Posted on 07/02/2025 3:54:48 PM PDT by ConservativeMind
Hot tubs and saunas can both soothe aching muscles and provide welcome warmth, but hot tubs might offer greater health benefits.
That's the takeaway from a new study done by researchers which compared the physiological effects of soaking in a hot tub to sitting in a traditional dry heat sauna or a more modern far-infrared sauna.
By raising core body temperatures, soaking in hot water can help lower blood pressure, stimulate the immune system and, over time, improve the body's response to heat stress. Moreover, those effects can last beyond the minutes spent directly in heat treatment.
Researchers monitored body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, cardiac output (the amount of blood the heart pumps per minute) and immune cell populations and blood biomarkers of inflammation. Data were collected before, during and after subjects soaked in a hot tub and sat in traditional dry heat and far-infrared saunas.
The study looked at 10 men and 10 women who exercised regularly and ranged in age from 20 to 28 years old. The goal was to isolate the physiological responses to each heating method in a young, healthy population.
"We saw that hot water immersion was the most impactful in increasing core body temperature, which is the main stimulus for these subsequent responses," Atencio said.
"Increasing body temperature causes an increase in blood flow, and just the force of blood moving across your vessels is beneficial for your vascular health."
While the research team took blood samples from subjects after each kind of heat therapy, only hot-water immersion produced an inflammatory response as measured by the levels of inflammatory cytokines, a kind of immune signaling molecule, and immune cell populations.
Regular exercise can provide benefits similar to and even better in some respects than those from heat therapy, he added.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
If any of you homos make homo-erotic jokes about this, I’ll kill you!
Word to the wise: probably shouldn’t use the words “beat” and “sauna” in the same sentence.
The study took 10 random men age 20 to 28 years old and paired them with 10 random women age 20 to 28 years old and plunked them down in a hot tub with Brie and Chardonnay. The researchers measured blood pressure and other physiological responses to the soothing hot tub water.
It is almost like water is a better conductor of heat than air. This needs to be published in the journal of thermodynamics.
Private hot tub, OK.
Public hot tub, no way Ho Zay.
>If you homos grrrrrr
What’s the difference between the new pope at prayer and Barack Obama in a hot tub?
The pope has hope in his soul, Barack has soap in his hole.
,,, very limited number of people in a very specific age range. I thought hot water soaking would pump the blood pressure up. Get back to us when the survey includes people in their sixties. In the next three weeks I'll be buying a sauna [infra red]. It takes up less space than a hot tub and the running costs are confined to time of use, rather than a spa pool staying heated. Also the maintenance factor is worth consideration.
That’s DISGUSTING!
,,, I’m not smiling; it’s muscular cramp in my face.
You likely have a bathtub already.
That is a hot tub, for this purpose.
“I thought hot water soaking would pump the blood pressure up.”
Since you think wrong, maybe you need to rethink your options.
You got that right…
,,, thanks for your consultancy expertise.
That joke has been around forever.
Get some new material, preferably some that isn’t obsessed with Obama digestive tract.
The only hot tub I have access to is at the YMCA.
An employee told me they were always having trouble in the men’s locker room, and it’s not about leaky plumbing or malfunctioning equipment.
At the risk of introducing the ick factor, sometimes (often) soaking in a tub can trigger a UTI. I’m sure it depends on a person’s particular system.
I would choose a sauna if I had to pick just one
Thought cold plunge had benefits too.
Newer spa pool heaters can also chill the water.
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