08/17/2019
Sauna after workouts people. It’s a THING. 😁
I have been hitting the sauna after my workouts. One of the adaptive responses that occurs in response to heat stress is increased levels of heat shock proteins. This has been shown to occur after intense physical exercise and after using the sauna. Heat shock proteins have been shown to be increased by ~50% after 30 minutes in a 163 F (73 C) sauna in healthy young men and women. The cool thing is that being acclimated to the heat, such as from regular sauna use, results in more heat shock proteins under normal conditions and even more under stressful conditions such as cell and tissue injury.
Heat shock proteins do many things mainly as a result of one of their main functions in helping all other proteins inside a cell maintain their proper 3-dimensional structure which is important for many, many reasons. For example, this plays a very important role in preventing proteins from aggregating inside tissues. Protein aggregation is associated with cardiac diseases including heart failure, cardiomyopathy, and atherosclerosis as well as with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Huntington’s disease. Heat shock proteins have been shown to prevent and slow the progression of all these neurodegenerative diseases in many preclinical studies.
Heat shock proteins have also been shown to prevent muscle atrophy. A small intervention study in humans found that daily heat treatments applied locally to the muscle during 10 days of immobilization attenuated skeletal muscle atrophy by 37% compared the control group.
If you want to learn more about the many benefits of the sauna and the references mentioned in this post check out the sauna topic page on my website.
https://www.foundmyfitness.com/topics/sauna
