I joined a health club that has a steam room. People seem to really enjoy the steam room after a workout, and so I’ve tried it out after a few workouts and don’t really understand the benefit.
I looked it up online and it seems to me that there really isn’t any health benefit provided by a steam room. The only thing it is good for is “relaxing,” assuming you find the heat relaxing. It doesn’t purify your skin (sweat is for cooling, not purifying), it doesn’t help you lose weight . . . it seems like it doesn’t really do anything except make you sweat your ass off in a room full of naked dudes for no reason!
Can anyone fill me in on any benefits of a steam room?
As soon as I have the money I will be converting the shower in my bathroom to a steam room. It is relaxing and it seems to help, me at least, with congestion.
The standard answer is that the heat of a steam room increases your pulse rate, but since blood vessels in the skin are dialated by the steam, the extra flow of blood is somewhat accomodated such that blood pressure more or less remains the same. It’s therefore a “healthy” way to increase blood flow.
Increased blood flow is probably a good thing–at the very least more nutrients can be carried to the skin. As for other benefits, much of it is anecdotal, e.g. since your body sometimes goes into a fever during sickness to stimulate the immune system, a steam room should also do the same thing.
I’ll buy the blood vessel argument , but any talk of “stimulating the immune system” seems a little quacky to me…
I use the steam room because it feels so good when I get out
Actually, I do enjoy it. Some people probably try to tout some health benefits but I think it’s bunk and that it’s just plain relaxing, and could possibly ease some joint illness symptoms.
The heat would increase sweating, and I’m with you that there’s nothing “purifying” about sweating; I don’t buy the line about removing toxins. If it were so damn good for you we wouldn’t have air conditioning.
It would also cause blood vessels near the skin surface to dilate, but I know of no health benefit to that; it’s a natural reaction to lose heat like a car radiator.
Your body raises its core temperature because higher temperatures interfere with the ability of some bacteria to live or reproduce (it is believed). However, I do not know if a sauna or steam room raises your core temperature. That is, stick a thermometer in your mouth after being in a steam room and see if your temp is still 98.6[sup]o[/sup]F. Even if it did, I can’t see how that could help you if you’re healthy to start with. Your body does a great job of knowing when to raise its own temperature, thank you very much.
I have done a little searching to see if i can find an authoritative site with some hard science on this but all the sites that come up are either new age sort of sites or someone trying to sell steam room equipment, so I can’t cite any scientific evidence on one side or the other, just baseless claims.
It is relaxing and works much as a heating pad on overstressed muscles after exercise.
Better yet take a short cold shower and then about 2 to 3 times as long as the cold shower in the steam.
You can get an excellent close shave by applying shaving cream before the steam and shaving immediately afterward.
It provides gentle heat to the sinuses and promotes drainage if you have sinusitis.
WAG and a real plus, you can’t answer your cell phone!
My doctor recommends steam for sinusitis, too. It is good for the skin, but not because it “removes toxins.” Sweat is the most natural way to moisturize the skin.
I think this and the article Danceswithcats posted are the real answer. Way back when in Europe, it was also easier to have a bath house and pay for that then to try to get a hot bath at home. During the winters, the bath house also meant that for a small fee you could get out of the cold and really be warm.
But even then, one of the big draws of bath house was that there were no women. You could burp, fart, stop holding in your gut etc. You could go to the locker room and spend hours playing chess or cards. After indoor plumbing and heating made the bath house unnecessary, tradition and men’s dislike of change (I mean men here not men as in humanity.) kept them going to steam room. You sit around in the steam, complain about your wives, talk about how the team will do this season and you don’t worry about anything more troubling than correcting your slice, or how much better your lawn would be if you had a mulching mower.
I thought that was one of the whole points–lose weight just by sitting with a towel wrapped around your, eh, wild hairy banana. Jockeys call it “hotboxing” and I was certain it was for weight loss. No?
Anything that causes a lot of sweating can be used for temporary weight loss. If you need to keep your weight below a certain limit to remain in your weight class, hotboxing would come in handy. You sweat off up to ten pounds, then head to the official weigh in. But, being that dehydrated is not good for you and you can’t keep it up for long. If you manage to resist your increased and constant thirst, one of the complications is bound to land you in the hospital. But, if it’s just a matter of losing a few pounds for a weigh-in or needing to fit into an old outfit for a wedding, it will work.
Dave Atell visited a Russian bath house on one of the episodes of Insomnia. It’s very clear that it’s all about male bonding.
That would be a sauna that the jockeys call a hotbox and use to drop a few pounds so they can make their assigned riding weight. The sauna is dry heat and causes sweating and temporary weight loss.
Knowing I will get to sit in the steam room after my workout is what gets me to the gym. It relaxes and refreshes me. And I have noticed an improvement in my skin.
I don’t buy it. Why wouldn’t the circulatory system naturally be able to convey as many nutrients as are needed? Is our skin constantly malnourished? Seems unlikely to me.
Heat your muscles up above a certain temperature, and they have no choice but to relax. In this regard, steam rooms operate in a similar way to hot baths soaking away aches and pains - it’s just tensed up muscles relaxing. Bathing from the inside-out by sweating profusely is a bonus feature, though this sweat doesn’t get the chance to evaporate in the super-saturated atmosphere, so it is entirely possible to raise your core body temperature in a steam room, which is why it’s best not to hang around in one all day. You’ll start to feel faint if your core temperature gets too high - best to flee the room when that happens.
A variant on the steam room is the very hot room with dry air (don’t know the name, but the Japanese are fond of them). The body can bear stupidly high air temperatures if the air is dry enough, and the sweat evaporation is usually enough to keep the core temperature stable for the duration. Even the wooden benches are at a temperature that would normally burn flesh, but fortunately the poor thermal conductivity of wood means that this doesn’t happen.
