Identifying Saunas' Effect On Women's Health

We’ve known for some time now about the overall health benefits of infrared sauna bathing on human physiology, but research focused specifically on the benefits of infrared saunas for women is something that has been relatively untouched. That was, up until recently, when Dr. Joy Hussain conducted a pilot study to explore how the female body reacts to thermoregulation facilitated by infrared saunas.

Dr. Joy Hussain is a renowned medical practitioner, researcher, acupuncturist, and remote medicine specialist who has devoted her Ph.D. research to sauna bathing, as well as the impact of sweating on our bodies. The phenomenon of sweating is something recognised, but relatively unexplored in established research, which is precisely what Dr. Hussain has devoted her research to in recent years.

We sat down with Dr. Hussain in a recent episode of The Sauna Show to discover what her recent pilot study can point to in terms of the health benefits, specifically for women, that can be facilitated in an infrared sauna.

Individualised Research Exploring Individual Health Benefits Of Infrared Saunas

One of the most interesting aspects of Dr. Hussain’s study is the fact that she used individuals as their own control group for the research. Meaning that the results tallied for each woman while exercising, meditating, and inside an infrared sauna, can be seen as a more accurate depiction of the health benefits, rather than comparing them to a sample from a different group.

“You often hear about randomised controlled trials where they’ll actually have a controlled group that is put through something similar to what is being compared. For me, I really think saunas are something that should be measured individually. The effects it has are very individual, so I wanted to set up a trial that used people as their own controls.”

Quite simply, Dr. Hussain took her baseline figures from the group after their meditation sessions and compared their sweat and urine samples after 45-minute sessions of exercising and inside an infrared sauna.

Interestingly, Dr. Hussain says that the ‘control’ activity of meditation actually had a more noticeable impact than she had anticipated.

“Some of the things I looked at like arterial stiffness and heart-rate variability changes were very similar in all three sessions. I think that’s because that meditative ‘control’ session wasn’t doing nothing, it was doing something as well.”

‍