Have you ever looked at a graph of countries with the lowest incidence of cancer, heart disease, fat-ness, etc. ? Of course you have. So you know that in general, scandinavian countries and Japan rule the roost in such things. This also includes life expectancy.
Now, you might well be asking yourself, “who is this this crackpot? and what does he know?” Well if you are then I must tell you that THEY’ve gotten to you too even if you don’t know it, and you should live underground for a month, drinking your own urine until you are clean.
Anyhow, now that the weirdoes are gone lets be logical. Why would these countries have such superior records?
Genetics? The vast amounts of fish eaten? Healthier lifestyles? Balderdash says I.
The answer is simple. The one thing these countries all have in common, which gives them such an edge is… bathing.
Both of these cultures have a bathing ritual in which they reside in a hot, steamy room for a while, before being purged with icy cold water. Just like we are all taught to wash our hands in cold water when we wash them, to close off the pores so no more bacteria can enter, this lot have gone one better. The hot water obviously opens the pores, killing all the bacteria living in there, before the cold water does it’s job and closes the pores, sealing out any nasties.
Now you might whinge, “but heart disease isn’t infectious neither is obesity arent you meant to go back to the padded cell each night? blah blah blah” To you I say True. But imagine never feeling a bit crap and deciding to sit around smoking and eating because you have a cold. Instead you’re running around being healthy. It all adds up.
Now that I have scientifically proved my theory, the only thing left is to provide a reason for this, say, howabout the governments of these countries and the huge fish companies of the world wanting to become gods. That’ll do.
So, everyone convinced? good. Send donations to…
Even if you find a relationship, you can’t prove it’s a cause and effect relationship.
For example, it could be that those countries promote a less stress filled way of life, because those people will actually sit down and relax in a hot bath and observe these kinds of rituals that are stress relievers.
In the good ol’ USA, if you have free time and you don’t spend it running around like a nut, running your kids to points A, B and C…or you don’t spend it at the office, then you are a slacker.
So, the act of steaming one’s self might not clear anything out of anybody, but to live in a culture that promotes rituals that are stress relievers might go a long way to preventing illlnesses that attack stress riddled people.
The point is, the hot soak as a ritual might say alot about the culture one lives in. The culture might promote a healthy state of mind.
My culture here is stress riddled. Stress is an immune system killer.
Also, there are lots of bacteria that hot water - even boiling water - doesn’t kill; and cold water doesn’t “seal” the pores so closed that no bacteria can enter. And they open again pretty quickly - they might be made smaller temporarily by cold water being applied them but it doesn’t last forever.
I’d say Philster’s explanation about stress is also correct.
One reason that Swedes have a lower cancer (at least lung cancer) frequency than our neighbours is that we smoke less and the reason for that is that we have a culture of using snuff.
As for a tradition of sauna you mix us up with Finns, who, if I remember correctly, have a much higher rate of heart diseases.
There are much simpler explanations for longer lifespans. The most obvious is that countries with a high average annual wage tend to have the longest lifespans. Actually, an even better correlation is that countries with the least poor tend to have the longest lifespan. In other words, a country with a greater average wage but with more inequality tends to have a slightly shorter average lifespan than one with a slightly smaller annual wage but with less inequality.