Millions of Canadians and Americans use saunas for their health benefits every day. Worldwide, there are even more people who tap into the healing powers of infrared saunas and traditional Finnish saunas. They’ve been used for centuries and yet, saunas are still controversial fodder among some scientists and those in the medical community. Why are sauna medical benefits widely ignored, misunderstood, and at times chastised by some – we sought the answer to this question.
Surveying the reasons why a person walks into a sauna, they’ll usually tell you one of two things. They’re doing it because it’s relaxing or for the perceived health benefits. Despite increasing evidence outlining over two dozen health benefits of a sauna, including on some points where saunas produce statistically better outcomes than certain medications treating the same condition, most doctors ignore this. Many think it’s either placebo and they haven’t bothered to examine the evidence.
A person with a chronic illness that subjects them to pain or trouble sleeping has time to look at remedies. A doctor who was educated a decade or later does not necessarily have the experience or time to catch up with the latest research. The result of this becomes patients attempting non-pharmaceutical alternative treatments – some of which work and others which may not – and some doctors not really bothering to examine the effectiveness of anything other than the medications they know and prescribe.
There are dozens of academic studies published in some of the world’s foremost medicine journals, detailing how effective saunas are at treating insomnia, certain types of pain, and helping chronic conditions. The trouble that a lot of doctors point to is that, although a sauna produces a certain effect, if we do not understand how this effect was produced it is unclear whether the sauna was wholly responsible. Almost every study on saunas recommend ‘further study’ to examine the health benefits. This isn’t a failing of these studies but is simply to say that more research is needed.
For those who don’t believe in the effectiveness of saunas as a medical treatment, we avidly encourage those doctors to use it for their own conditions. In some, routine sauna sessions can relieve chronic pain ranging from central nervous system-based fibromyalgia to arthritis, will improve circulation, will relax the mind and potentially help to treat certain mental health conditions like depression and anxiety, can improve sleep and act as a natural insomnia treatment, and can help with mobility for people unable to do traditional exercise.
Those who use saunas see these benefits and though this is anecdotal evidence, this is still evidence all the same. Western medicine has notoriously been slow to pick up on alternative medicine, with evidence for acupuncture long being denied by doctors who preferred to prescribe opioid medication as opposed to trying alternative therapies first.
At the end of the day, it comes down to what’s most effective for the patient in treating their symptoms. The dated knowledge of doctors, the mis-education of some doctors, and the community’s general slow-to-react approach to ongoing concerns is responsible for saunas not receiving a fair look at a possible alternative to medicines for chronic pain, insomnia, cardiovascular challenges, and other conditions. If you are a patient with any of the symptoms and/or conditions mentioned, a sauna may be able to help.