lake, see if you can tolerate it. A river or anything. It can come from a faucet or a hose, if you’re in a city. You can do it in the shower.
Just turn your warm shower down, at the end, to cold for a little bit. That’s easy. You can also go from, warm to lukewarm, lukewarm to cool, cool to cold and do that.
You could gradually habituate yourself that way. Something like three minutes of cold, as cold as you can stand on your back and then three minutes of it a little bit warmer on your back and then put down to 30 seconds on your back, as cold as you can go, and then do 30 seconds, as cold as you can go on your front.
Go back and forth. Because the runoff is there. I think that would be kind of a fun way to try it, then she’d be like, “Oh yeah, I like that.”
I think for a sauna, how about bringing a friend? What if you don’t know. Give it a try. Just see, maybe it’ll be part of a community. Maybe it’s something new to try in the winter or something new to try if you’re new to an area trying to meet someone. It’s very popular these days. I think there’s a social reason to try it
Kristen Meinzer:
We’ve mostly been talking about hot saunas and cold plunges as two separate activities. But, you just mentioned alternating between hot and cold in the shower, and I know the combination of hot sauna cold plunges have a long history in Nordic cultures and a popular topic of online discussion today. Do we know why they go so well together? What are the benefits, if any, that can come from alternating from hot to cold in this way?
Dr. Beacom:
I, again, don’t think there’s necessarily science behind why they work together, but I think they tend to go together. You get really hot. It makes it easier to cool down. Perhaps it’s just the thought of jumping into a cold lake. Maybe that’s how it all started.
I’m not entirely sure why they go together, but oftentimes they are done in tandem and I don’t think there is a true reason. The one thing that does seem to have an impact with that is sleep. Sleep is made easier if you make an abrupt change over a short period of time.
If you go from hot to cold very quickly, that’s going to facilitate sleep. People will get into their sauna and then just dive into a cold bed. You’re going to fall asleep faster. Some people will cold plunge after that and then go to sleep. I think for me, that would be almost impossible, but you can actually just go into a chilly bed.
Your sleep, because that’s that abrupt change in temperature, that abrupt change is what makes it work together and alternate nicely.
Kristen Meinzer:
I am curious. As I already mentioned, I don’t have any desire to jump into any of the Great Lakes in the springtime. The Great Lakes are very cold in the springtime.
Dr. Beacom:
Very cold.
Kristen Meinzer:
I don’t want to jump into those at all. Is there also some sort of self-selection of people who consider cold therapy or heat therapy beneficial, who happen to just enjoy it, who seek it out, unlike me?
Dr. Beacom:
Absolutely. To your point of community, like there’s a lake where I live, Lake Harriet, and they have a group of people that meet every morning at 6am, rain or shine, 365, and they go in that lake early in the morning.
Kristen Meinzer:
In the wintertime.
Dr. Beacom:
They have a chipper, the guy’s name is the chipper and he brings a shovel and chips through and it’s huge. It’s a big deal, but I walked by and I’m like, “no way,” but they love it. I do think that there is a certain population of people that are going to seek it out. Also I think one of the glorious things is there’s fundraising now, like there’s people that say, “Hey, let’s try this.”
There’s all sorts of polar plunges around here that raise money for charity. They open up to many people and it’s, in some ways, a great introduction because it’s controlled. It’s a quick burst, you’re out, and then you’re dried off immediately, which is very safe. They have all the resources.
There’s lifeguards. There’s people there. There’s medics on hand, so even I think they’re now opening up to a population that may not do it, but for a worthy cause.
Kristen Meinzer: That’s interesting. Do you feel daring?
Dr. Beacom:
Yeah. I do feel daring. Like it’s usually on the front page of our papers at least once a season around New Year’s typically.
Kristen Meinzer:
That experience of novelty has been shown to have a mood boost. The experience of being charitable can be a real emotional and psychological boost as well.
Dr. Beacom:
Especially if it’s personal. Like I have someone who suffers from this. I’d love to help the cause. This is something I can do.
Kristen Meinzer:
I’m curious about the people who maybe live in different climates though. Let’s say you live in a very warm climate. Let’s say you live on the Gold Coast of Australia, for example, where it’s constantly hot and the sun is actually dangerous.
Are people living in that climate going to react differently to heat or cold therapy because of how they are conditioned and the climate that they’re in? Then let’s say somebody who is Finnish in those other studies.
Dr. Beacom:
For sure. Absolutely. I think it will be different. I have relatives that live south and in the summer their cold water in their faucet doesn’t get very cold. It’s hard to make water cold in a warm climate. You might need ice if you have to do that, but you probably are habituated.
You probably don’t think it’s that hot when others, someone else who would be trans, but this is like being in the sun.
Kristen Meinzer:
I could feel like I’m in heat therapy right now just visiting you down in your state.
Dr. Beacom:
I think you’re right. It’s probably very relative. Wouldn’t that be an interesting study to compare people from two different climates, doing a similar protocol? If you could somehow do that it would be fascinating.
I think you could do the same thing with altitude. People that live in Colorado and go for walks in Colorado and they come down to Florida, they’re like, “wow, I can breathe so easily.”
I think it’s, if you think about it, it could be that way too. I absolutely think that’s a great thought. I think there’s so many different little nuances to parse out. I think it’s nice that it’s not that specific because you can make it work for you.
Kristen Meinzer:
I love that advice. I love it because advice is hard to follow if it’s hard. If you can make it easy for yourself, why not make it easy for yourself?
Dr. Beacom:
Absolutely! Change a tiny habit.
Kristen Meinzer:
For this week, I’m going to turn down the water in my shower for the last 30 seconds.
Dr. Beacom:
Ooh, I like that.
Kristen Meinzer:
I’m going to do it for a minute.
Dr. Beacom:
I like that. Just little things. I think it would be great to try that. See how it goes.
Kristen Meinzer:
If your board of directors approves, and if you want to. This is not prescriptive, we’re not saying everyone has to do this.
Dr. Beacom:
No, 100%. Absolutely not. Just explore it. Be curious.
Kristen Meinzer:
Curiosity is great.
Dr. Beacom: It is.
Kristen Meinzer:
Thank you. Dr. Beacom, you’re a fantastic guest. Not just your preparation, but your energy.
Dr. Beacom:
Oh, I’m so glad. I’ve had so much fun too. I almost feel guilty. I’m like, should it be fun like this? This is awesome.
Kristen Meinzer:
This has been such a fun, illuminating conversation. We appreciate it so much. Thanks for being here today.
Dr. Beacom:
Thanks for having me. It was wonderful. I really appreciate you inviting me in.
Kristen Meinzer:
Well, if you’re not shivering or sweating already, and you think you’d like to try regular sauna use or cold plunging, you might find that it can help you with recovery from injury or soreness or even boost your mood.
Please consult with your physician before deciding to do so, especially if you are pregnant or have a history of heart or lung issues. The jury is still out on some of the more ambitious claims of health benefits, but if it can improve mental health and help you connect with a community, those are benefits enough to give it a shot.
If the idea of intentionally making yourself uncomfortable makes you…uncomfortable, you can always ease yourself into things or choose not to engage at all. It feels safe to say that neither cold plunging nor sauna use is the new “quit smoking” for your health and longevity.
That’s all for this episode. But if you’ve got a question or topic suggestion, you can leave us a voicemail at 507-538-6272. We might even feature your voice on the show!
For more “Health Matters” episodes and resources, head to mayoclinic.org/healthmatters. Thanks for listening and until next time, take care and stay healthy.
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