of daily life in Finland, where there is on average one sauna
for every household!^11 Some of these saunas are built in the
unlikeliest of places—an abandoned phone booth, on a
boat, or in an immobilized Airstream. Many of these are
caught on film in the quirky documentary Steam of Life,
chronicling this musty national pastime. Elsewhere in the
world, though, saunas tend to be found in spas and higher-
quality gyms.
While you may be inclined to write saunas off as mere
recreation with a schvitz, science is beginning to validate
their use as a powerful health-modulating activity. Recent
research has shown both mechanistically and
observationally that hyperthermic therapy gives your brain a
potent workout and might play a powerful role in protecting
it from aging.
Heat Shock Proteins: A Protein
Bodyguard
Sitting in a hot sauna imposes a certain kind of stress on
your body called—wait for it—heat stress. The highly
adaptable human body, forged in the climate of East Africa,
knows that heat can kill you and, as a result, takes
precautionary measures to protect itself. One such protective
measure includes activating heat shock proteins, or HSPs.
As their name implies, heat is the primary variable to get
HSPs going, although these proteins are also activated by
exercise and cold temperatures.
HSPs act to guard other proteins by protecting them from
“misfolding,” as the consequences of protein misfolding are