A sauna increases the heart-rate by as much as 60 per cent, as blood vessels dilate, boosting an individual’s cardiovascular performance.
Getting control over the stress in your life is a matter of life and death. If you are perpetually stressed and you do not know what to do about it, you could become the prime candidate for high blood pressure – the silent killer.
Today, we are expected to manage more tasks in an hour than our grandparents handled in a day. This lifestyle has been occasioned by developments in technology and our future-oriented culture. Simply put, we live in a more chaotic world than our forefathers.
Moving from one stress to the next seems the order of the day. If you are not thinking about rushing to work in the morning, then you are stressing about job performance. If the stress is not over the traffic, then it is about your child’s performance in school.
The rising prevalence of knock-on health issues such as high-blood pressure and high stress lifestyles are now responsible for 12.5 per cent of deaths in the country.
Urban toxins
However, there is hope and a sauna is said to be just the remedy for dealing with stress. While it delivers the health benefits of a work-out and improving cardiovascular health, a sauna also flushes out urban toxins of the system and aids in weight loss.
A sauna increases the heart-rate by as much as 60 per cent, as blood vessels dilate, boosting an individual’s cardiovascular performance. According to the Davis and Shirtliff CEO, private homes now account for 80 per cent of sauna purchases.
Mr Davis says that urban, sophisticated lifestyles have also created a more health-conscious consumer, driving the uptake of saunas alongside gym equipment. As far as weight loss is concerned, the average person can shed 500 grams, the loss of which consumes approximately 300 calories in a single sauna session.
The AMR journal equates this to three miles of running. A fitness supervisor at the Nairobi Club, Musa Ibrahim says they re-fitted their sauna equipment in order to meet the growing demand at the facility.
“Our customers have expressed increased satisfaction due to improved physical well-being from sauna use,” he says.
The deep sweating associated with sauna use flushes out toxins such as lead, copper, zinc and mercury from the body. These are toxins that our bodies absorb routinely in urban environments.
In sweating, bacteria are rinsed out of the skin’s epidermal layer and sweat ducts, in turn improving capillary circulation. The effect is that the skin looks and feels softer.
Saunas are also able to significantly lower incidence of influenza, colds and minor respiratory diseases. The heightened humidity in the sauna triggers a more rapid production of white blood cells which then actively neutralise viruses.
Additionally, the vapour in the sauna helps relieve sinus and congestion from colds and allergies.
