Sauna use can positively impact physiological aspects comparable to moderate aerobic exercise, such as blood pressure and heart rate variability.

“heart rate elevates while you're doing the activity, blood pressure increases while you're doing the activity, but then after heart rate decreases, resting heart rate decreases below baseline, blood pressure is improved. So, it decreases below baseline. This is happening the same in moderate intensity cycling versus sauna.”

“Dry sauna sessions at high temperatures (≈80-100 °C) and longer sessions (>19 min) have the strongest and longest-running evidence for lowering resting blood pressure, improving arterial elasticity and, over decades, cutting cardiovascular and all-cause mortality.”

“One study showed that dry sauna correlated with reduced blood pressure at and 120 min after a session. The most short-term benefit to blood pressure came from combining exercise and dry sauna, reduced blood pressure at 15 and 120 min.”

“So it turns out that exercise or what we call the executive workout, which is getting in the sauna, is probably good for you to get your heart pumping, to use your blood vessels.”

“you know and when I sit in a sauna my heart rate starts to elevate like I'm doing cardiovascular and that's that's what happens like I'm doing cardiovascular exercises start to sweat I mean a lot of the same adaptations that happen with exercise are happening when you're you're sitting in a hot sauna”

“They also have similar blood pressure-lowering effects and glucose regulation improvements.”

“There have also been interventional studies on sauna (including head-to-head comparisons with moderate exercise) showing cardiovascular benefits.”

“15 minutes of aerobic exercise immediately followed by 15 minutes in the sauna (163-167 F) lowered mean arterial pressure and reduced markers of arterial stiffness.”

“far infrared sauna had more mild effects on heart rate (+26 bpm), cardiac output (+1.6 L/min), and blood pressure (-1 mmHg).”

“Traditional sauna led to a 34 bpm increase in heart rate, a 2.3 L/min increase in cardiac output, and a 4 mmHg reduction in blood pressure”

“This has to do with the fact that traditional saunas mimic moderate cardiovascular exercise, whereas infrared saunas do not.”

“Combining exercise with sauna sessions enhances cardiorespiratory fitness, a key indicator of longevity, more effectively than exercise alone.”

“using the sauna at a moderate level can increase the heart rate to 100 beats per minute and a more intense sauna session can increase heart rate to 150 beats per minute”

“Yeah. It is quite high actually. It's something like a moderate level of physical activity.”

“what the study showed is that in terms of the effects on heart rate and blood pressure they were identical”

“your skin temperature increases and your body then shifts blood flow so blood flow goes from the organs to the skin about 50 to 70 percent of blood gets read just redistribute a tattoo to your skin and that's to help facilitate sweating and so you sweat and your heart rate increases your heart rate increases up to 150 beats per minute which is equivalent to moderate physical activity stroke volume remains the same but cardiac output increases to between 60 and 70 percent so a lot of these things in fact all of these things happen when you're physically active”

“They've done a side by side, head to head comparison on a stationary bicycle and comparing it to 20 minutes in a sauna. And all the same physiological changes happen while you're exercising, your blood pressure actually goes up, your heart rate goes up, you sweat, your core body temperature elevates. While you're in the sauna, your blood pressure goes up while you're in there, your heart rate goes up, you're sweating, your core body temperature goes up, but then when you're done with the exercise, or you're done with the sauna, blood pressure goes down even lower than baseline. You know, your heart rate improves. And, you know, so it's very comparable to cardiovascular exercise.”

“Yeah, I just want to mention sauna use, real quick, because that's also been shown to do the same thing with parasympathetic activity and heart rate variability and blood pressure and all these things. And it mimics cardiovascular, particularly aerobic exercise. And it's very useful for people that are injured and can't go out and get that exercise.”

“And the sauna, and there's many different ways that the sauna does mimic cardiovascular...moderate cardiovascular exercise. We have a lot of the same physiological responses, the increase in blood flow to the skin, the sweating to cool down the core body temperature, which increases with aerobic exercise. It also increases with sauna. Elevated heart rate, you know, blood pressure changes, the blood pressure increases while you're exercising or while you're in the sauna, then afterwards, it goes down even below baseline level, so lots of different similarities.”

“And, of course, there's been head-to-head comparisons comparing moderate aerobic exercise to sauna use. So there's definitely some overlap there.”

“and interestingly the sauna also does that the heat stress that a lot of the physiological aspects of yeah I didn't know that but that yeah interesting and there's a lot of research in fact there's of course uh with you know observational data it's you never can establish causation as as you mentioned there's all sorts of yes you know covariates and things but there are studies showing that you know dose dependently sauna use is associated with like a 60 lower dementia risk and Alzheimer's disease risk if you're using the sauna four to seven times a week if you use it you know two to three times a week there's like a 20 lower risk after adjusting for other factors as well but we do know sauna like there's there's intervention studies I mean it's it's comparable to moderate aerobic exercise in in terms of the effects on blood pressure okay heart rate variability and stuff”

“there were also better improvements in blood pressure and other lipid parameters as well in the group that also added a sauna plus the the exercise”

“after the activity whether it's exercise or sauna you're getting blood pressure improvements your resting heart rate is improved and so and these things are comparable”

“there's been intervention Studies by Dr Yari linan that have shown so he's taken um he's taken untrained people and put them on an exercise protocol it was a stationary bike and then he he had two groups one that justed the stationary bike with passive recovery and the other ones that did the stationary bike but then they went right into the sauna for 15 minutes and and they looked at a variety of parameters one of them being V2 Max so what he found was that those people that did the the ex size bike and the sauna had a better V2 Max than the ones that only did the exercise bike”

“In fact, there's been a headto-head comparison looking at sauna versus a stationary bike. So individuals did about 100 watts on a stationary bike for about 15 minutes or they were in a hot sauna for about 15 minutes. And the physiological responses that were measured were identical. So during the activity, heart rate went up, blood pressure went up. After the activity, whether it was sauna or stationary cycling, blood pressure was improved compared to baseline. The uh resting heart rate was improved was lower.”

“what he found is that exercise plus sauna improved cardiorespiratory fitness better higher than just exercise alone which isn't that hard to believe considering I just told you that sauna is like an exercise mimetic. So you're essentially extending the time of your workout. There was also better improvements in blood pressure in lipid biomarkers as well compared to just exercise alone.”

“if you think if anyone in here that's done a hot tub or a sauna, um, a steam shower, hot yoga, you know that a lot of the physiological responses are very similar to moderate intensity exercise. So, as you're sitting in the hot tub, as you're sitting in the hot sauna, your heart rate starts to go up. You start to feel hot. You start to feel uncomfortable. You start to sweat. A lot of the same physiological processes that happen when you're doing moderate intensity exercise, not vigorous, moderate, happen when you expose yourself deliberately to heat, increased heart rate, uh your your stroke volume goes up, you have increased cardiac cardiac output.”