There are millions of people struggling with a health problem that affects the heart. Many of these conditions can be relieved by the healing heat of a sauna. One specific condition that a sauna can help with is high blood pressure.
When you have high blood pressure, your heart is working harder than normal to pump blood throughout your body. In the long term, this stress on your heart can affect its ability to function, and the slowdown can affect your entire body.
One suggested treatment that doctors often prescribe for people with high blood pressure is exercise. Although some people think that high blood pressure is not a big deal, it can lead to heart disease, heart attacks, strokes, and kidney disease.
When your blood pressure numbers stay high, that means your internal organs are damaged and you need to lower those numbers. But the problem with exercise is that many people don’t have the health to exercise.
And there are times when exercise just isn’t feasible for some people for reasons unrelated to health. Sometimes high blood pressure goes hand-in-hand with other issues that can make it hard to exercise, and therefore people end up feeling a bit bummed out.
But there is another way to lower blood pressure. Saunas can give you the cardiovascular benefit of exercise, especially if you use them regularly. The way saunas work to help people who have been diagnosed with high blood pressure has been shown in several medical studies.
The heat from the steam in a sauna causes the blood vessels to relax and this allows the blood to flow easier, faster and more freely. Immediately lowers blood pressure.
You end up feeling better and your heart isn’t working as hard. Studies have also shown that regular use of a sauna can reduce certain conditions that can put your heart at risk.
One of these conditions is cholesterol levels that are not conducive to good heart health. A sauna can help lower your total cholesterol level and that means you will reduce your risk of developing heart disease or having a heart attack.
And using a sauna not only lowers your cholesterol, it can also help raise your HDL or good cholesterol. The reason a sauna can do this is because the elevated temperatures in the sauna make your heart beat faster, it pumps more oxygen throughout your body just like when you exercise.
It has the same cholesterol-lowering potential that a workout can give you. Helping your heart with issues like high blood pressure and cholesterol aren’t the only areas of health where a sauna can bring healing.
Medical studies have shown that saunas can help those struggling with heart failure. Regular use of a sauna can increase the heart’s ability to function. When someone diagnosed with heart failure uses a sauna five out of seven days a week for 15 to 20 minutes, her heart benefits greatly.
The benefit it gives is that the heart can pump blood more easily. The inability to pump blood easily is one of the reasons heart failure is so devastating. When your body doesn’t get the right amount of blood supply, it means your organs don’t get the right amount of oxygen.
With that reduced oxygen capacity, it’s harder for someone with heart failure to exercise because they end up feeling out of breath very quickly. Since a sauna can provide the same benefits as exercise, it helps your heart work better. Studies have also shown that regular use of saunas can work to stimulate the production of certain cells that can improve the heart’s ability to function.