Next time you're feeling a little blah about the idea of working out, consider hitting the gym, bypassing the machines, and just sitting in the sauna. According to new research recently published online in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, sitting in the sauna could protect you from disease just as well as exercise does.
In a long-term observational study, researchers compared weekly sauna use among 2,315 middle-aged men enrolled in the Finnish Kuopio Ischemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study. (Saunas are kind of a big deal in Finland, both in gyms and in people's homes — all but 12 men in the study said they "sauna bathed" at least once per week.)
About 20 years later, researchers checked in on the participants: 190 participants had died of sudden cardiac death; 281 had died of coronary heart disease; 407 had died from cardiovascular disease, and 929 had died from other causes.
So why should you care about what happened to old Finnish men? Researchers found that, after adjusting the results for factors that could affect people's health, like smoking, age, weight, fitness and activity levels, and preexisting health conditions, the more often men used a sauna, the lower their risk of developing a fatal disease — which means spending time in a sauna could potentially protect you too.
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