Fight-or-flight is something you may have heard of spoken about as a natural physiological response to an event. For example, if someone’s experiencing a traumatic event, is being attacked, or there’s a threat to their survival, in that moment they are sent into a state of hyperarousal or an ‘acute stress response’. It’s believed to originate in the nervous system as a beginning to whether someone will stay and fight or flee. This sort of response occurs in human beings and animals in nature frequently.
Now imagine if you were stuck in this constant state of fight-or-flight. That’s a lot of stress to put across the body. A number of hormones are secreted in higher than average amounts such as norepinephrine and epinephrine. There’s also an effect on a person’s estrogen, testosterone, cortisol, neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin, and how the body adapts to stress. Anxiety can develop from fight-or-flight, muscle tension, and some doctors even suspect some chronic conditions could be linked to it.
Can a sauna help fight-or-flight response?
A sauna’s ability to relax a body in an acute or chronic state of stress has benefits to someone stuck in constant fight-or-flight. You don’t want tension like this stuck in your body or mind. A sympathetic nervous system response like this can dominate your life and make you physically sick. A sauna’s a sure way to remove some of that stress and relax the nervous system.
A sauna’s built to help your body be more efficient and to essentially bring it back to balance. You’re not meant to live in a state of chronic stress. A little bit of stress is ok – nothing wrong with that. Being stuck in a fight-or-flight response isn’t that. Fight-or-flight can feel like a gentle torture and you’d never really know. For some people, finding relaxation can be a battle. Some may even forget what being relaxed feels like. There’s a solution, if that’s you.
Understanding the fight-or-flight system and our bodies
There are two parts of the nervous system that is affected as we live our lives. There’s the sympathetic nervous system, which is your fight-or-flight. This is responsible for keeping us ready almost for anything. When we are relaxed, this is called the ‘rest and digest’ system or the parasympathetic nervous system. This keeps us calm and relaxed, which also helps to reset our nervous system.
To positive influence the nervous system is to reduce the time we spend in fight-or-flight mode. Typically, our bodies can throw us into fight-or-flight mode from stress, stimulants like caffeine, and/or even eating sugary foods. When this happens, our bodies begin pumping out stress hormones and then, never stop. Our bodies can actually wear out its adrenal glands by overburdening them with too much production.
A sauna’s working the body into a sweat
A sauna applies heat to your body and gives it a workout similar to moderate cardiovascular exercise. This causes you to relax, burn calories, and calms down that nervous system. Any hormonal production related to stress is given a break in a sauna while you sweat.
The best way to think of a sauna in terms of managing the fight-or-flight response is that you’re going to sweat it out. Literally, you pretty much will. Ensure you’re well hydrated beforehand so that your body isn’t under more of a burden than it needs to be. After all, you don’t want to dehydrate. A sauna’s going to push sweat out of your pores and subsequently, your nervous system’s going to get a nice little reset.
How long do I have to sit in a sauna?
There is a line in the sand where if you cross it, all those sauna benefits suddenly start to turn negative. Limit your time in a sauna to no longer than 20-30 minutes. If you feel stressed out or unwell in any way before your time is up, by all means, leave. If anything, you could be saving yourself from passing out or from health damage.
When in a sauna, it doesn’t hurt to work on one’s breathing and meditation. If you haven’t used meditation before, this is a great opportunity to start. The act of meditation can also lower stress evidently with a sauna, the effects are all the more apparent.
For beginners in a sauna, it can be tough getting out of the mind all those stressful thoughts but focus on what’s happening. Loosen up those muscles, feel your circulation and temperature increase, and then, breathe. For your time in the sauna, all you have to do is breathe.
An infrared sauna’s advantages over a traditional sauna
You tackle the fight-or-flight response in any sauna or steam room but an infrared sauna’s arguably better. An infrared sauna works by penetrating your body three inches deep. This penetration is unlike a traditional sauna which heats the air around you rather than your body itself.
When you reach into the body with heat, you pull out toxins from the fat cells. Then, when you sweat, it’s not superficial sweat. When your body’s in ‘fight or flight’ mode, it also can’t release toxins because it’s under so much stress. Therefore, you need to get your nervous system to get towards its ‘rest and digest’ mode. This is why in a sauna you increase your body’s ability to detoxify, creating more efficiencies.
Is stress relief the only sauna benefit?
There are dozens of benefits to being in a sauna that go beyond stress relief. They include improving cardiovascular performance, soothing aches and pains in the muscles and joints, flushing out toxins, reducing your risk of Alzheimer’s by as much as 65%, helping to induce deeper sleep, fighting illnesses like colds and flus, cleansing the skin, burning calories, and more.
Can a sauna completely eliminate chronic stress?
We don’t want to make false promises, by any means and chronic stress is tough to shake off, literally. In some users, a sauna may be able to help eliminate the presence of chronic stress. In others, it may only provide a temporary sort of relief.
A sauna targets fight-or-flight response as well as numerous other things. It sort of does some housekeeping in the body, helping to nourish areas that may not be receiving all the nutrients or oxygen from the blood as they need, helps to repair and relax damaged tissue, eliminates byproducts and waste, and helps with the building up and storage of energy. For those who experience trouble relaxing, this is an opportunity to make stress more manageable and to regulate it a bit better.
Though regular sauna sessions you can achieve a sort of homeostasis which is essentially a balance in the body. This not only helps to eliminate that tough-to-beat stress but elevates any threshold to stress and pain, reduces the risk of illness, aids in digestion, balances hormones, improves the body’s natural abilities to detoxify itself, and more. Using a sauna 3-7 times a week almost is like weightlifting for your body’s internal systems, including your nervous system.
Where is your stress coming from?
There’s nothing good about stressing. Daily stress will oftentimes affect a person in ways they probably don’t realize. If you can, eliminate what’s creating the stress from your life. As much a sauna may help, it’s not going to solve any problems.
Stress can do things to you like rob you of sleep, reduce appetite, upset your stomach, and manipulate your body’s systems into developing disorders or chronic conditions. Things like heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity can be closely associated with stress. A fight-or-flight response isn’t a fun experience to have and be thrown into it as often as some people are, that’s something that needs to be worked through. Use a sauna to overcome your fight-or-flight response, reduce stress, and heal your body and mind!