Can You Get the Same Benefits from a Bath That You Can from a Sauna?

Glad you brought up hot baths because that's something that I wanted to cover before we got off track. When we're talking about sauna, when people that don't have access to a sauna, how much benefit can they get out of a hot bath? Oh, I'm glad you brought that up because there was, you know, so a couple of things. One, there was a study that showed hot baths can have an antidepressant effect. And these people were put in 104 degrees Fahrenheit bath where they were up to their shoulders for like 20 to 30 minutes. And the sham control was like a green light. So people thought they were getting a treatment. They were getting some kind of green light therapy or whatever, you know. So it was a placebo control because placebo is definitely real, particularly with depression. And it had a pretty powerful antidepressant effect, very similar to Charles Raison's study with the hyperthermic chamber thing. And when you say antidepressant, there's no real way to measure that. They have this whole, yeah. I mean, so there are some, there's potential biomarkers being identified. C-reactive protein being one, inflammation. Inflammation plays a, there is like a huge link now between the immune system and chronic inflammation and depression. Brain function in general, brain aging, but inflammation. So I mean, that's, there's a push for looking, but not all depressed patients have it. It's like there's a subset of C-reactive protein. But yeah, depression is measured. It's a very much like a, you know, have someone. So a subjective measurement would be a clinical person like measuring a whole battery of things they do. I forgot the name of the test, but yeah, that's the test. So it's like basically a battery of feeling thing. So it's not like a hardcore quantitative biomarker, which is so badly is needed. But the hot baths have also been shown. So heat shock proteins, which do like amazing, there's so many amazing things that heat shock proteins do. They've been shown to prevent muscle atrophy. And that's, you know, in the brain, they're so important, like preventing proteins from aggregating in the brain. That's how I first got in, like one of my first biological experiments ever, because I was a chemistry major in college. I was doing all chemistry stuff, organic chemistry and like chemistry. But after I graduated, I went to work at the Salk Institute for biological sciences in La Jolla. I was working in an aging lab. And one of the first experiments I had that I was doing, like one of my first projects was we were taking the human amyloid beta gene and injecting them in these worms, these nematode worms that only live like 14 or 15 days. And we were making them form amyloid plaques in their muscle. So like basically you look at these little worms under a microscope, so only like half a millimeter, you know, they move around. And as like they get older and they're aging, they don't move as quickly, you know, they're kind of slower, a little more decrepit. But anyways, you give them this amyloid beta. And after like a couple of days, they become paralyzed, where they're like laying in their little Petri dish plate on the E. coli food you're giving them. And they kind of just move around just to feed like their nose just moving around. And so when we would give them tons of heat shock proteins, in addition to the amyloid, totally reversed it, like completely. They would move around and be young. So anyways, heat shock proteins play a role in like neurodegenerative disease, also some links to like improving depression in animal studies. But Can you measure heat shock proteins in the bath versus sauna? Yeah, so that's been done. So the sauna, I know of one study where people that sat in a 163 degree Fahrenheit sauna for 30 minutes had heat shock proteins, their levels were 50% higher over baseline, which is great. And that usually like animal studies show that they can stay elevated for like 48 hours after that. There's a hot bath study where they also elevated, it wasn't quite as high, but it was like, you know, 40 or so percent higher than baseline levels. And it was 104 degrees. But this study, instead of doing it from the shoulders down, where I told you about the depression, it was like only 20, 30 minutes, it was like from the waist down. So they had to stay in there for an hour. It's like a jacuzzi, you know, where you're sitting there from the waist down and like, that's hot, like staying in 104, that's pretty hot. But heat shock proteins did increase. So I think, you know, for people that don't have access to a sauna, that hot baths absolutely are a good modality for heat stress. And I used it for a long time. Like I said, I just got a sauna. I've made a career about talking about saunas, you know, and I just got one like last month. So like, I understand what it's like to not have a sauna and to have to use hot baths. But I was also using the gym saunas, but right now it's like, there's no gyms that are open. So yeah, hot baths are like the only really choice if you don't have a hot sauna, a home sauna. What about cold shock proteins? And I mean, how much difference is it between taking a really cold shower, ice bath versus something like cryotherapy? The place that I took you to. Yeah. So I mean, there's differences in I mean, so it depends on how long you're staying in a cold, you know, water, like cold shower, like actually being submerged, like from like if you're like in the ocean or something or a lake and you're like from your shoulders down, like that's probably much more powerful than just having to shower on. But by the way, the shower, like some days I'm like, what is the matter? This this is not cold at all. You know, it's just so variable where you live in southern southern California, you live on the right border of Mexico yesterday. So so ever so most of the time now I shower right after the sauna, that's like my shower time now. And so like it's I do about six minutes and it's so easy for me. I totally have adapted. And I'm not sure if I've just totally adapted or if it's just like my faucets doesn't get as like this doesn't get cold, that cold like I really doesn't. Today I took a cold shower from home and my sauna is not there and I did it just because I wanted to have the mood affects the norepinephrine that's been shown to be increased. And it was much colder. But then again, it was a different shower. I'm not sure if it's because I didn't have the hot before, you know, beforehand, like the being hot and like getting in the cold shower, like it just feels really good. It's a nice shock. But the cold shock, you asked me cold shock proteins that that hasn't really been measured in humans. What is measured most the time with cold shock is norepinephrine release and norepinephrine in plasma. And there has been studies correlating norepinephrine in plasma upon cold exposure norepinephrine release in plasma to in the brain where it's involved with like mood and focus and attention. So there's been studies where like you could do a two minute cryo, whatever the average temperature, it's really cold minus 240 is something like that. Yeah. And then that could be compared to like, you know, a longer a longer duration in 50 degree, you know, I think 50 degree Fahrenheit water or something like that. I don't remember the exact time, but but it is comparable, but you have to stay in a longer duration. So some people prefer ice baths. Some athletes prefer the ice bath versus cryotherapy, even though it's probably more painful because it lasts a lot longer. Have you done those ice baths? Oh, I've done it. I've only done the cryo. So I've have you ever done the cold shower after your sauna? Yes. Do you like it? I like it a lot. I like it particularly after hot yoga. After hot yoga. Yeah. After hot yoga, especially in the winter when it's actually cold, the water is cold. That's when I love it. There's something mood enhancing. I mean, these things also affect the immune system by the way, which is also very relevant, both cold and hot. They both have been shown to increase lymphocyte numbers and also like other myeloid cells and stuff in people. But but like there's something like I've done the sauna and then gone into an ice bath and then, you know, it's just really it's hard. It's cold. I mean, you feel good, but man, you know, I think just like the guy's house I was doing and I was trying to impress him. So, you know, I'm hardcore. I can do this. But it was it was pretty intense. I do. I do eventually want to get some kind of like they have those like like ice, those bath that you can like regulate, you like regulate the water temperature. Yeah. Those ones that you plug in. Yeah. They're not ice baths. Exactly. Just cool the water too much work like ice. Yeah.