Yes, that it was especially rural environments and not having much options otherwise to live around while building.
Sauna that was built then wasn't just one hot room, but it also had at minimum small changing room dressing/undressing, relaxing between turns in steam room. Also if it was first building made then adding also lounge which served as living space with beds and cooking stove while building house was common. With sauna you had place to stay warm first winter, able to get warm water, wash clothes, yourselves and even a give birth old times. Building sauna first made lot of sense.
These days sauna for home builders is more about getting sauna somewhere in that floorplan where works well for the intended users of that house.
Due to lack of running water in those times (and still in many cottages) cooking is done above a fire, water is brought from the lake. A kitchen won't serve you well if you're just trying to get through a long winter of -30c.
While it's true something like 90% of the accomodation have a sauna it's not like everything is planned around it. It's more like that it's the ONLY well soundproofed space, with nice atmosphere, that makes life enjoyable when your neighbors suck.
I have no idea if that claim is true, but what I did love about visiting Finland was the even the small apartment I rented had a sauna in it! It seems like it's a non-negotiable for even the smallest accommodations.
The cheaper apartments tend to not have private saunas built into the bathroom, but most apartment complexes at least have a shared sauna on the top floor. Residents can book a block of personal time in advance.
"Tar, acclaimed to have been formed from the sweat of Väinämöinen, a central character from the Finnish national epic Kalevala, was an important medicament to the former-day Finns. Tar actually did bear antiseptic features, which worked as a cure for infections. Lately tar has been recognised to include parts that can cause cancer, and the European Union has urged that its use should be avoided." [1]
I personally dont know how tar was used for health, but it was big export item of Finland during medieval times.
Vishnevski’s Liniment, which contains birch tar, was a common treatment for wound infections and burns in the Soviet bloc. However, this was something that individuals used because there was nothing else at hand.
Now, there are things like Fucidin, Polysporin and silver ointment for infected wounds and burns, respectively, that are safer and more effective.
Some people still swear by it, because “tradition” and probably some element of malignant patriotism too.
It's mildly anti-fungal as well, which makes it effective in dandruff shampoo since a lot of dandruff is caused by fungal overgrowth, aka seborrheic dermatitis.
Another weird/fun one is using bleach as an anti-inflammatory (topical only, of course...), although these days you can find derivative products that offer the same benefits but are much less harsh.
I take a mild bleach bath sometimes and it’s quite invigorating. Seems to kill off a lot of skin surface bacteria which can sometimes be beneficial (there’s good and bad bacteria on your skin).
Not to be done too often but every once in a while I find it helpful. Not all that different from a strongly chlorinated pool.
Another cool one, especially if you don’t have a sauna, is doing a mustard bath. You will sweat like a stuck pig
lol. They make formulations you can buy but I make my own. A cup of ground mustard seed, which I buy fairly cheap online, and a few tablespoons of baking soda, plus some essentials oils mainly to cut through the mustard smell.
Pour that in a warm bath and soak for 20 mins. Then get out and wrap yourself in a towel and continue sweating for 15 mins or so.
Besides water proofing wooden boats and long time ago ships pine and fir tar it's been used protecting wooden roof tiles when they were a thing and still are used old wooden churches keeping and restoring.
It's used small amounts in additive in soap or shampoo mostly as a scent, mouth pastille and lozenge a for taste, animal health care kind antibacterial and bug resistant etc. long time ago.
Quite lot of applications especially old times long time ago before more scientifically developed medicines were commonly available. These days less there but it's used as a scent or for flavour.
Go to an ER or UC and have them dress a wound for you. They will use a healthy dose of petroleum jelly and generally tell you to stay away from antibiotic ointments.
All of these studies are always performed by Finns (or SE / DK / NO + maybe Russia).
I'd love to see this (and other sauna studies) replicated by someone somewhere to the south or hotter climates in general (southern Europe, Africa, hotter parts of Asia and the Americas).
I doubt they would replicate it or any of the magical effects of saunas. Lots of the sauna studies suffer from the same issue where people self-report sauna usage rather than being assigned randomly to a treatment group. In countries where saunas are readily accessible and most people are under the impression that the more you use sauna the healthier you are, the ones that use the sauna less are probably because they tolerate it far worse. And that's probably related with age, comorbidities, physical condition, etc.
Basically, the sauna studies are probably mostly discovering that "healthier people can stand sauna longer". In countries where most people don't stand sauna for more than a few minutes, that self-selection bias won't exist.
Also location. In my country, saunas at home aren't as common in Finland, but basically every gym has one. So the people that use the sauna the most, are likely to be the most active.
If you want to experience positive health effects from sauna, you don't have to set records in heat and duration. You just get hot and sweat as much as you feel is fine. So you can do it in almost all conditions. Sweating out bad stuff from your body, activating the blood flow, unless you are at risk of a aneurysm - of course it is beneficial, even though it doesn't magically turn your health around. But a proper sauna and ice bath do revive and make you feel reborn. Try it at least at some point and then you can judge if it did not make you feel more alive and healthier and that all the studies around it a "probably bullshit".
There are two separate issues there. One, you feeling good about going to the sauna. If you feel good, that’s nice. But it’s your personal feeling from it. I personally did not have the same opinion about my lungs feeling as I was breathing fire, but to each their own. I’d rather do other nicer things to activate blood flow and feel revived.
The other is the health benefits, and that can only be measured from serious studies and not from how you or me feel about it later.
I don't know about that. As in yes I agree but that seems to apply to Western countries in general. For example in Tunisia, people go to public baths at least once a week and part of that involves sitting in a hot steamy room for 30+ minutes. So here you have an example for a population that does use sauna (in a way) but aren't relying on self-reporting.
And also replicated with participants not used to high temperatures inside a typical Finnish sauna. As the study said such people are very difficult to find in Finland. But I wonder if a person who has never been to a real sauna would tolerate this study protocol (2*15 min at 73° Celsius) without any training.
Sauna and hot climates may sound counterintuitive, but it has been tested by most Finns that when you come out of a hot sauna any outside temperature feels cool.
What about Japanese hot springs? ("onsen")
Those are typically around 40°C but could be up to 60°C. Because it is hot water and not hot air the temperature would be transferred differently to the body though, so I don't think the numeric temperature is directly comparable.
Onsen baths are taken all year round: including summers that get hotter than in Finland, but especially enjoyed in winter.
Anecdotal evidence. But since I started doing sauna regularly (once a week) I started to get sick less. I’m talking colds or flues. And the ones I did catch were much milder. Even with sick family members around I’m not catching it as often.
Back in Eastern Europe I frequently visited public "sauna" with my parents. It included jumping into freezing water after three heat sessions and the only thing you feel is just tingling in your skin. During those years all my respiratory illnesses were very brief and never affected lower areas (like bronchitis). The very first year I've emigrated I've got pneumonia and needed antibiotics twice during the cold season. The doctor told me it's just different viruses and I didn't have immunity for those (which is ridiculous considering globalization and I wasn't in an isolated tribe before).
For my parents though I think it was net health negative as public sauna was always accompanied with a lot of alcohol.
The thing about sauna I love the most is rare moment of absolute clarity after hot/cold cycle. I rarely can think so clearly, even if it's only for ten minutes, than after putting my body to stress by sauna heat.
Sauna is the perfect activity to add to most people's everyday routine. It is 30-60 minutes of relaxation for the body and mind, which nicely fill in the slot between dinner and bedtime, instead of TV/Netflix or doom scrolling in the sofa.
284 comments
or is that just an urban legend claim?
Sauna that was built then wasn't just one hot room, but it also had at minimum small changing room dressing/undressing, relaxing between turns in steam room. Also if it was first building made then adding also lounge which served as living space with beds and cooking stove while building house was common. With sauna you had place to stay warm first winter, able to get warm water, wash clothes, yourselves and even a give birth old times. Building sauna first made lot of sense.
These days sauna for home builders is more about getting sauna somewhere in that floorplan where works well for the intended users of that house.
>
sauna is often built first because it serves as a place to live while you're building the housewouldn't a kitchen accomplish that goal better?
I personally dont know how tar was used for health, but it was big export item of Finland during medieval times.
[1]https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/themes/themes/health-a-wellbein...
Now, there are things like Fucidin, Polysporin and silver ointment for infected wounds and burns, respectively, that are safer and more effective.
Some people still swear by it, because “tradition” and probably some element of malignant patriotism too.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3735239/
Another weird/fun one is using bleach as an anti-inflammatory (topical only, of course...), although these days you can find derivative products that offer the same benefits but are much less harsh.
Not to be done too often but every once in a while I find it helpful. Not all that different from a strongly chlorinated pool.
Another cool one, especially if you don’t have a sauna, is doing a mustard bath. You will sweat like a stuck pig
> ... doing a mustard bath.
So many questions...
American, English, or Dijon?
*Sponsored by Heinz? ;)
Pour that in a warm bath and soak for 20 mins. Then get out and wrap yourself in a towel and continue sweating for 15 mins or so.
Sounds like you're making human soup? :)
It's used small amounts in additive in soap or shampoo mostly as a scent, mouth pastille and lozenge a for taste, animal health care kind antibacterial and bug resistant etc. long time ago.
Quite lot of applications especially old times long time ago before more scientifically developed medicines were commonly available. These days less there but it's used as a scent or for flavour.
I'm also still unclear on how it was used to treat human illness (treating boats and roofs is clear enough)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terva_Leijona
I'm guessing these might no longer contain actual tar.
Smells good, for sure. But I don't know if it promotes good health.
I'd love to see this (and other sauna studies) replicated by someone somewhere to the south or hotter climates in general (southern Europe, Africa, hotter parts of Asia and the Americas).
Basically, the sauna studies are probably mostly discovering that "healthier people can stand sauna longer". In countries where most people don't stand sauna for more than a few minutes, that self-selection bias won't exist.
The other is the health benefits, and that can only be measured from serious studies and not from how you or me feel about it later.
The experiments where at 73°C which is a lot hotter than most gym/hotel/spa saunas I’ve been in outside Finland
Sauna and hot climates may sound counterintuitive, but it has been tested by most Finns that when you come out of a hot sauna any outside temperature feels cool.
Onsen baths are taken all year round: including summers that get hotter than in Finland, but especially enjoyed in winter.
>mitigate the adverse effects of low socioeconomic status
Makes me wonder how much of it is Sauna, vs just the luxury of having the time to go do nothing for ~30 minutes.
> A total of 51 adults (...) were exposed to a 30-minute session of acute FSB at a temperature of + 73°C
Woah, that seems like a lot for me. I can usually stand maybe 60ºC for like 10 maybe 15 min. I don't think I'd be able to stand 30 min under 73ºC.
For my parents though I think it was net health negative as public sauna was always accompanied with a lot of alcohol.
Weirdly I never saw any explanation.