Sitting in the warmth of a sauna may simply be the most intense activity your body has experienced in some time; this is due mostly to the fact that the severe heat produces a synthetic fever which encourages every major organ to leap into action. It may not feel like it since sitting in a sauna is so soothing, but your organs are working as hard as they would be if you were cutting the lawn or running. Skin, the body’s largest organ, and the sweat it produces are removing damaging toxins from the interior of your body.
How Your Body Reacts to Sauna Heat
When you lounge in sweat baths or steam showers, warmth receptive nerve endings produce acetylcholine, a chemical which alerts the two to three million sweat glands embedded in the skin. The eccrine sweat glands, by far the most plentiful, respond to warmth. During a fifteen minute sauna, about one liter of sweat is excreted, depending upon the individual. Any smell associated with this type of sweating is caused by bacteria present, since eccrine sweat is itself odorless.
When you take a sauna, the warmth causes increased blood circulation near the skin and stimulates sweating which helps with the body rid itself of unwanted materials and improves general circulation. Some people suffering from toxic poisoning or severe allergies need to purge their systems by sweating heavily, the sauna delivers this easily.
Sweat also has the purpose of being a judicious rubbish collector. Sweating inside a sauna for fifteen minutes can rid the body of the same amount of heavy metals that would normally be eliminated by the kidneys during a much longer twenty four hour period. While only about one percent of what sweat contains is actually waste, it is enough to cause significant benefits to the body when these waste products are removed. Excessive salt carried by sweat is generally believed to be beneficial for cases of mild blood pressure.
A metabolic by-product, urea, if not disposed of regularly, can cause headaches, nausea and, in extreme cases, vomiting, coma and even death. Some physicians are so certain of the benefits of sweating out toxins that they will encourage their patients to supplement kidney machines with house saunas. Sweat also draws out lactic acid which causes stiff muscles and contributes to general low energy. Sweat flushes out toxic metals such as copper, lead, zinc and mercury which the body absorbs in polluted environments.
The body’s impurities are flushed away, even nicotine from a smoker’s body. The perspiration that occurs over the entire body while in a sauna or steam shower will help encourage clear, healthy skin and even gives a temporary, rosy afterglow. Even with all these beneficial effects to the body, most people still see saunas as primarily a place to calm down. The warmth and humidity relax sore muscles, relieve stress, and contribute to a truly healthy feeling that is not only a state of mind but a state of inner, physical well-being.