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Go Easy On The Sauna
107 Plays1 year ago
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Transcript
Introduction to Sauna Benefits and Risks
00:00:45
chrisyzen
hi Cristian Ordonov here ah so clients ask me once in a while what what's my take on sauna so I thought I would record this so I can just not have to repeat everything every time um and you may get some benefit from it too so very very simply with sona all i'm saying is don't go crazy with it like a lot of people seem to think a little bit if a little bit is good more extreme is better and i look i used to be like that and i sometimes i still am but um especially like i like it keep kind of harping on especially as we get older
00:01:29
chrisyzen
We are less resilient to stress, therefore we need to be thinking of ways of reducing stresses on the body, not not going out of ah out of our way to add more stressors. So with sauna I would say is I would rather go longer at a lower temperature than getting for 20 minutes to get blasted, right?
Sauna Setup and Usage Tips
00:01:55
chrisyzen
and Because that's clearly like I think most people feel the stress of that.
00:02:00
chrisyzen
So I would rather, if a person is only starting out, I would probably, let's say you were to get one of these far infrared dome saunas like ah I have, or maybe like an infrared sauna blanket. I would say just start with a few minutes even.
00:02:20
chrisyzen
may set it up in such a way where it is very convenient because a big factor, at least for me, why I ah stopped using it so often, the Sonom, is because um I had to like place towels underneath because obviously you sweat like I already sweat quite a lot, especially now it's summertime, so I sweat so much. So there's a lot of sweat, a lot of towels to deal with, wiping down stuff, setting up, which for my my dome sauna is just a little bit too much work. So then what I did was where my
00:02:59
chrisyzen
near infrared and red light therapy lamp is in the living room what I did there was I set up a couple of infrared light bulbs you know those kind of ones that you can use for like terrariums and whatnot and I would then use that to first of all you can you can I got them on swivel arms so you could place it so it can shine on your back help with any pain knee it really helps kind of tissue repair and healing speeding that process up so while I get my red and near infrared and by the way the near infrared kind of creates heat so you with my kind of metabolism I already start sweating there
00:03:43
chrisyzen
and then adding one or two of these depending on how hot or cold the ambient temperature is. It's a really good way to get a light sweat going. So you don't, and it's easy to set up, you know, you can swivel them in and out of the way. I think, so with the the light, the bulb and the swivel arm, each of these was like 80, 90 euro. And it has like, um what do you call that? Like a ah like a thermostat type type dial, so you can actually adjust the heat of the light. So if it's a little bit close to you, you can actually turn it down.
00:04:19
chrisyzen
If it's far away, you can turn it up so you can really play with it. So it's very, very, it's a good investment because then the replacement, replacement bulbs are like 20 bucks and the near infrared light is really, it's kind of like, you know, light is a nutrient and we're very deficient in these, the whole, pretty much the whole spectrum of light because we're not out in the sun all day. And if, even if we are for a few hours,
00:04:47
chrisyzen
we're mostly clothed so we're not getting a lot of straight up nutrition from the from from the sun which we used to a lot more but back in the day when you know we were hunting and farming and whatever else so that's a ah big reason why a lot of people are sick nowadays or not optimally healthy So what I try to do is I try to at least mitigate some of that at home. For example, now it's so it's so uncomfortably hot outside that my daughter she just doesn't want to go out during the day. So the best thing I can do is I have the red light with the near infrared light and I can turn it turn it on when we're there, you know, in the living room.
00:05:40
chrisyzen
and then maybe you know later in the day when it gets a little bit more bearable then you know the nanny can take her out and stuff like that so we're just doing the best we can or like if it's a very gloomy winter day and it's raining and you can't get out this kind of thing can help to at least get some of that light on on your eyes on your skin and so on so my my personal strategy is to to use and I've done quite a lot of detoxing over there so I don't do it as much anymore and But my personal strategy is to kind of use those lights and then you can kind of kill two birds with one stone. So you can read your book or like maybe maybe listen to a podcast, watch a YouTube video, educate yourself so about something whilst you're sweating. And it's kind of easy to swivel the the things, the red lights in and out of um where you need them. And then if there's some drips of sweat on
Dangers of High Sauna Temperatures
00:06:33
chrisyzen
the floor, you know, you could put a towel down or can wipe it up. So it's a lot easier than setting up the sauna.
00:06:38
chrisyzen
But the nice the the point the very long point I'm making is that um the the key is to get a light sweat going and build up to something where you can sweat for however long you want to do. Maybe that could be 30 minutes or more.
00:06:58
chrisyzen
Maybe two three times a week depending on on your goals if you're doing an active detox you're trying to really get the toxins out of your body um Obviously you you'll be doing more and you have to be very careful and diligent about replenishing liquids and electrolytes and stuff like that. But ah the ah the what I would urge you, especially if you're a client of mine, and this this is kind of the the the major message here is just go low and slow and very gradually increase it and if if it feels
00:07:31
chrisyzen
Too hot to bear that means it's becoming stressful so get the hell out there and you know take a break or at least take a break but here's the thing. Elevated temperature core temperature can be dangerous now these ah in the bio hacking circles you hear the the. The term heat shock proteins being thrown around and it's a little bit like autophagy.
00:07:52
chrisyzen
you know, these kind of freakin' um terms that sound fancy. It's like, oh, you know, you're gonna, ah you know, get in the sauna, get the the heat shock proteins, and magical things will happen. But here's the thing. Heat shock proteins are produced in response to exposure to stressful conditions. So, okay, great that they're upregulated and they help repair and stuff like that, but it's because of a stressful condition or situation. So why would we go out of our way to do that? It's like autophagy.
00:08:32
chrisyzen
autophagy is always running in the cells but it's up-regulated when there's stress, nutrient deprivation being a primary stressor. So you fast and and autophagy is up-regulated but why would you want to do that? You know it's like just trying to think I'm not really great with the analogies I need to get better at this but it's like you you spend all your all your money in the month and you have your overdraft or your credit card to fall back on and you know your credit limit is like a few thousand bucks and so you you if you get into debt you can get a lot of credit but why why would you want to like spend all your money and get into debt to get all this credit if you know what i mean so i just really need to work on my analogies the point is
00:09:29
chrisyzen
Why damage and stress your body to upregulate things that are upregulated when you damage and stress your body, right? So look if you read up, if you go on Wikipedia, you know, yeah heat shock proteins are now known to also be expressed during other stresses, including exposure to cold, UV light, and during wound healing and or tissue remodeling, so injury.
00:10:00
chrisyzen
Okay. And then if you, I just went to chat GPT and said, uh, what did I say? What, uh, what are some of the damaging aspects of heat on the body, right? So thermal stress, when the body's temperature regulation mechanisms such as sweating and vasodilation are overwhelmed,
00:10:19
chrisyzen
Core body temperature can can rise dangerously high. Protein denaturation, so high temperatures, can cause proteins in cells to denature, losing their structure and function. When you hear heat causes denaturation, I think you're getting cooked, it's cooking you, right? When you cook meat, the the protein can become denatured. So it loses its sort of three, the the amino acids or the the proteins are folded when they're created and built by enzymes, they're folded into this three dimensional structure. And that's kind of,
00:11:03
chrisyzen
what gives the protein its structure that dictates its function. So when you cook the protein by heating it, It damages it, right and then that helps us to digest it, break it down. right But that protein clearly, when it's when a piece of meat is cooked, let's say it's muscle meat, it can't perform the functions it used to when it wasn't cooked. Pretending you could put it back into the body. right It's not going to be able to do to do those cells same functions.
00:11:40
chrisyzen
so if you just go in there and blast yourself with heat you're kind of cooking yourself slow cooking yourself right you're slow cooking yourself because I have a slow cooker and it has two temperatures or two settings and one is just just around under boiling point so close to 100 celsius and the other one is 70 degrees which some saunas can get into in that range so 60 70 degrees so on that setting it will take hours and hours to slow cook some some piece of meat that that we cook during the winter but it will cook it eventually so
00:12:30
chrisyzen
even like 30 minutes of getting blasted with super high heat, you are getting slow
Balancing Sauna and Other Stressors
00:12:35
chrisyzen
cooked. There is protein denaturation and heat shock proteins are a response to this kind of stress stressor. Then you have the thing, ah the concept of enzyme inactivation. So enzymes need a specific pH h and temperature.
00:12:54
chrisyzen
in order to be able to um cat catalyze various biochemical reactions. So if the pH is changed or the temperature increases out of the range where that enzyme can do its job, then that ens those those enzymes in the body may not do well so it's kind of again it's another stressor right then there's cellular damage this is again just very quick chat gpt search right cellular damage so heat can disrupt cell membranes increasing their permeability
00:13:28
chrisyzen
and leading to cell damage or death, reactive oxygen ah reactive oxygen species. So heat stress can increase the production of ROI, so reactive oxygen species, leading to oxidative stress and damage to cellular components like fats or lipids, proteins and DNA. And then ah intestinal barrier dysfunction.
00:13:52
chrisyzen
gut epithelial cells ah can be directly damaged by elevated temperatures, compromising the gut barrier function. And we also know that cortisol and stress increases um ah intestinal permeability and can compromise the functioning of those cells and or their tight junction proteins that um hold those intestinal cells together. i And it's also known that heat stress can disrupt those tight junctions between the intestinal cells, joining them together.
00:14:26
chrisyzen
and that increases leaky gut or intestinal permeability. Then, systemic inflammation. So heat stress can trigger the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as TNF alpha, interleukin-1, interleukin-6, which contribute to systemic inflammation. And then heat shock proteins, we cover that, while beneficial short in the short term, allegedly,
00:14:50
chrisyzen
to help with the the damage, their overproduction can indicate severe stress. And then of course you have the other factors like dehydration, heat exhaustion, heat stroke, electrolyte imbalance, cardiovascular strain, right? um Blood pressure changes, but this is more for folks that are kind of in a slightly more precarious state. um So that's that's it. This is ah just another example of
00:15:22
chrisyzen
of something that you don't really want to take too far,
Effective Sauna Detoxification Techniques
00:15:27
chrisyzen
right? Like fasting, like ah cold exposure, like anything, like reducing certain macronutrients, whatever it is. if you if there is a benefit And there is a benefit look there is a benefit from from the sweating, right? There is a lot of toxins in the body.
00:15:49
chrisyzen
things like persistent organic pollutants, lipophilic toxins that are very difficult to make water soluble which makes them very difficult to kind of excrete so when you sweat a lot of this stuff comes out but here's the thing You want to, this is another thing that um sometimes i've I've heard people tell me, yeah, I sweat a lot. So I'm detoxing a lot. And then I'm like, but how are you sweating? It's like when I exercise a lot. So it's it's a different thing when you're sweating in a sympathetic state, like when you're exercising, moving and whatever else. And it's a different thing when you're
00:16:31
chrisyzen
in a parasympathetic state because then the blood the blood flow kind of remains in the core where ah as opposed to going to the limbs when you're running and and kind of lifting weights and stuff like that so ah these processes of ah you know the immune system digestion detoxification these are much going to yeah basically the the rest and digest parasympathetic nervous system um state is a lot more conducive to these processes running well so if you're gonna do the sauna I would personally not be doing like yoga in the sauna and like some people are doing like exercise in the sauna I would not do that ah light light stretching is totally fine stuff like that but you want to be lying down
00:17:23
chrisyzen
Ideally or sitting down kind of reclining that would be The most just the most relaxed you can be and then after you get out obviously you want to towel you want to towel off a lot during See you kind of are more any Potentially any toxins getting ah chemicals whatever else toxic metals getting excreted through the sweat you want to be mopping them up and as much as possible to reduce chances of them kind of getting back in getting reabsorbed and then you want to shower but here's the thing most people still don't even have a freaking shower filter which costs 50 bucks and i know i know like one for 50 bucks
00:18:05
chrisyzen
It kind of filters the chlorine and maybe some other stuff. It's not perfect. It's not ideal but It's better than nothing but especially because chlorine you absorb it through the skin and it's because it's volatile When it hits the bath the shower floor or the bath floor um itself it volatizes and then you're breathing some of that in into your lungs so you don't this is why i never used to well once in a while would but i would never use the saunas in gyms because
Post-Sauna Care and Recovery
00:18:46
chrisyzen
You know you're obliged to shower before after and those that water is obviously unfiltered And you're getting a bunch of chlorine and then the pool next next to it would you? Inhaling a bunch of chlorine as well so when ah I tell my client if you're at if you use the gym and you're at the gym just shower but do it as quickly as possible a minute and And then when you get home, if you want to have a proper shower with your filtered shower water, that would be a lot a lot more optimal. And yeah, you want to after the sauna, you want to ideally just rest, not start running and jumping around doing errands. So that those would be my thoughts. ah Personally, like I said, I use a couple of the the light bulbs is just much handier than dealing with them.
00:19:38
chrisyzen
dealing with the dome sauna but if you get if you can get used to using like a sauna blanket i think i know some people say there's emfs in those but i think we're already bathed in emfs like most people don't even keep their freaking phone on on airplane mode when it's near them ah or on their person and then they're like oh but this this has emfs you're using it for 20 30 minutes at the end of the day. It's not ideal. You can get a low EMF1. It's better, but again, these light bulbs, they're so cheap, they're like 20 bucks, and then the fixtures have to be heat resistant, but they're not expensive either. So with two, three of these, you could potentially get enough to get a sweat going, and it's just a good way to get into it cheaply.
00:20:25
chrisyzen
as long as the obviously in winter if the ambient temperature is cold it might be hard to get a sweat going so then you have to get a little bit more creative but it's a good it's a good sort of entry into into this because um like I said these lipophilic toxins a lot of them get stored in our fatty tissue so there's a turnover of them and ah just getting a released from from the fats gradually there's always a little bit of fat release happening so a good way to upregulate the the detoxification of these suckers is is by sweating them out and back in 2018 yeah when we were we still didn't have like our kid and didn't even have a dog yet
00:21:17
chrisyzen
with my wife. we We weren't even married yet. And um we're doing all this crazy detoxing mineral balancing because a lot of a lot of
00:21:29
chrisyzen
This is going to be a whole separate subject to discuss at at another time, but a lot of toxic metals, they can displace nutrient minerals. For example, lead can can displace calcium. and And just like that, increasing increasing these minerals again, can the body can start displacing the toxic metals and excreting them.
00:21:54
chrisyzen
So, um it's it's worth at least once in your life to engage in some kind of more planned, systematic and comprehensive detox protocol just to unburden yourself of some of your body burden. And when I say at least once, I mean like for like a couple of months or something like that.
00:22:19
chrisyzen
And then after that, after you have a lower body burden, then you can maintain it. But that's just an at least type thing. If you truly want optimal health and longevity, it has to be a bit more of a lifestyle.
Understanding Toxin Recirculation
00:22:35
chrisyzen
I'm not saying you have to be like detoxes every week or whatever, but you would want to do periodic sort of In turning up the dial on the detox the detox stuff and then just maintain um Your would kind of support to support your detoxification systems daily with supplementation and dietary stuff that we do with my clients and then every once in a while just engage in certain types of detoxes and using the sauna even once or twice a week for 20 minutes is a good way to To chip away
00:23:10
chrisyzen
or at least kind of stay stay at one place in terms of the exposure because we are getting when when you kind of think of these lipophilic and difficult to excrete toxins and endocrine disruptors there's so many like all the plastics around us your computer your phone your mouse your keyboard you have your you know your couch your car seat beds all of these will have various flame retardants so there's a lot of stuff that we're constantly being Subjected to right and our our liver and our detox systems are constantly working to To get the stuff out, but some of it is not Very easy to budge if it's stored in fatty tissue For it's there for a reason to so it doesn't circulate in the bloodstream and end up in organs the brain and so on so you have to have a very
The Liver's Role in Detoxification
00:24:08
chrisyzen
um well thought-out strategy if you're gonna be getting that stuff released from the fatty tissue how to get it the hell out of you because a lot of toxins actually recirculate back into the circulation their way out right it's called entero enterohepatic recirculation so a lot of toxins get basically recycled because a lot of toxins they're this is I'm gonna do a whole separate episode on this but their route out of the body or their route out of the body is through bio
00:24:47
chrisyzen
and the bile gets recycled a lot of it gets recycled and that's how a lot of these especially the more fat soluble the more lipophilic toxins that's how they they kind of have a very long half-life and then certain other certain I think methylmercury that's another one ah that is also has a very long half-life because it just gets to recirculate back and back into the liver and this can damage the liver and then it was a damaged liver a lot of the liver is like oh my god after the brain it's the more the most complex organ it does so much more than detoxifying things it keeps your blood sugar stable I mean just hormone balance it hinges on it and so on and so forth right so
00:25:33
chrisyzen
ah when the liver starts getting damaged it's like you know if the brain is the control center the liver will be like the engine right so ah imagine if in a system in a machine if the freaking engine ah starts getting starts malfunctioning obviously the entire system or machine or whatever we're talking about will start to ah experience loss of function and over a long enough timeline in a human that will end up as something that your doctor can diagnose as a disease or ah or health condition and we want to slow down that process as long as possible and this that's the thing you know deliverr is the so unsexy compared to like brain and neurotransmitters and optimizing
00:26:21
chrisyzen
mental performance and stuff like that, then nobody gives a shit about detoxing and um the liver and the gallbladder and this other stuff, nobody cares. So I'm trying to make it a little bit more more sexy. not um Maybe not not sexy, but I just ah harp on it a lot. A big part of what what I do with my clients is getting these these things dialed in because nobody's gonna do it for you. Your doctor will never say, if you if you talk to a doctor about increase in improving they will laugh at you as if you're some ignoramus and they might even like say, you are always detoxing. You don't need to like upregulate or anything because your your liver is constantly detoxing things.
00:27:07
chrisyzen
yeah yeah Yeah, exactly. That's the point. And there's a lot of things to detox and it can become overwhelming to the liver. And then that can cause liver damage over time. And look at 25% of adults in the USA have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and then like another 10 or so percent have other liver diseases like non-alcoholic steatohepatitis.
00:27:35
chrisyzen
ah seattle hepatitis And then there's like, Jesus Christ, alcoholic liver disease, um ah hepatitis as well. There's a few of those, right, that make up probably 10 or more percent extra. So more than a third of Americans, as an example, have liver dysfunction already. And then on top of that, we have this burden of constantly detoxifying.
00:28:04
chrisyzen
So it's important to get the stuff dialed in, the sooner the better, because these things are aging us, right? If if you're not meeting the demands of the modern world with a sound nutritional supplementation dietary strategy, it means you are aging faster than you normally would if those factors weren't affecting you. And they are, because you drive a car,
00:28:32
chrisyzen
You're inhaling those fumes. you You may live in a big city. You have plastics in your home. You touch them every day. Most people have products they use that are not made of only natural ingredients, you know like hand soaps, cleaning
Conclusion: Detox Strategies Recap
00:28:48
chrisyzen
products. not Very few people have it all dialed in. Even you know myself, but just it's impossible to have it perfectly dialed in. You just do what you can without going bananas. But I'm not so worried because I'm even if I don't have anything everything dialed in in terms of reducing toxic exposures in the home obviously I have no control of the outside world but at home it's not 100% dialed in that's I'm okay with that because we do so much for detox ah with supplementation and for with kind of dietary strategies so I feel like
00:29:25
chrisyzen
that i'm doing my best and i'm i'm not stressing over the rest that's it so hope you found this interesting and informative and i'll see you on the next episode