OFR48 Performing in an Ofuro

What do a Japanese pop group and a specialized bus in Finland have in common? They’re both all for singing in the sauna!

Rocket News from Japan tells us about OFR48, a new, all-female pop group made up entirely of workers at Ofuros, or urban Japanese bath houses. The OFR in their name even stands for ofuro.

The performances started as a way to make customers feel more willing to approach the staff of the bath houses: An awkward experience because the bath customers are naked. The clothed female workers serve both the men’s and women’s sides of the spa.

The performances began in the bath houses around Tokyo. They were so well received that the group has gone on to perform at larger venues. They plan to release their first single “Our Customers are Naked” in May. Their music video for this performance follows.

Meanwhile Russia Today reports on naked Finns singing — while driving. An enterprising tourist company spent € 30,000 (US$ 39,000) renovating a 1986 tour bus into a mobile sauna paradise. The bus holds 17 passengers who can either enjoy the sights of Lapland or sweat their ride out in a wood-fired sauna installed in the bus. For everyone’s enjoyment the bus features a karaoke system allowing its passengers to belt out tunes as sweat pours from their body.

Should you find yourself near Rukatunturi, Finland, you can hire the sauna bus yourself. See our database for more information.

So enjoy your sauna and keep singing.

Singing in the sauna

Sauna (Photo credit: Muchobra)

10. It makes your hair look great

We spend a lot of time and money on different hair care products to keep our hair looking natural. The truth is, we don’t need to. Our body has many specialized organs that condition our hair better than the synthetic products on the marketplace. The trick is getting them out.

A few minutes in the sauna will activate the sebaceous glands on your scalp, releasing a set of compounds that moisturize and condition your hair. If you wash the dirt away and spend some time in a sauna, a quick rinse is all it takes to reap these benefits. Our sauna and hair care post has more information.

9. Saunas are cardio everyone can do.

Saunas are a unique way to get your heart pumping. As your skin heats up, your heart goes into overdrive to bring cooler blood to the surface and lower your skin’s temperature. Inside of a sauna, you can raise your heart rate up as much as mild exercise while not moving.

Saunas are being used as treatments for high blood pressure, heart attack recovery and other “lifestyle diseases”.

8. Saunas help you reach a healthy weight

There is a myth that you can burn up to 600 calories an hour while sitting in a sauna. That is not true, however it comes from a medical study that proved sauna users are more likely to stay on a diet and reach a healthy weight. Overweight people who used the sauna regularly lost much more weight than a control group who didn’t use the sauna. That same study found underweight people who used a sauna were more likely to gain weight than people who didn’t.

Read our post “Weight Loss in the Sauna” for more information.

7. Sauna users catch fewer colds

An Austrian study found that people who use the sauna regularly are less likely to get sick than people who don’t. In fact, the group who used the sauna regularly caught half as many colds as the group who didn’t.

Read our post Fewer Colds for Sauna Users for more information.

Of course, if you already have a cold, stay out of the sauna.

6. Saunas can get rid your acne

Acne, pimples, blemishes, blackheads, spots – the bane of our teenage years – can be caused by your pores getting blocked by buildup of oils from your skin or dead skin cells. The heat of the sauna and your sweat can help your skin mobilize these contaminants leaving you with clean, clear skin.

For details and a procedure for using the sauna to eliminate acne, read our post Sauna your skin clear

5. The sauna boosts your energy

We’ve already told you that the sauna is a type of exercise, and exercise always gets your heart pumping to give you an energy boost. The sauna does more than that. If you rid yourself of your tight clothes, and use your time in the sauna to clear your mind, it can reboot you from your busy day and give you that boost you need.

Regular sauna use can have longer term effects that boost your energy too, lowering your stress levels and helping you sleep better. These are two of the largest drains on your energy according to our article Boosting your energy with a sauna

4. The sauna helps you recover from a workout

There is a reason most good gyms have a sauna: It’s a great way to recover from a strenuous workout. Sweat is one of the ways your body eliminates its metabolic wastes. Sweating in a sauna while your muscles are at rest quickly mobilizes all the waste products your muscles just generated and gets them out of your skin. This cuts way down on the stiffness many people experience later in the day after they’ve worked out.

Other post-workout benefits include increased blood flow. Blood flowing to your tired and strained muscles helps them recover more quickly. The heat itself helps as well. Just applying heat to sore muscles can block their pain messages for a half hour or more.

See our post Heat – It’s good for your health for more information.

3. The sauna makes you look younger

Our skin is the largest organ on our bodies, but how can you exercise it? In the sauna of course.

As we age, our skin gets less elastic, and more likely to hold onto dead skin cells. A few sessions in the sauna every week gets blood flowing to your skin. This spurs new skin growth and helps exfoliate all the dead cells that are building up. The heat of the sauna also mobilizes the oils in your skin which are natural moisturizers and antibiotics.

2. The sauna lowers your stress level

When you’re sitting in a hot sauna, it’s hard to concentrate on anything else other than your immediate environment. Spending time in a sauna is like meditation: It clears your mind of all the little things that are bothering you while you’re inside. When you emerge, your mind has been “rebooted,” letting you start fresh with a new focus on your tasks.

Dr. Stephen Colmant, a licensed psychiatrist, talks about this and other psychological benefits of the sauna in his sweat rituals video

1. The sauna makes you feel great

Spending a half hour every few days in the sauna is going to leave you relaxed, refreshed, healthier, ready to lose weight, and looking radiant. Those things alone should make you feel great, but there is more to it than that. The time you spend in a sauna reboots your brain, and actually can change your mood. People who use the sauna on a regular basis are happier than people who don’t.

So what are you waiting for? Find a sauna near you and get started. There are too many reasons not to.

Top 10 Benefits of the Sauna

However, just throwing on a sauna suit or spending a marathon session in a sauna could cause you to retain more water. We’re going to look at why you retain water and how to safely eliminate that extra water from your body.

Why am I retaining water?

The simple answer is, because your body thinks it needs it. Your body is a finely tuned machine. It has a number of processes that are constantly regulating and adjusting themselves to deal with all the inputs to your body.

The simplest cause for water retention is dehydration. If your body believes it is going to need more water than it is getting, it will lay in supplies that it can draw upon in times of need. This is most common in pre-menstrual women as your body prepares for the blood it will lose during your period.

Another common cause is ion storage. Your body needs a certain amount of sodium and potassium ions to survive. However, if you consume more than your body needs, it will store those for later. So if you have a diet high in salt, your body takes those extra sodium ions, dissolves them in water and tucks them away in the cells of your legs, arms or belly until it needs them. If you’re serious about dropping some water weight, start by cutting down on the salt in your diet.

While we’re talking about your diet, there are a number of other corrections you can make to your diet that will help cut down on the amount of water you retain. Eating more fiber is a big one. This helps keep your digestive tract working in the best order. Improper digestion can be a trigger for your body to retain water. A protein or vitamin B deficiency can  trigger your body to retain water. Eating healthier can fix this. Another big one is artificial sweeteners. Yes, your diet soda may actually making you fat. Finally, some food allergies will trigger water retention. These are harder to figure out and you may need to enlist your doctor’s help in finding them.

Lack of exercise can be a contributing factor to swelling. While it’s not actually water retention, excess fluid can pool in low areas like your ankles at the end of a long day at work or cause puffy eyes when you wake up in the morning. Working your leg muscles to strengthen them will help, as will getting up to move around several times throughout your workday.

There are a few more serious medical causes that can cause water retention. If your body is burned, you will retain water as your body prepares for extra fluids it need to heal the burn.  Certain medications will cause water retention, especially estrogen-containing hormones, blood pressure medications and NSAID pain relievers. Some people have “leaky” capillaries that can cause you to retain water. Increased water weight can also be a symptom of a very serious disease like heart disease, lung disease, cancer, or liver or kidney failure.  If you’ve tried some of the techniques and nothing seems to work, consult your doctor. This may be an early warning sign of something very serious.

Getting rid of that excess water

Okay, we’ve figured out where your water is coming from, and this is a sauna blog, so it’s time to jump into the sauna and sweat out that water, right? Wrong. If you want to get rid of that water weight, there are other changes to make first.

1. Drink more water.

Really. If you want to stop retaining water, you need to show your body that it’s going to get plenty of it. It’s also going to help your body flush out some of the excess sodium in your system. Drink up, you’ll actually slim down.

2. Cut out the salt.

In general, we eat way too much salt. According to new research, we should consume less than 1500 mg of sodium daily. A single can of soup or noodle bowl can contain over 1000 mg of sodium! If you’re not cutting the salt from your diet, none of the other techniques will help you. Your body will need to retain water to deal with all the salt ions you’re throwing at it.

3. Eat more fiber.

Everyone says it, but it really will help. Adding fiber to your diet will help your body get rid of those excess ions and water you’re carrying around.

Sweating out the last of it

Now that you’ve made those changes to your diet, you can work on sweating away the stubborn water that won’t come out any other way. This is not an everyday routine, but a once in a while tune-up. If you try this and the water is coming right back, you’ve got a different issue. Take another look at your diet or talk to your doctor to see if there is a medical problem that is holding you back.

Find yourself a comfortable sauna and get a nice large bottle of water. You can use a traditional sauna, an infrared sauna or a Steam Room for this part. Even a ganbanyoku bed will work. You just need something hot that will get you sweating and mobilize those stored ions under your skin. For this technique, a cooler sauna is better than a really hot one.

Since you’ll be really sweating, make sure you sit on a towel. You’ll also want to make sure you’ve showered and dried yourself off before going in the sauna. For this technique to work best, your problem areas should not be covered with any clothing.

Sit inside the sauna until sweat starts pouring out of your body. Drink water at the same rate that you feel like you’re losing it to replenish the fluids you’re sweating out. If you get dehydrated in the sauna, your body is going to start retaining water and you’ll be worse off than when you started.

Now taste your sweat. Yes, taste it. If it tastes salty, then the sauna is working. You’re sweating out the ions that are causing you to retain water. You want to keep sweating and drinking until you can no longer taste salt in your sweat.

If you feel uncomfortable, make sure you take a break and cool down for a while. It’s especially helpful if you occasionally rinse yourself off with cold water periodically. This will flush away all the stuff that’s come out of your pores and clean your skin off. A cold rinse also helps keep your skin from burning in the sauna. Remember, burns will also cause you to retain water.

What about a sauna suit?

Sauna suits are completely worthless for losing retained water. They are worthless for a lot of other reasons too.

Sauna suits have one purpose: They temporarily dehydrate you. Athletes use them to cut weight before a weigh-in so they can gain an advantage over a lighter opponent.

Of course, if you remember above, when your body is dehydrated, it is going to retain more water as a defense. So while you might lose a little water weight today from your workout in a sauna suit, you’re going to end up retaining a lot more water tomorrow since you’ve just put your body into survival mode.

Conclusion

Yes, your body does retain water and if you’ve got a really low body mass index and you need to get rid of a stubborn pocket of bloat, a sauna can help you. However, if you’ve got an average amount (or more) of body fat, a sauna isn’t going to help you. You are better off changing your diet first.

Sweating out water weight in a sauna

Contact lens case (Photo credit: ? Lee J Haywood)

Lots of people need glasses to see. Many estimates say that three out of four people need vision correction of some kind. In the USA, about half the population wears glasses or contacts at least part of the time.

If you are one of those people, when the time comes to visit the sauna, it can be tempting to wear your glasses or contacts into the sauna. It is a bad idea. You run the risk of ruining your lenses. You are better off leaving them outside the sauna.

Contact lenses in the sauna

Contact lenses are perhaps the most tempting to wear in the sauna. Many contact lenses are designed to be worn for days at a time and have been engineered to stay put even during strenuous physical exercise. The hassle of taking these lenses out and storing them just for a quick sauna round may not seem worth the effort.

Unfortunately, saunas and contacts don’t mix well. Contact lenses are made from specially engineered plastics called hydrogels. This means that up to half of the contact lens material is actually water bound inside the plastic. This water helps the lens feel comfortable and allows your eye to breathe.

When you step into a sauna with a contact lens, the high temperature and low humidity in the sauna can cause lens material to give up its water. As the lens dries out, a few things can happen. The lens can change shape, which can cause your lens to stop fitting well or even change the prescription of your lens.

A more serious problem with lenses as they lose their moisture is their ability to let oxygen reach your eye changes. You may not even feel this change, but like wearing your contacts too long, this can put you at risk of eye infections or other types of permanent eye damage.

What about wearing your contact lenses in a steam room or hot tub? They are more humid, so shouldn’t that be okay?

No, steam rooms and especially hot tubs are just as dangerous for contact wearers. The heat of the steam room, even though it has 100% humidity, can still cause your contact to lose some of its moisture. Both the steam room and the hot tub with their lower temperatures can really promote the growth of little nasties. With the moisture inside, there is a very strong chance that one of these can get into your eye and cause problems.

What if I wear my contacts in the sauna?

If you do wear your contacts in the sauna, it isn’t the end of the world. When you have the chance, take them out. If you wear disposable lenses, it’s time for a fresh pair. If you wear a reusable lens, follow your lens manufacturer’s instructions and run them through a full disinfection and cleaning cycle. If you suspect that something is different in your eye, don’t take chances and see your optometrist.

Glasses in the sauna

Glasses aren’t in direct contact with your eye, and many are made from materials with higher temperature limits, so you may think they are better to wear in the sauna. They aren’t. You should also leave them outside.

The biggest issue can be burns from your frames. Human skin begins to burn at around 130°F (54°C). Saunas typically range between 150 and 220°F (65-105°C) – well above the temperature where skin burns. This works because the usual things you touch inside of a sauna, like air, wood and fabric, are all poor conductors of heat to your skin. Metal and rigid plastics are very good absorbers of heat from air and are very good conductors of heat to your skin. With your glasses on, you may quickly find that a normally pleasant sauna experience leaves you with burns on your temples, ears and nose. Ouch.

Another problem with the heat of the sauna are lens coatings. Most modern glasses are coated with a series of special coatings to prevent glare, reflections, and limit certain wavelengths of light from reaching your eyes. Many of these are applied via a polymer film with a low melting point. Bring  a pair of these into the sauna and the film can separate from the glass, sag or distort, all causing vision defects.

More expensive coatings can be applied directly to the lens material using a direct deposition method. The lens and the coating may both nominally be able to resist the temperature of a sauna, but unless all the components were designed to work together at high temperature, wrinkles or small fissures can develop as the lens material expands at one rate and the coatings expand at another. This again can cause vision defects when wearing your glasses, or in severe cases, cause parts of your coatings to flake off of the lenses.

The last thing to think about are the frames themselves. If you have plastic frames, many of these can be reshaped by heating them to a temperature as low as 175°F (80°C) – about the same temperature as a sauna. Some stylish plastic frame materials are coated with other materials to give them a distinct appearance, and should not be heated at all.

With glasses, steam rooms and hot tubs are less of a problem. In both, the temperatures are lower, usually within the normal limits of an extreme environment. Since glasses aren’t in direct contact with your eyes, there is little damage of complications like you could see with a contact lens.

So when headed into the sauna, its best to take your contacts out and your glasses off before heading inside. If you absolutely must bring your glasses in to find your way back out of the sauna, take them off as soon as you get settled, wrap them in a towel and keep them as low as you can where it will be cooler.

Can I wear my contacts or eyeglasses in the sauna?

Photo by Crossett Library Bennington College on Flickr

A common claim is that sweating in a sauna will help rid your body of toxins. It is a common claim of infrared sauna manufacturers and the sauna-based “purification rundown” is a mainstay of Scientology. However, many other experts say that using a sauna to detox is hogwash. Yes, a sauna will expel metabolic wastes, but there is no chance that you can excrete any environmental toxins in a sauna.

A study is now underway at Bastyr University near Seattle, Washington to study whether sauna use can cleanse the body of toxic chemicals.

Dr. Jason Allen is the lead researcher in the study. He notes that there are over 200 synthetic chemicals that are detectable in human umbilical cord blood. Accumulations of these chemicals can cause cancer, obesity, infertility, heart disease, birth defects and other illnesses and developmental issues. At present, science has no proven mechanism to remove these toxins from the body.

In an interview with a Seattle-area radio station, Dr. Allen said “Products are out there that slowly degrade in the environment and accumulate in humans, particularly in fat. So in this study, we picked one chemical that’s detectable in 100 percent of the human population, in fact 100 percent of the mammalian population, and those are PCBs.”

PCBs or polychlorinated biphenyls are industrial chemicals that were commonly used in electrical components. PCBs were banned in the US in 1979 and worldwide in 2001. The pesticide DDT has been banned since 1972, but Dr. Allen notes that DDT compounds can also be found in 100% of the population, even those born years after the ban.

For his study, Dr. Allen built a special sauna that combines both a traditional sauna stove and radiant heating panels. Three groups of otherwise healthy people who are not using any other detox regimen will be studied for three weeks. One group will use the sauna five days each week for two hours. A second group will use the sauna three days a week for one hour. The third group is a control and will not use the sauna at all.

Throughout the study, the sauna using groups will be monitored for health, their mood, and blood samples will be taken to monitor PCB levels in their blood.

Dr. Allen does not expect the sauna to cause people just to “sweat out” the toxins. He expects instead that the sauna will help break down fatty tissues that store these toxins which will then allow the body to expel them through normal means.

If you live near Seattle and want to be part of this study, you can find more information on the Bastyr University Website.

Do saunas help you detox? A new study seeks answers.

According to the Bloomberg story, the banya will open next month in the New Jersey suburbs of New York City. No details were given on the name or location of the banya. We’ll keep digging and update this post when we find more details.

He is entering a crowded market. According to our database, there are currently 13 Russian Sauna establishments in and around New York City. Mr. Kizenko told Bloomberg, “There are a few in Brooklyn and Manhattan, but the aesthetics are not up to scratch. We are going for a mixture of the contemporary and the classical of Sanduny in Moscow.” The Bloomberg article says he had considered building his banya in London, but was stunned by the high price of real estate there.

Mr. Kizenko, if you are reading this, we wish you luck and would love to hear why you left the world of high finance behind for high temperature.

Update: The establishment will be called “Bear and Birch.” They have a website with just a landing page at the moment. More details are on their Facebook page, including this comment from Mr. Kizenko:

Whack, whack. Steam. Ice.

Over 1000 years of the Russian banya experience has finally been brought to New Jersey. Assembled and flown in from Moscow, Russia, the Bear and Birch is proud to present the East Coast with its first authentic Russian banya.

Invigorate, detoxify and revitalize yourself in a spacious setting with three types of steam to choose from. Follow up with a plunge into the cool downed pool and then saunter on over to the lounge area to chilllllll.

Enjoy a wide variety of teas while wrapped up in a Bear and Birch robe and decide on a Jacuzzi, shiatsu water massage or another round of steam as your next move. Complimentary recommended treatment cycles are offered by our in-house banya consultant to help you along the way to rejuvenation.

A full banya menu prepared especially by our renowned chef, Dmitry, in our mezzanine level dining area rounds out a superb day. BYOB and plasma screens means you don’t miss the latest sports action and two VIP rooms allow you to host a full range of social functions. Bear and Birch. Get Whacked.

We’ve added Bear and Birch to our database.

Goldman trader quits to open sauna

Of course, we are biased.

What do you think? If there is a sauna or steam room next to the showers in your gym, what would you wear inside? Take our poll and let us know.

New Poll: What do you wear in your gym’s sauna?

Sunless tans are great, but how will they react to the sauna or steam room? Image via Flickr.

It is winter, and if you are like me, your skin now is as white as the snow. I have no problem with my white skin that comes with my northern European heritage. Many people, though, would rather have more color on their skin, especially when you are planning to bare most of it on a spa day.  Dozens of bottles of sunless tanning lotions  are waiting for you at your local drugstore that promise to make you look like you just returned from the beaches of Aruba. If you’re willing to spend more, you might opt for a session in a spray-tan booth or an airbrush tan from your local salon.

But what happens when you go in the sauna with a new sunless tan? Will it end up streaked? Will it wash off in one large oil slick when you get into the hot tub? Will it change to an odd shade of orange, making you look more like a Muppet? Let’s take a look at sunless tans and what happens to them in the sauna.

Types suntans

Before you can guess what will happen to your tan, you have to figure out what you are using to make your skin look tanned. There are two major types of product available today, sunless tanners and bronzers. Manufacturers can put any name they want on their bottle, so unless you read the instructions and ingredients, you may not know what you are really getting.

A true suntan

The look that sunless tanners try to simulate is that of a real suntan. When you lay in the sun or on a tanning bed, you are exposing your skin to ultra-violet (UV) rays. Inside your skin is a chemical called melanin. When the UV rays hit melanin molecules in your skin, they immediately turn brown. This process stimulates your body to produce more melanin, which darkens your skin in the areas exposed to the sun.

A true suntan affects all the layers of your skin. In most areas of your you have about five layers of skin cells. Approximately every week your skin makes a new layer of skin cells inside your body, which push the older layers to the surface. The oldest layer, which is on the outside of your skin is about a month old. To protect your body from dirt and disease, these skin cells eventually wear off as you exfoliate. Since a real suntan occurs through all the layers in your skin, it can last for about a month after you’ve last seen the sun. Sunless tanners try to simulate this look, but cannot penetrate deep inside your skin.

A sauna or steam room will not affect a regular suntan. Saunas and steam rooms do not give off any UV radiation. So using a sauna or steam room will not give you a suntan or increase the body’s production of melanin. A sauna will help promote exfoliation, so if you haven’t seen the sun in a while, a sauna or steam bath can speed up the loss of your bronzed color by a few days as that outer layer of tanned skin cells goes away. However, that loss of color was going to happen anyway.

Bronzers

Bronzers are the quickest way to get a tanned look. These are usually just a skin lotion with some dye in them. You can tell you have a bottle of bronzer when the instructions tell you not to wear clothing over your tanned skin. Many “airbrush” tans done at salons and spas are also done with bronzers. Here are some examples of bronzers on Amazon.

Many bronzers are nothing more than makeup. If you wash the area where you’ve used them, the color will come off. Others have a more permanent dye in them to change the color of your skin’s surface. As this outside layer of skin comes off, so does all the color. These can give your fake tan a blotchy appearance as the outside layer of your skin comes off unevenly.

You definitely don’t want to  use a bronzer if your plans include a sauna. If your bronzer is the makeup type, your sweat from the sauna can cause it to run like mascara, leaving you with unattractive streaks in your tan and causing you to leave strange brown stains on everything you touch. Strange brown stains are definitely not welcome on the towel you wrap around your body.  If you jump into the hot tub after your sauna bath, you could end up leaving your whole “tan” behind as an oily slick on top of the water. All of these options are much less attractive than pasty white skin.

If your bottle of bronzer is the dye type, it might not embarrass you, but as you go through the exfoliating process of the sauna, your “tan” will come off unevenly. You’ll have a patchy look as your “tan” goes away in some places, but stays dark in others.

Sunless tanning products

A true sunless tanning product usually has a chemical called dihydroxyacetone or DHA, though a few other compounds are used.  Chemicals like DHA react with the outer layers of your skin and causes a chemical reaction that makes it change color over the course of a few hours. The reaction is similar to what happens to the flesh of a cut apple when you leave it exposed to the air. Here are some examples of sunless tanning lotions on Amazon.

You don’t have to worry about a sunless tanner washing off once it sets. The change to your skin color is permanent. However, some sunless tanning lotions also include a bronzer. This serves two purposes. The bronzer gives you an instant “tan” so you don’t have to wait for the reaction to take place. It also helps you see what parts of your skin you’ve covered and which ones you haven’t. All sunless tanning products take several hours for the reaction to take place. You definitely want to stay out of the sauna until the reaction is complete and wash away all the remaining bronzer on your skin to avoid leaving mysterious brown stains on everything you touch.

As we discussed above, the outside layers of your skin only stay on your body for about a week. Most sunless tanning products recommend you fully exfoliate the areas where you plan to use them before applying. This ensures you get the longest and most even “tan” possible. Since the outside skin layer will be “tanned” the most, when you lose this layer of your skin, you’ll also lose most of your “tan.”

Getting a good sweat going in the sauna or steam room, then rubbing your body with a loofah, brush, or getting a Korean body scrub are great ways to get a full body exfoliation in preparation for a sunless tanner. Of course, it is also a great way to quickly remove a sunless tan. Again, since these products affect just the outside layers of your skin, using a sauna or steam room can make a fresh sunless tan appear blotchy as different areas of your skin, like those that are regularly in contact with waistbands, bra straps and other clothing, are thicker and exfoliate more quickly than other areas.

Another problem with sunless tanning lotions is they do not work equally well on all areas of your body. The skin on your face, hands, feet, elbows, knees and pubic area is different from the skin on the rest of your body. These areas do not respond well to the sunless tanning lotion, leaving you with unnatural “tan lines” or they discolor your skin in those areas unevenly making it look dirty instead of tanned. Sunless tanning products also do not work well on stretch marks and other areas of scar tissue, so they can highlight these problem areas. Keep this in mind if you want an all-over “tan” before you go naked in your sauna.

So if you really feel you need to darken your skin and you can’t lay out or get to a tanning bed, a sunless tanner is a better option than a bronzer. Make sure you exfoliate very well before you use it, or else your sauna or steam room will make it go away quickly. Better still is to use your sunless tanning product right after a good exfoliating session in the sauna or steam room. Your “tan” will last the longest and should have the most even appearance as it ages.

Sunless tans and the sauna

Image via Wikipedia

Today’s New Zealand Herald presents an interesting idea: Monkeys taught us to bathe in the heat.

In an interview with the owner of Bliss Stone Spa, a new ganbanyoku establishment in Auckland, he says the Japanese idea for the ganbanyoku by watching monkeys. Photos of Japanese macaques bathing in the country’s hot springs are extremely common. What is not as widely known is that the monkeys, after leaving the baths, lie and sleep on the flat geothermally heated stones near the pools.

From the article:

“These monkeys live long and healthy lives, so the early Japanese thought lying on hot rocks will be good for people too,” said Mr Sekikawa, who brought the Japanese stone spa concept to Auckland in 2009.

If you aren’t familiar with it, ganbanyoku is a heated slab of stone placed in a humid room. You lie on the stone and the heat causes you to perspire profusely in a few minutes. You can read more about the ganbanyoku in our post “What is a ganbanyoku?”

Ganbanyoku spas have become very popular in Japan, especially with young women. Some of these spas are built as “drop-in” locations in city centers where you can have a quick sweat on your lunch break or while waiting for the train home in the evening. Others are built into elaborate bathing facilities where you can make like the monkeys, alternating between a hot bath and hot stone with a massage in between.

The New Zealand Herald reporter Vaimoana Tapaleao describes her experience at Bliss Stone Spa:

I’m lying face down on a hot stone slab only just covered by a couple of towels.

The room is dark and I’m almost drowning in the heat it’s so overwhelming.

At first you wince as your skin touches the stone, but you soon adjust and it becomes less intense.

I’ve been five minutes on the stone bed and already I’m drenched with sweat.

I’m told it’s not the ordinary sweat you get from exercising – or doing hard work – and you’re encouraged to not shower afterwards, for best results.

Unlike ordinary sweat, which is sticky and has an odour, this feels more as if someone has poured hot water over me.

As you lie on the stone bed, it gently heats you from the inside, spreading the heat around your body before releasing impurities and dead skin cells, leaving the skin glowing.

Sounds good to me. I’m in there for an hour, switching from my tummy to my back now and again.

I notice at the end of the session that the “sweat” disappears within minutes of leaving the spa room and my skin is not only dry but baby-bottom smooth.

Sounds good to me. If you’re looking to try a ganbanyoku, there are a few scattered throughout the world. You can find them in our database.

Source: “Alternative therapies: Japanese monkeys knew about the health benefits of rocks” from the New Zealand Herald

Did we evolve to like the sauna?

I’ve been a Lifehacker fan since its beginning. While some of their topics are obscure geekdom, the occasional tip about a new piece of software or website that ends up saving me hours makes it a daily stop on my morning review of the news. I was really interested this morning when I saw their new post “How to Hack Your Bathroom into a Home Sauna.”

I had to check the calendar to make sure today isn’t April 1. It isn’t.

Holy sh*t Lifehacker. What will you stoop to for linkbait?

The post is chock full of lots of crazy ideas and very few concrete details, like:

If you plan to install a wood-burning stove, you’ll need to fire-proof the walls and roof around the stove. Particle board isn’t cheap, but this is one area you don’t want to skimp on.

If you don’t have an air vent in the bathroom, don’t make one: the gap under the bathroom door will work just fine.

Um, NO NO NO NO NO!

If you’re putting a wood burning stove anywhere enclosed, you need to make sure you have proper ventilation. If you don’t you’ll end up at best poisoning yourself and at worst asphyxiating yourself and your whole family in your project. Especially if you follow their instructions to build a sauna stove:

A wood burning stove can easily be made from a junk yard gas canister. Use a cheap angle grinder to lop off the top, then just find a metal bucket, cut a hatch and fit the flue.

Those are the instructions. All of them. Now go forth and build one of these and put it in your house!

Please don’t follow these instructions. We value you as a reader too much to have you kill yourself in a home-made deathtrap.

If you’re really set on building your own sauna in your home, buy a good book like How to Build Your Own Sauna & Sweat by Mikkel Aaland, The Sauna: A Complete Guide to the Construction, Use, and Benefits of the Finnish Bath by Rob Roy, or Hot Tubs, Saunas & Steam Baths: A Guide to Planning and Designing your Home Health Spa by Alan Sanderfoot.

If you don’t want to shell out the dollars for a book, then visit Sauna Times or Kalle Hoffman’s Sauna Pages. Both offer plenty of free advice and detailed plans for building your own saunas and sauna stoves.

And unless you really, really know what you’re doing, build your first DIY wood stove sauna in a shed, far away from your home and anything else flammable.

Meanwhile, watch for these exciting posts coming soon to Lifehacker: “Improve your mood: Hack your bathtub and a toaster into your own electro-convulsive therapy system” and “Hack your own Botox from cans you fish out of your grocer’s dumpster!”

Lifehacker shows how to build a ghetto sauna in your home