Sweating is a complex process and one of the major benefits of a sauna.Many health experts consider sweating to be the best health benefits of a sauna. There is a lot more to sweating than meets the eye (or nose). It is a very complex and active process. Upon close scrutiny it is clear that sweating is essential to life and deserves to be at the top of the list of benefits of a sauna. Who knew that sweating is more than just a way to cool off? It is an intricate and interesting process that is essential to life itself. Much of the following information comes from Nenah Sylver’s outstanding book THE HOLISTIC HANDBOOK OF SAUNA THERAPY. This is an extremely complete and detailed look at the health benefits of saunas and heat therapy. It covers health benefits, history and how-tos of saunas plus it looks at holistic ways to get well and stay well.
To examine sweating it’s natural to focus on the skin first. Skin is much more complex than it first appears. Weighing on average 6 lbs. it houses blood vessels, nerve endings, hair follicles, pigment and up to 625 sweat glands per square inch (2.5 million per average person). The purpose of skin is more than just keeping you in and everything else out. It is a major player when it comes to removing excess heat, water, waste materials and accumulated toxins. Surprisingly, keeping your PH levels within the appropriate range is another job of the skin. Sweat’s stinky reputation is undeserved. It is actually bacteria found on the skin and hair that is the real culprit for any smell. Most sweat is more than 95% pure water. You sweat up to 1 quart of insensible (not noticeable) sweat each day. This is about 10% of your total water loss. In some situations, like in a sauna, when sensible (noticeable-the dripping wet kind) sweat is added to the mix, up to 30% of your water loss can be through your skin. Your brain’s hypothalamus is in charge of regulating organs, glands, and systems when it comes to eliminating body heat. By dilating blood vessels and activating sweat glands your skin can increase the amount of heat loss by a factor of 8. This can increase the blood flow to your skin by 50% where it can hold over 65% of all the blood in your body. There is direct heat loss plus the added benefit of evaporation on the skin. Jacquline Krohn in her book NATURAL DETOXIFICATION says “our bodies are like sponges, absorbing the chemicals to which we are exposed.” Much of that toxic brew is eliminated through the skin with sweat. In fact sweat often has a higher concentration of trace elements like nickel, cadmium and mercury than urine does. It has also been claimed that 15 minutes of sweating in a sauna eliminates as much toxin as 24 hours of normal kidney function. Some people have gone so far as to claim, after extreme toxic exposure, that they could smell specific toxins leaving their body while sweating in a sauna. Do you remember in high school science class wondering what the PH scale has to do with you? Well here it is: your life depends on it. PH measures how acidic or basic a substance is. On this scale (going from 0-14) 7 is neutral. Lower is more acidic and higher is more basic or alkaline. The PH of blood should be between 7.35 and 7.5. Outside this range can cause severe health problems including death. Toxins cause the PH of the blood to become too acidic. Sweat is an effective agent for correcting blood PH. Sweat removes not only the toxins themselves but much of the acidity those toxins cause. So much acidity is removed that sweat is often in a PH range between 6.8 and 4.
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