July 22, 2010 • 37 mins
Although they seem pretty mundane, saunas are surprisingly fascinating inventions. Josh and Chuck break out all sorts of sweaty, sauna-related trivia, from the Finnish affinity for saunas to sauna etiquette, in this episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
With me as always is Charles W. Chucker's Chuck Chucky
Bride of Chucky. You paused as if you forgot who
(00:23):
I was. I had a thing. I have marble mouth,
whereas the unusual to Here we go, this podcast brought
to you by Jolly Rancher. Have you ever mixes with Ziema? No?
But you know that Oakland Raiders former Oakland Raiders quarterback
JaMarcus Russell just got busted with. They call it purple
(00:44):
drank and it's it's like it's codeine syrup and I
think some sort of carbonet soda and Jolly Rancher, Wow,
that's robo tripping is what he's doing. Well, it came
out of the Houston, Texas scene like ten years ago.
We're drink. I never heard of That's how square I am.
I haven't heard of it either, So don't feel bad. Okay. Plus,
(01:04):
it's like that's what they do in Houston. Seriously, that
what you want your town associated with? Yeah, we use
code dean water. Yeah, we came up with purple drink.
Wasn't he the QB for l s U. Yeah. Hey
that guy, Well he's a bust. He's nothing. Now, well
he's a big wash. Really. Yeah. He went to the
NFL and got all fat and through interceptions and he
(01:26):
was great for LU team. He was so Anyway, I
guess what all that leads us to, Chuck is saunas. Yes,
football players, Well they probably your steam room guys. Yeah,
let's talk about That's a great place to start, Chuck.
There's a difference between a sauna and a steam room.
There's a number of differences, but the mode of heat
(01:47):
is what's really different. Right. Yeah, And I should point
out we called this Saunas colon more interesting than you
think for a reason because Robert lamb Our, a steam
writer and uh stuff from the Sience Lab. He wrote
this and he told us like months ago, He's like, dude,
you should do saunas saunas. It's way cooler than you think,
(02:08):
and it's dirty and filthy and Mike and he was
right steeped in history. Yeah, this is uh for my money.
Robert Williams the best writer on how stuff works out
com ever. Um, but he wrote an altogether pleasant article
that I've read like many, many times, and every time
you just loved the way he wrote it. It's a
great article. We should read the first line, please do.
The first line of his article says, you're going to
want to read this article naked, So please, before you
(02:30):
go any further, disrobe completely. So if you're in the
confines of your own home, yeah, if the shades are
drawn and you're an adult, there's no one else around
that you're uncomfortable with. Very specifically, Chuck is only talking
to people who are we'll just go with twenty one
years of age and older. And you're alone in your house,
And if you're listening to your podcast and you feel
(02:50):
like doing so naked right now, please do right now.
Saunas more interesting than you think. Thank you. Brought to
you by Jolly Rancher. Uh, Chuck, we were talking about
the difference between a steam room and a sauna. A
steam room is heated by moisture vapor, water vapor. Uh.
And for that reason, the average steam room is going
(03:12):
to be about a hundred and four degrees fahrenheit, which
is forty degree celsius. Right, pretty hot it is, but
you can't check it up much hotter than that, and
the reason why is because it feels so much hotter
than it is because it's a moisture rich environment and
our body cools by sweating, and then the sweat evaporating
off of the skin that creates our cooling sensation. Well,
(03:35):
in a steam room, you sweat, you sweat buckets, but
it never evaporates because for evaporation to occur, the environment,
the ambient air has to be drier than your skin,
and if it's equally dry or it's wetter, then your
sweat is not going to evaporate, no cooling effect, right,
which is why sweating while you're swimming is is and
(03:56):
it's a problem, it's yeah, which is what I do. Yeah.
And then in a sauna, conversely, this is dry heat,
so it's gonna be a lot hotter temperature wise in there, right, Yeah.
I mean, if a steam room is a hundred and
four degrees fahrenheit average, you're talking a hundred and seventy
six degrees fahrenheit. It's hot eighty degrees celsius in in
your average sauna. And I do you like saunas and
(04:18):
steam rooms? You do. I've never really sat in the
steam room, but I love saunas. Actually, growing up. There's
a holiday in in Toledo that um my family had
a pool membership too, and they had a sauna. Who wha, wha,
wha wha. You could get a pool membership to a
hotel in Toledo in the seventies, seventies and eighties. Yeah, yeah,
(04:39):
I never heard of that. But I mean now that
I look back, I'm like, yeah, that's really really weird.
Probably a membership, your dad was probably yeah, we got
a membership kids, come right, I wonder actually had a
room key? Is we had I'm pretty sure we had
a membership, but I don't remember. But they had a
sauna for sure. Uh. And so I was introduced to
the sauna like really early on. It was like just
(04:59):
a normal thing. So when you were a little kid,
you enjoyed it because it seems like such an old
person thing or an adult thing to do here in
the West. If you go to Finland, baby, they are
all about the saunas. I mean, it's like their national pastime,
right actually, um, in their national epic, Chuck, it's called
the calla Valla. This is a little side side note
(05:24):
that it's their national epic, very very old. Uh. It
mentioned saunas frequently. Well, of course, okay um, there's about
one point six million saunas in Finland and uh. The
first description of a Finnish sauna dates back to eleven thirteen.
The Ukrainian historian Nestor wrote about him. That was my
goats name, Nestor? Really did you name it after the
(05:49):
Ukrainian history house? That was eleven and named him after
the Ukrainian storian. It was either that or Plato. Did
your goat love a good fitz? Uh? No, but he
drank coke from a bottle, which was kind of cute.
That is so cute. It's cute with goats. It's not
very cute when you see a human baby drinking coke
from a bottle, which I've seen and it's disturbing. Really. Yeah,
(06:11):
if you're seen, like a one year old drinking a
bottle of Coca cola, no it ain't right, man, Yeah,
that's not right at all. It's better than an espresso shot,
I guess, but not much there. And by coke, of course,
I'm using the Southern colloquialism for coke, which means any
kind of soda poptu c o a. As always, man,
we got really far off of saunas, didn't we let's
(06:33):
go back, So Finland saunas are associated with it, and
for good reason. Right, did you read the article about
the Finnish navy fighting pirates. Yeah, they have saunas on
the pirate fighting boats. Yeah. And not only that, the
Finnish army and Kosovo built twenty saunas for their for
their fighters over there, like troops, eight hundred troops, and
(06:56):
they have them in prison yeah, finished prisons. Yeah, it's
it's literally a part of daily life. If you go
camping and you're finish, you take along a portable sauna
while you're camping, like people take saunas every day. It's
like showering to us, and this is an addition to showering.
They shower a lot too. Yeah. Before we breathe past
the finished prisons on as though, we should uh that
(07:21):
this is sort of remarkable to me because we'll find out,
as we said that a lot of about being in
sauna is being completely naked, especially if you're finished. Americans
a little more shy, but we'll get to that in
a minute. But I imagine a finished prison sanna is
a pretty happening place to be on a Friday night,
wouldn't you think. Yeah, because the saunas have something of
a reputation, especially in the seventies. Um they developed the
(07:44):
reputation for being a swinging gay hangout, right, and that
is nothing new actually, um saunas, which we'll talk about later,
the history of them. But they were um kind of
eradicated thanks to the product start reformation, because they had started,
they had started to get pretty. Yeah. Yeah, it's a
(08:06):
big party in there. Uh and not just gay either, well, no,
all sorts of stuffy prostitution. Yeah, it's honest, word that.
All they were missing was a disco ball in uh
Andy Warhol and it could have been a studio. Uh
So let's get but let's crawl back inside the sauna
for a minute. Okay, you know all the spruce cedar.
(08:26):
Would that looks so nice and feel so good on
your bottom? Yes? I always thought that was just like
I mean, I knew obviously they weren't gonna put stainless
steel in there, but I never really figured out it's would.
But I never gave it two thoughts. Right, you would
think that it was just a traditional and it is traditional.
But at the same time, yeah, it's never been updated
in that respect because if you did put in stainless steel,
(08:48):
you would leave many, many layers of skin in the
sauna from your bottom every time you sat down. Same
with plastic um, you'd just be in big trouble. So
would absorbs heat, and it remains relatively cool at high temperatures,
which is why I mean, it's still warm. Your tookis
is hot, but it's not like you're not hurting yourself. Yeah.
(09:09):
And Robert also pointed out that it's absorbs steam and
stores heat and releases like that fine ceedar smell, right,
which is why the youth ceedar and spruce because they
have natural aromatics trapped within more than others. Right. I
love cedar except pine. But I don't know if you'd
want to sit there and smell pine the whole time,
would you? Maybe you get a little crazy? I think yeah,
(09:31):
I think so, so, Chuck. Let's talk about the original
finished sauna, the Savusana. Yeah, it looks sort of like
the Unibomber cabin. It's literally a cabin like structure, no windows,
no chimney, no chimney, which is important because it is
a wood fire sauna. Yeah. And it's a little disconcerting. Apparently,
(09:54):
if you have an original savosana, it takes like all
day to get it hot enough. You're burning wood, they're
smoke in there. Yeah, it's black soot on the walls
and this is where you're supposed to go in and sit. Yeah.
It sounds very dangerous to me. It does. It doesn't
sound healthy, um, which is why the savo sauna UM,
because of the eye irritants, the fact that you're inhaling
(10:16):
carbon monoxide and all sorts of other stuff UM is
generally relegated to sauna purists. According to Mr r L
A M. Yeah, but I get the idea that you're
supposed to let the smoke clear out as much as possible,
Is that right? Yeah? Like, but how how do you
do that well? Because you're just letting all the heat
out you know? Yeah that he said it seeps through
uh in the roof? Yeah yeah. Stick to me, And
(10:39):
I mean you're getting hot enough. As a c O,
I would say, please do not try to build your
own savo sana because you will likely die off. That's
what I'm saying. Like, I don't understand how people survive
the saunas, right, So, um. They're generally left to sauna
purists and the rest of us just use regular saunas.
It's just called the sauna. And this is the very
(11:00):
recognizable sauna with spruce or cedar would um and a stove.
Most of the time these stove called kiowas, are electric
these days, although you can have a wood burning kiowa
kiowas k i u a s um that has a chimney.
So the main feature isn't that it's wood heated for
(11:23):
a sava sauna, it's that there's no chimney and you're inhaling. Yeah,
and well we should point out to like whether it's
wood or gas or electric or whatever, it's not that's
not providing the heat. You're heating rocks, right, and then
the rocks transfer the heat to the surrounding environment. And
if you want to jack the temperature a little bit,
remember we talked about steam room, uh huh, that it's
(11:45):
heated by water vapor. You can actually use the same
thing for a sauna. You take a little water too
later from a bucket, splash it on the rocks, and
all of a sudden you have with the Finns call loyally,
there's a lot in there, I know, and I don't.
I'm not big on Finnish pronuncia Asian. I know how
to say semohaya, and I'm not even sure I'm saying
that right. I'm gonna go with literally literally literally convening.
(12:09):
That's Swedish. I'm sorry, Yes, I just said something in Swedish.
So since we were talking about the rocks, so we
should say that the rocks. It's very important. You can't
just throw granite in there, because granite will probably explode
in your face. I think it's that hot, sup, But
water on real dangers are not good. No, you need
unweathered quarry rock. And he listed a few. Hornblenda is
(12:30):
my favorite. The one they like the most is, uh,
what is it? Periodote, periodotite, peridotite, because there's an there's
there's a semi precious mineral called parado. Yeah, so I
imagine this is where it comes from. Paradotype or old
friend basalt. Yeah, why why can't we get that one?
(12:51):
It won't stick in our head like there's no um
neural pathway forming when we hear that word. So anyway, paradotite.
(13:24):
So those those are the rocks, the unweathered corey rock
that that you can use to get really really hot.
You can pour water on them. It'll steam, it'll hiss,
but it won't blow up in your face right again,
which is very important. I was surprised to find that
the Swedes don't have a name for the pile of
rocks that heat the sauna. They have a name for
the stove kios. They have a name for the steam,
(13:46):
which is yeah, they don't have a name for the
rocks called the pile of rocks. The water on the
pile of rocks and make us some really uh josh.
You can also have what's called an infrared sauna, and
that's the latest and greatest. And people say, people that
believe in the infrareds honest say that it actually penetrates
like into your bones, which it's good and bad. If
(14:09):
you listen to the Butterfly Wings podcast, you know, infred
means redder than red on the on the spectrum of light,
right yeah, and it's radiation, sure exists, radiation that's good. Basically,
what's going on is you're being bathed in infrared radiation. Yeah,
so it heats you up. I'm a semi purist. I
think yeah, I think I would just like a regular sauna,
(14:31):
not a savos stove a key us exactly, kind of
like they have at the gym, yeah, or at the
holiday and without the old naked men. Well, that is
the thing about um SAA's that you're going to run into,
chuck is naked men and naked women even depending on
why not, Yeah, that's um. Robert made sure to point
out that depending on where you are in the world,
(14:54):
different cultures have different traditions. Finland, a lot of Eastern Europe, Russia,
you can pretty much drop everything. You gotta have your
towel though, because you gotta sit on it. Right. You
you may be completely naked, but you still have to
have a towel for hygienic reasons. You don't want to
just sit your butt on the cedar plank where somebody
else just said there but because there's a transfer of
(15:14):
butt funk. Yeah. But you know what also I thought
was funny. He said that they don't like Americans who
want to wear like their bathing suit in there. They're
really frowned upon because of hygienic reasons. Right, you just
cover up with a towel. Yeah, but why is that
not hygienic to wear like your speedo in there? Does
a butt funk get trapped in the I think the
butt funk can make it through the licra to the
(15:35):
outside of it. Is that it? Maybe? I don't know.
I just thought that was odd because here in the
U S we're like, now, you wear a bathing suit
for hygienic reasons. That's my point. Yeah, that's some my point.
Maybe maybe it's because we don't wash our bathing suits
quite as often as we wash our selves are naked bodies.
(15:56):
This is a steamy episode. Should know, well, we are
talking about nakedness, and we also should mention that, um,
same sex saunas are found all over the place in Europe. Yeah,
where saunas have traditionally been around for a very long time. Yeah,
they tend to have same sex, although they'll also have
mixed sex um as well. Yeah there's both. Wait, I'm sorry.
(16:21):
The places where the songs have been around the most
are more likely to have mixed sex. Places where it
went away for a while and came back would have
more like same sex saunas. Right right, I was confused. Germany, Austria, Scandinavia,
Eastern Europe. He says generally offer nude, mixed company bathing.
I yeah, mixed company like men and women. You got it? Yeah,
(16:43):
in Russian banyas. Did you ever see Eastern Promises? Yes,
such a good movie. Has there ever been a more
uncomfortable fight scene in your life? Completely naked? A couple
of guys, it was you. Yeah, it's awesome movie. Um,
it's for adults. It's rated R or maybe n C
seventeen even possibly triple X, triple X, triple X. But yeah,
(17:07):
there's a fight scene where Vigo is completely naked in
a bath house and fights these guys. I can't imagine
anything worse than being in a fight when I'm completely naked.
I would just that gives me the hives. It does
me as well. Yeah, let's talk about sweat. Yeah, let's
talk about the science of it. Huh Okay, that's what
it's all about. Yeah, but a lot of people who um,
(17:29):
who use saunas say that they're very healthy, and as
Lamb gets into that goes back to the idea that
sweat is excretion and excreting anything is healthy. But he
also points out that it's very easy to make this mistake,
this this idea of any excretion is good. Has been
around for a very long time. And don't forget what
we used to use leeches to suck our blood. Um.
(17:52):
We used to believe that UM pooping as much as
we could was a good idea, UM, which I kind
of still into that one. I do too. I'm a
big believer in it. Uh. If you're talking sweat, josh, Um,
what happens is nerve endings are triggered by heat and
it releases a neurotransmitter called acetal colie exactly, and he
(18:15):
says there are two point three million sweat glands that
all a sudden kick into action, which are also called
ekring glands, are different from apo kringla. I feel like
I have more, but it's probably not the case. Mine
are just overactive. That's possible. Hard working you do, I've
seen I've seen you sweat in a seventy degree farrenheight
tank which is chili. You have to have a wet
(18:36):
suit for that. And Chuck is still sweating again with
the swimming and sweating. Uh So he claims that in
a fifteen minutes sauna, the average person sweats about four
cups about a leader of sweat, which is way more
for me in fifteen minutes, right yeah, I sweat about
a gallon in fifteen minutes. I guarantee that's a lot, man.
A leader of sweat is a lot of water to lose.
It is, you know. But you should see me in
(18:58):
a sauna. It's awesome. It's one of the best feelings.
But I'm not exactly uh sweating out toxins, am I. No,
you're sweating out salt uric acid, not to be confused
with Robert uruk um. And that's pretty much it. You
can you can you do excrete toxins, right yeah, but
(19:19):
not much. No. For the most part, toxins are excreted
through your kidneys. This is your go to um excretion,
right um. And the researchers have found that in heavy sweat,
about one percent of mercury found in the bloodstream is released,
(19:40):
where the other that's released goes through the kidneys. It
either comes out in the stool or the urine, right right, uh.
And this is it has no the The concentration of
a toxin in the blood stream appears to have no
bearing on how much is released through the sweat. It's
almost like our sweat glands are set up to just
do one percent. But people who use saunas, say, man,
(20:03):
one percent of a concentration of mercury. Yeah, yeah, that's
definitely worth fifteen minutes in the sauna. Absolutely, you know,
so they can. But I think it's not just feeling healthier.
They're saying, Look, there's a science behind it as well,
right right, exactly. Um. Another benefit of a good sauna
sweat or a good sweat period is this really good
for your skin. It opens your pores, keeps them nice, impliant,
(20:24):
and the uh there's a study by the Journal of
Dermatology that said, you know, a regular sweat from a
sauna has a proactive effect on your skin and like
helps out with ex amaun and all kinds of dry
skin conditions. And also um Land points out that we
have long associated like bathing rituals with kind of um
(20:45):
clearing away the like a spiritual the psychic funk. Yeah yeah,
not just bottom funk, but head funk. Yeah. Uh. And
anybody who's felt poorly uh and it's taking a shower
can attest to that. You just feel better somehow after
a shower, And there's nothing worse than the feeling of
taking a shower, stepping out and still feeling bad because
(21:08):
you know it's gonna be another twenty four hours before
and you're going to feel start to feel good. Like
you know, you've screwed up big time if you take
a shower and you still don't feel good afterwards, right
you are, Josh, A great shower, like a great sweat
or a good steam. Good fits good, fits does a
body good. Um, we're talking about the Russian banya, the
saunas there the bath house. They also would beat themselves.
(21:32):
I think they probably still do. You would flog your
skin with what's called the venic and it's a bundle
of leafy branches like oak and maple and birch branches, right,
And by doing that, they're they're stimulating circulation because the
skin's like, what's gonna quit that? Send some blood there,
find out what's going on, right, let me know what's
going on after you get there. See, And um, that's
(21:53):
what that's what the skin is doing, right. Uh. And
it also um produces a mild euphoric effect apparently releases
the plant oils, which is also a good thing. And
uh yeah, he said. It stimulates the production of opiate
endorphins and it's like a mild narcotic effect crazy, which
I love that that those three words together. Mild narcotic effect,
(22:14):
that's great. It's almost like cellar door. Mild narcotic effect.
That's better than massive narcotic effect. Right, and then you're
in trouble. Then that shower doesn't work. Um chuck. Also,
saunas produce a mock fever. Yeah, I thought that was
kind of cool. So your internal body temperature can raise
as much as five point four degrease fahrenheight, right, and uh,
the temperature at your skin can increase by as much
(22:36):
as eighteen degrees fahrenheight. That's a lot. That is a
serious amount. And by doing that, your body is like, Okay,
I'm sick. I need to jack my immune system up.
So white blood cell count or white blood cell production
is increased. UM. The limph nodes, which are another internal
waste system, a very important one, UM, are flushed. Uh,
(22:57):
and you start to sweat even four even further. Yeah,
but it doesn't increase your blood pressure. Increases your blood
pump circulation circulation, but not your blood pressure. No, but
if you do have high blood pressure, we should say
saunas are not recommended for you. Well, we should just
go ahead and say, who all, it's not recommended for
kids and old people, it's not recommended pregnant ladies. Um,
(23:20):
but it is good. Um, like those people shouldn't get in,
but women definitely might want to get in because it
apparently alleviates menstrual cramps really well. Right, but if you're
pregnant again, you want to stay away from the sauna
if you're pregnant, right, very very astute point, Chuck, thank you. Um.
Lastly about physiology and saunaing, Um, what you want to
(23:42):
do is keep yourself very hydrated because the irony is
while you're excreting that one percent the go to excreaseing
excreting organs, the kidneys need water to excrete the other
and if you're sweating all of it out, things get
backed up toxic levels, raising your body and you can
do some real damage to yourself. So every time you
(24:03):
go into the sauna, you want to take a jug
of water with you with at least a leader. Right. Yeah,
I would say if you have gout, the sauna is
probably a good place to go. You think so, oh,
because you're a acid builds up. Yeah, it's your all
this is a build up. If you're a acid and
you're well, your is you're a acid. So if you
have gout, can get thee to a sauna. Okay Um,
And there was one other cool thing about the physical
(24:24):
Oh the reason they one reason they recommend heart patients
not getting saunas is because one of the traditions is
to jump from the sauna, either into a snow bank
or into a cool pool water in Finland, Yeah, and
shock your body. And the old urban legend that you
heard when your kids about going from the hot tub
to the pool and you'll you'll drown because your pores
(24:45):
are open. That's so not true. Actually, it's big in
Turkey too. There's the Turkish bath, which is like a
hot tub and then a cool tub, right, and you
go from one to the other. I did not know
that far as I know, that's what I've always heard it.
I had no idea. Um, Chuck, I think it's high
time we talked about the history of the sauna. And
saunas are very very old. Yeah, Neolithic tribes. I love
(25:08):
how he tied culture and uh humans like culture springing
up around human physiological needs and bathing he said was
like the first people that bathe and hot springs lead
to saunas. They're like, wow, this is fantastic. I really
like this. Yeah. Um, And I think in France and
Spain especially, a lot of the Neolithic settlements are located
(25:32):
very close to hot springs and not by accident either. Right. No, Um,
as people were remained nomadic, apparently, we started creating collapsible,
portable saunas that resemble like sweat lodges in Native America. Um.
And then as we began to settle down and become sedentary, uh,
(25:52):
they made more permanent structures like dugouts in Earthen dugouts uh.
And then eventually the Savo saunas, and then which remember
day back at least to the twelfth century, right, that's
the humily a lot further than that. Apparently, as Finland
settled by modern Finns, um, the the sauna was pretty
(26:15):
much brought with them. Yeah. And through the Middle Ages
it was like the common people. It wasn't just for
the rich or anything. The common like whole villages would
would sauna together, sweat it out together, men, women and children,
and at the local bathhouse they would actually feast inside
the sauna. Yes, is really gross. It is they would
(26:37):
get married, um, and they would get they would have
babes on. Yes, prostitution what they called the stews was
the nickname they had. Yes, Yeah, that's not a stew.
You want to eat with crackers, um maybe afterwards, yeah, perhaps.
So this this association, like we said, with saw and
(27:00):
places where you could find a prostitute and have sex
with said prostitute. Um. And just kind of that Roman
diane ie in orgiastic um kind of vibe going on
in the Saunus was one of the reasons why they
were eradicated by Europe because in the early sixteenth century
Europe got a little tense. Yeah, Protestant Reformation just ruined everything. Yeah,
(27:24):
they're kind of like, you can't do that you put
a put a hat with a buckle on right now. Yeah,
you can't do that either or that or that or
that right, get out to start crying right now, let
me teach you what guilt is all about. Right. And
then that lasted for about five hundred years, and then
finally in the late twentieth century, thanks to the nineteen sixties,
people began to loosen up again and get climbed back
(27:45):
into the sauna right, and the sauna immediately became associated
with sex again, like the gay bath houses that we
were talking about. Have you ever seen in the band
played on? Uh No, but my brother worked on that.
I think we talked about that. Um and I think
you said they your brother worked on it too, But um,
Phil Collins plays a bath house owner, and I think
it's Richard Gear who's like trying to track patient zero,
(28:08):
is trying to convince him to like shut down the
bath house because there's like this epidemic that no one's
paying attention to. That back then they called gay cancer,
which is now called HIV or AIDS. They called the
gay cancer they did originally crazy Yeah, um, and so
the bath houses featured prominently, and Sauna's feature prominently in
the bath Houses Phil Collins, Phil Collins SUSU studio was Yeah,
(28:30):
they did a good job the bath house. I think
we talked about what a good job Phil Collins did too. Dude,
that was a long time ago. So if that's the case,
then people, you know, that's like a two year old podcast.
So I don't mind repeating things every once in a while.
We should do one on things to do with the
Dead body or synesthesia. That'd be a great one. That's
what SKO shouldn't. That's what sk so chuck. The saunas
(29:13):
make their comeback now. You can find them at holiday
inns around the world. Actually it's not true. I've never
seen a sauna at a holiday in since they had
my last really crappy job. They had um a gem
in the building, which was one cool part because you
could go down, like during lunch and work out and
they had a saun in there and I would work
out and then I would could theoretically I did for
(29:35):
a time, and I would go sit in the sauna
and it's just the best man. Yeah, just sitting there
just like there's something. I see why the intercourse happened,
because there's something very primal about just sitting there naked
and just sweating and sweating and sweating. But I never
had a desire to like eat food or meet anyone special.
You know what I'm saying? Is that clear? Yeah? I
(29:59):
got it. I get hint hint um. For those of
you can't see, I just winked that, chuck um uh
so chuck. Let's say that you have been inspired to
go out to take a sauna from listening to this,
because there's actually something called sauna etiquette that you need
to know about. First of all, if you're in a
country and they speak German and you decide to go
to a sauna, there will be a person in there
(30:21):
named the sauna maister. The sona maister is in charge
for basically running a very strict ten minute session where
your entire job is to go in there and sit
down and shut up, right. Uh, basically follow the son
of Myster's lead. You're not allowed to leave once the
ten minutes has started. You're not allowed to come in
once the ten minutes. Definitely, never ever put your hands
(30:41):
on that later. No, that's the son of master's job.
Do not wet the rocks if you have a son
of mister. No, that's that's the song. And I got
the impression. I was looking around, I couldn't find anything
that wasn't in German and that I could translate. Um,
but I get the impression that the sona myster is
actually a paid professional. Well I hope, because if someone's
just doing that for kicks, then no, you know, there's
(31:02):
like jerks out there, They're like, I'm the so on
a monster, come here, all the time. Yeah, it's like
no one a mister. It just goes on like that
for a long time. And then they wrist wrestle and
what's that? Yeah, they like wrestle. Yeah with that with
just towels on. God, how about those guys that walk
around the gym with the towel over their shoulder but naked,
(31:24):
I know? And why are they always like seventy I know?
And they pretend like, hey, everybody else is subject to
the Protestant Reformation. I'm free. It's like put a towel on, hippie.
I don't even like, I'm this close to being a
never nude myself, are you? I don't like you have
the Denom jeans. Yeah, shower with Denom jeans now, But
I don't. I mean, I mean, I'm I'm not into that.
(31:44):
Put some clothes on. Protestant Reformation. No one can escape it. Yeah,
no one escapes the Protestant Reformation the sun myself. So lastly,
with sauna etiquette, basically the whole thing comes down to
putting the ladle on. If you're alone in the sauna,
feel free to add some loyally, Yeah, do whatever you want.
Somebody in there. It's probably one of those things where
(32:04):
you want to be quiet and then just say, hey,
do you mind if I put some water on the rocks.
It's supposed to be a pretty quiet environment. Don't go
in there like some chowder head with your cell phone. Right,
and um, when you go in and out, you want
to come in in out as fast as possible because
that open door changes the temperature very quickly. Right, and
just be considered, don't be a jerky. I saw him.
(32:24):
That just reminded me. I saw The War of the
Roses again the End of the Night for like the
fiftieth time. And remember Kathleen Turner locks Michael Douglas and
the sauna, and then the next shot after he like
some like falls out of the sauna is him drinking
gatorade in the office. The next day He's got like
a gallon of gatorade. And that was good. Didn't Danny
de Vito directly? Man, this is one of my favorite movies.
Has a brilliant mind. Lastly, Chuck, let's talk about the
(32:47):
world record for saunaing. Uh. There is a guy named
timok Conan. He is the world championship, Um, well, the
world record holder. Finish of course, finish. Yeah. In August
two thousand nine, he sat in a sauna. That was
he did to two hundred and thirty degrees parent height,
(33:07):
which is undred and ten degrees celsius, for three minutes
and forty six seconds. You can like warm food at
that temperature. You can cook food. Oh yeah, at that temperature. Uh.
That my friends of saunas. And again I think Chuck
and I would both endorse you going over to the
website how stuff works dot Com typing in saunas and
just reading this really well written article by Robert Lamb
(33:31):
in particular, enjoy it. Yeah, then informative. Uh. And since
I said how stuff works dot Com, I'm largely abandoning
the handy search bar thing. I think that's run its course. Really. Yeah,
So the new the new signal for for um listener
mail is how stuff works dot Com. Oh really? Yeah? Okay?
Watch I would say it again because I wasn't ready.
(33:52):
I was still in handy search bar mode. Okay. Uh,
you want to just go over and read saunas at
how stuff works dot Com watch us see so you
know I can say now it's time for listener mail.
I can't control it. I used to be able to
control a lot more when I said handy search barah.
But oh look it just happened that chu chiming all
(34:16):
over the I need to not say anything else. Okay,
let's just read the listener mail. How about that, Josh,
I'm gonna call this, uh take that Colbet. Oh yeah, Colbert.
I recently heard this from Scott in Connecticut. Is that
what c T is? Yeah? Okay, I recently heard about
your rivalry with Stephen Colbert's Keep a Team. Congratulations on
(34:39):
your success. I'm a fan of both your podcast and
his show, which is cool. But he has uh he
says he wasn't gonna choose sides until late one night
when this happened. I know, this is pretty amazing. It's
slightly harrowing. I was up late and winding from a
long day of working class. I was listening to some
vintage s Y s K the Bhutan's Gross National National
Happiness episode. After a little while, I noticed a strange smell,
(35:03):
a little like overheated electronics. Yeah, ozone, Yeah, this is
a scary smell. I sniffed around my computer and noticed
that it seemed to be stronger near the door to
the rest of my apartment opened it and this visible
wave of thick, acrid smoke and gas poured into my room.
I ran to wake my housemates, opening as many windows
as I could to vent out some of the gas.
(35:23):
I'm a smart guy. Uh. It literally tasted like burning.
Our eyes and throats were stinging, and we called the
fire department. They arrived. They found our oil furnace had
basically imploded. Um, those things are dangerous. What oil burnings? Yes,
this I don't know where he isn't get a letter
from the oil burning up board. Okay, remind me to
(35:44):
tell you about high for your toast corn syrup letter.
One day, the basement was loaded with carbon monoxide and
other compounds you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley,
and it had been leaking up into the rest of
the apartment. Not for your podcast, I would have gone
to bed earlier, never noticed that smell. This is why
I mentioned Colbert, you may wonder. As it turns out,
my roommate Caitlin, had been watching Colbert upstairs and she
(36:07):
fell asleep. She was tripping z s when I woke
her up and pulled her to safety. Where was Stephen
Colbert in our time of need. He may have a
space treadmill named after him and a high profile primetime
TV show, but he's no substitute for s Y s
K when it comes to riveting and informating, informative late
night life saving. I thought I would add another game
(36:27):
winning point for team s Y s K Scott in Connecticut.
He's also no s y s K when it comes
to raising donation loans for the developing world, because we
beat the tar out of him on Kiva. Yeah, Kiva
dot org slash team Slash stuff. You should know, Chuck,
we indirectly save these people's lives. You realize we've saved
(36:48):
it quite a few lives at this point, my friend,
if only we've been there for the family at the
end of storytelling. Yeah, I want to know if we've
killed and oh god, so awesome. You're so hooked on
us now. I love that guy. Todd Solins, if you're listening,
I appreciate your work, buddy, Yeah I do too. Yeah. Uh,
if you are Todd Solins, we want to hear from you.
(37:09):
Send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on
the bottom, and send it to Stuff podcast at how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
(37:29):
the how stuff works dot com home page.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
With me as always is Charles W. Chucker's Chuck Chucky
Bride of Chucky. You paused as if you forgot who
(00:23):
I was. I had a thing. I have marble mouth,
whereas the unusual to Here we go, this podcast brought
to you by Jolly Rancher. Have you ever mixes with Ziema? No?
But you know that Oakland Raiders former Oakland Raiders quarterback
JaMarcus Russell just got busted with. They call it purple
(00:44):
drank and it's it's like it's codeine syrup and I
think some sort of carbonet soda and Jolly Rancher, Wow,
that's robo tripping is what he's doing. Well, it came
out of the Houston, Texas scene like ten years ago.
We're drink. I never heard of That's how square I am.
I haven't heard of it either, So don't feel bad. Okay. Plus,
(01:04):
it's like that's what they do in Houston. Seriously, that
what you want your town associated with? Yeah, we use
code dean water. Yeah, we came up with purple drink.
Wasn't he the QB for l s U. Yeah. Hey
that guy, Well he's a bust. He's nothing. Now, well
he's a big wash. Really. Yeah. He went to the
NFL and got all fat and through interceptions and he
(01:26):
was great for LU team. He was so Anyway, I
guess what all that leads us to, Chuck is saunas. Yes,
football players, Well they probably your steam room guys. Yeah,
let's talk about That's a great place to start, Chuck.
There's a difference between a sauna and a steam room.
There's a number of differences, but the mode of heat
(01:47):
is what's really different. Right. Yeah, And I should point
out we called this Saunas colon more interesting than you
think for a reason because Robert lamb Our, a steam
writer and uh stuff from the Sience Lab. He wrote
this and he told us like months ago, He's like, dude,
you should do saunas saunas. It's way cooler than you think,
(02:08):
and it's dirty and filthy and Mike and he was
right steeped in history. Yeah, this is uh for my money.
Robert Williams the best writer on how stuff works out
com ever. Um, but he wrote an altogether pleasant article
that I've read like many, many times, and every time
you just loved the way he wrote it. It's a
great article. We should read the first line, please do.
The first line of his article says, you're going to
want to read this article naked, So please, before you
(02:30):
go any further, disrobe completely. So if you're in the
confines of your own home, yeah, if the shades are
drawn and you're an adult, there's no one else around
that you're uncomfortable with. Very specifically, Chuck is only talking
to people who are we'll just go with twenty one
years of age and older. And you're alone in your house,
And if you're listening to your podcast and you feel
(02:50):
like doing so naked right now, please do right now.
Saunas more interesting than you think. Thank you. Brought to
you by Jolly Rancher. Uh, Chuck, we were talking about
the difference between a steam room and a sauna. A
steam room is heated by moisture vapor, water vapor. Uh.
And for that reason, the average steam room is going
(03:12):
to be about a hundred and four degrees fahrenheit, which
is forty degree celsius. Right, pretty hot it is, but
you can't check it up much hotter than that, and
the reason why is because it feels so much hotter
than it is because it's a moisture rich environment and
our body cools by sweating, and then the sweat evaporating
off of the skin that creates our cooling sensation. Well,
(03:35):
in a steam room, you sweat, you sweat buckets, but
it never evaporates because for evaporation to occur, the environment,
the ambient air has to be drier than your skin,
and if it's equally dry or it's wetter, then your
sweat is not going to evaporate, no cooling effect, right,
which is why sweating while you're swimming is is and
(03:56):
it's a problem, it's yeah, which is what I do. Yeah.
And then in a sauna, conversely, this is dry heat,
so it's gonna be a lot hotter temperature wise in there, right, Yeah.
I mean, if a steam room is a hundred and
four degrees fahrenheit average, you're talking a hundred and seventy
six degrees fahrenheit. It's hot eighty degrees celsius in in
your average sauna. And I do you like saunas and
(04:18):
steam rooms? You do. I've never really sat in the
steam room, but I love saunas. Actually, growing up. There's
a holiday in in Toledo that um my family had
a pool membership too, and they had a sauna. Who wha, wha,
wha wha. You could get a pool membership to a
hotel in Toledo in the seventies, seventies and eighties. Yeah, yeah,
(04:39):
I never heard of that. But I mean now that
I look back, I'm like, yeah, that's really really weird.
Probably a membership, your dad was probably yeah, we got
a membership kids, come right, I wonder actually had a
room key? Is we had I'm pretty sure we had
a membership, but I don't remember. But they had a
sauna for sure. Uh. And so I was introduced to
the sauna like really early on. It was like just
(04:59):
a normal thing. So when you were a little kid,
you enjoyed it because it seems like such an old
person thing or an adult thing to do here in
the West. If you go to Finland, baby, they are
all about the saunas. I mean, it's like their national pastime,
right actually, um, in their national epic, Chuck, it's called
the calla Valla. This is a little side side note
(05:24):
that it's their national epic, very very old. Uh. It
mentioned saunas frequently. Well, of course, okay um, there's about
one point six million saunas in Finland and uh. The
first description of a Finnish sauna dates back to eleven thirteen.
The Ukrainian historian Nestor wrote about him. That was my
goats name, Nestor? Really did you name it after the
(05:49):
Ukrainian history house? That was eleven and named him after
the Ukrainian storian. It was either that or Plato. Did
your goat love a good fitz? Uh? No, but he
drank coke from a bottle, which was kind of cute.
That is so cute. It's cute with goats. It's not
very cute when you see a human baby drinking coke
from a bottle, which I've seen and it's disturbing. Really. Yeah,
(06:11):
if you're seen, like a one year old drinking a
bottle of Coca cola, no it ain't right, man, Yeah,
that's not right at all. It's better than an espresso shot,
I guess, but not much there. And by coke, of course,
I'm using the Southern colloquialism for coke, which means any
kind of soda poptu c o a. As always, man,
we got really far off of saunas, didn't we let's
(06:33):
go back, So Finland saunas are associated with it, and
for good reason. Right, did you read the article about
the Finnish navy fighting pirates. Yeah, they have saunas on
the pirate fighting boats. Yeah. And not only that, the
Finnish army and Kosovo built twenty saunas for their for
their fighters over there, like troops, eight hundred troops, and
(06:56):
they have them in prison yeah, finished prisons. Yeah, it's
it's literally a part of daily life. If you go
camping and you're finish, you take along a portable sauna
while you're camping, like people take saunas every day. It's
like showering to us, and this is an addition to showering.
They shower a lot too. Yeah. Before we breathe past
the finished prisons on as though, we should uh that
(07:21):
this is sort of remarkable to me because we'll find out,
as we said that a lot of about being in
sauna is being completely naked, especially if you're finished. Americans
a little more shy, but we'll get to that in
a minute. But I imagine a finished prison sanna is
a pretty happening place to be on a Friday night,
wouldn't you think. Yeah, because the saunas have something of
a reputation, especially in the seventies. Um they developed the
(07:44):
reputation for being a swinging gay hangout, right, and that
is nothing new actually, um saunas, which we'll talk about later,
the history of them. But they were um kind of
eradicated thanks to the product start reformation, because they had started,
they had started to get pretty. Yeah. Yeah, it's a
(08:06):
big party in there. Uh and not just gay either, well, no,
all sorts of stuffy prostitution. Yeah, it's honest, word that.
All they were missing was a disco ball in uh
Andy Warhol and it could have been a studio. Uh
So let's get but let's crawl back inside the sauna
for a minute. Okay, you know all the spruce cedar.
(08:26):
Would that looks so nice and feel so good on
your bottom? Yes? I always thought that was just like
I mean, I knew obviously they weren't gonna put stainless
steel in there, but I never really figured out it's would.
But I never gave it two thoughts. Right, you would
think that it was just a traditional and it is traditional.
But at the same time, yeah, it's never been updated
in that respect because if you did put in stainless steel,
(08:48):
you would leave many, many layers of skin in the
sauna from your bottom every time you sat down. Same
with plastic um, you'd just be in big trouble. So
would absorbs heat, and it remains relatively cool at high temperatures,
which is why I mean, it's still warm. Your tookis
is hot, but it's not like you're not hurting yourself. Yeah.
(09:09):
And Robert also pointed out that it's absorbs steam and
stores heat and releases like that fine ceedar smell, right,
which is why the youth ceedar and spruce because they
have natural aromatics trapped within more than others. Right. I
love cedar except pine. But I don't know if you'd
want to sit there and smell pine the whole time,
would you? Maybe you get a little crazy? I think yeah,
(09:31):
I think so, so, Chuck. Let's talk about the original
finished sauna, the Savusana. Yeah, it looks sort of like
the Unibomber cabin. It's literally a cabin like structure, no windows,
no chimney, no chimney, which is important because it is
a wood fire sauna. Yeah. And it's a little disconcerting. Apparently,
(09:54):
if you have an original savosana, it takes like all
day to get it hot enough. You're burning wood, they're
smoke in there. Yeah, it's black soot on the walls
and this is where you're supposed to go in and sit. Yeah.
It sounds very dangerous to me. It does. It doesn't
sound healthy, um, which is why the savo sauna UM,
because of the eye irritants, the fact that you're inhaling
(10:16):
carbon monoxide and all sorts of other stuff UM is
generally relegated to sauna purists. According to Mr r L
A M. Yeah, but I get the idea that you're
supposed to let the smoke clear out as much as possible,
Is that right? Yeah? Like, but how how do you
do that well? Because you're just letting all the heat
out you know? Yeah that he said it seeps through
uh in the roof? Yeah yeah. Stick to me, And
(10:39):
I mean you're getting hot enough. As a c O,
I would say, please do not try to build your
own savo sana because you will likely die off. That's
what I'm saying. Like, I don't understand how people survive
the saunas, right, So, um. They're generally left to sauna
purists and the rest of us just use regular saunas.
It's just called the sauna. And this is the very
(11:00):
recognizable sauna with spruce or cedar would um and a stove.
Most of the time these stove called kiowas, are electric
these days, although you can have a wood burning kiowa
kiowas k i u a s um that has a chimney.
So the main feature isn't that it's wood heated for
(11:23):
a sava sauna, it's that there's no chimney and you're inhaling. Yeah,
and well we should point out to like whether it's
wood or gas or electric or whatever, it's not that's
not providing the heat. You're heating rocks, right, and then
the rocks transfer the heat to the surrounding environment. And
if you want to jack the temperature a little bit,
remember we talked about steam room, uh huh, that it's
(11:45):
heated by water vapor. You can actually use the same
thing for a sauna. You take a little water too
later from a bucket, splash it on the rocks, and
all of a sudden you have with the Finns call loyally,
there's a lot in there, I know, and I don't.
I'm not big on Finnish pronuncia Asian. I know how
to say semohaya, and I'm not even sure I'm saying
that right. I'm gonna go with literally literally literally convening.
(12:09):
That's Swedish. I'm sorry, Yes, I just said something in Swedish.
So since we were talking about the rocks, so we
should say that the rocks. It's very important. You can't
just throw granite in there, because granite will probably explode
in your face. I think it's that hot, sup, But
water on real dangers are not good. No, you need
unweathered quarry rock. And he listed a few. Hornblenda is
(12:30):
my favorite. The one they like the most is, uh,
what is it? Periodote, periodotite, peridotite, because there's an there's
there's a semi precious mineral called parado. Yeah, so I
imagine this is where it comes from. Paradotype or old
friend basalt. Yeah, why why can't we get that one?
(12:51):
It won't stick in our head like there's no um
neural pathway forming when we hear that word. So anyway, paradotite.
(13:24):
So those those are the rocks, the unweathered corey rock
that that you can use to get really really hot.
You can pour water on them. It'll steam, it'll hiss,
but it won't blow up in your face right again,
which is very important. I was surprised to find that
the Swedes don't have a name for the pile of
rocks that heat the sauna. They have a name for
the stove kios. They have a name for the steam,
(13:46):
which is yeah, they don't have a name for the
rocks called the pile of rocks. The water on the
pile of rocks and make us some really uh josh.
You can also have what's called an infrared sauna, and
that's the latest and greatest. And people say, people that
believe in the infrareds honest say that it actually penetrates
like into your bones, which it's good and bad. If
(14:09):
you listen to the Butterfly Wings podcast, you know, infred
means redder than red on the on the spectrum of light,
right yeah, and it's radiation, sure exists, radiation that's good. Basically,
what's going on is you're being bathed in infrared radiation. Yeah,
so it heats you up. I'm a semi purist. I
think yeah, I think I would just like a regular sauna,
(14:31):
not a savos stove a key us exactly, kind of
like they have at the gym, yeah, or at the
holiday and without the old naked men. Well, that is
the thing about um SAA's that you're going to run into,
chuck is naked men and naked women even depending on
why not, Yeah, that's um. Robert made sure to point
out that depending on where you are in the world,
(14:54):
different cultures have different traditions. Finland, a lot of Eastern Europe, Russia,
you can pretty much drop everything. You gotta have your
towel though, because you gotta sit on it. Right. You
you may be completely naked, but you still have to
have a towel for hygienic reasons. You don't want to
just sit your butt on the cedar plank where somebody
else just said there but because there's a transfer of
(15:14):
butt funk. Yeah. But you know what also I thought
was funny. He said that they don't like Americans who
want to wear like their bathing suit in there. They're
really frowned upon because of hygienic reasons. Right, you just
cover up with a towel. Yeah, but why is that
not hygienic to wear like your speedo in there? Does
a butt funk get trapped in the I think the
butt funk can make it through the licra to the
(15:35):
outside of it. Is that it? Maybe? I don't know.
I just thought that was odd because here in the
U S we're like, now, you wear a bathing suit
for hygienic reasons. That's my point. Yeah, that's some my point.
Maybe maybe it's because we don't wash our bathing suits
quite as often as we wash our selves are naked bodies.
(15:56):
This is a steamy episode. Should know, well, we are
talking about nakedness, and we also should mention that, um,
same sex saunas are found all over the place in Europe. Yeah,
where saunas have traditionally been around for a very long time. Yeah,
they tend to have same sex, although they'll also have
mixed sex um as well. Yeah there's both. Wait, I'm sorry.
(16:21):
The places where the songs have been around the most
are more likely to have mixed sex. Places where it
went away for a while and came back would have
more like same sex saunas. Right right, I was confused. Germany, Austria, Scandinavia,
Eastern Europe. He says generally offer nude, mixed company bathing.
I yeah, mixed company like men and women. You got it? Yeah,
(16:43):
in Russian banyas. Did you ever see Eastern Promises? Yes,
such a good movie. Has there ever been a more
uncomfortable fight scene in your life? Completely naked? A couple
of guys, it was you. Yeah, it's awesome movie. Um,
it's for adults. It's rated R or maybe n C
seventeen even possibly triple X, triple X, triple X. But yeah,
(17:07):
there's a fight scene where Vigo is completely naked in
a bath house and fights these guys. I can't imagine
anything worse than being in a fight when I'm completely naked.
I would just that gives me the hives. It does
me as well. Yeah, let's talk about sweat. Yeah, let's
talk about the science of it. Huh Okay, that's what
it's all about. Yeah, but a lot of people who um,
(17:29):
who use saunas say that they're very healthy, and as
Lamb gets into that goes back to the idea that
sweat is excretion and excreting anything is healthy. But he
also points out that it's very easy to make this mistake,
this this idea of any excretion is good. Has been
around for a very long time. And don't forget what
we used to use leeches to suck our blood. Um.
(17:52):
We used to believe that UM pooping as much as
we could was a good idea, UM, which I kind
of still into that one. I do too. I'm a
big believer in it. Uh. If you're talking sweat, josh, Um,
what happens is nerve endings are triggered by heat and
it releases a neurotransmitter called acetal colie exactly, and he
(18:15):
says there are two point three million sweat glands that
all a sudden kick into action, which are also called
ekring glands, are different from apo kringla. I feel like
I have more, but it's probably not the case. Mine
are just overactive. That's possible. Hard working you do, I've
seen I've seen you sweat in a seventy degree farrenheight
tank which is chili. You have to have a wet
(18:36):
suit for that. And Chuck is still sweating again with
the swimming and sweating. Uh So he claims that in
a fifteen minutes sauna, the average person sweats about four
cups about a leader of sweat, which is way more
for me in fifteen minutes, right yeah, I sweat about
a gallon in fifteen minutes. I guarantee that's a lot, man.
A leader of sweat is a lot of water to lose.
It is, you know. But you should see me in
(18:58):
a sauna. It's awesome. It's one of the best feelings.
But I'm not exactly uh sweating out toxins, am I. No,
you're sweating out salt uric acid, not to be confused
with Robert uruk um. And that's pretty much it. You
can you can you do excrete toxins, right yeah, but
(19:19):
not much. No. For the most part, toxins are excreted
through your kidneys. This is your go to um excretion,
right um. And the researchers have found that in heavy sweat,
about one percent of mercury found in the bloodstream is released,
(19:40):
where the other that's released goes through the kidneys. It
either comes out in the stool or the urine, right right, uh.
And this is it has no the The concentration of
a toxin in the blood stream appears to have no
bearing on how much is released through the sweat. It's
almost like our sweat glands are set up to just
do one percent. But people who use saunas, say, man,
(20:03):
one percent of a concentration of mercury. Yeah, yeah, that's
definitely worth fifteen minutes in the sauna. Absolutely, you know,
so they can. But I think it's not just feeling healthier.
They're saying, Look, there's a science behind it as well,
right right, exactly. Um. Another benefit of a good sauna
sweat or a good sweat period is this really good
for your skin. It opens your pores, keeps them nice, impliant,
(20:24):
and the uh there's a study by the Journal of
Dermatology that said, you know, a regular sweat from a
sauna has a proactive effect on your skin and like
helps out with ex amaun and all kinds of dry
skin conditions. And also um Land points out that we
have long associated like bathing rituals with kind of um
(20:45):
clearing away the like a spiritual the psychic funk. Yeah yeah,
not just bottom funk, but head funk. Yeah. Uh. And
anybody who's felt poorly uh and it's taking a shower
can attest to that. You just feel better somehow after
a shower, And there's nothing worse than the feeling of
taking a shower, stepping out and still feeling bad because
(21:08):
you know it's gonna be another twenty four hours before
and you're going to feel start to feel good. Like
you know, you've screwed up big time if you take
a shower and you still don't feel good afterwards, right
you are, Josh, A great shower, like a great sweat
or a good steam. Good fits good, fits does a
body good. Um, we're talking about the Russian banya, the
saunas there the bath house. They also would beat themselves.
(21:32):
I think they probably still do. You would flog your
skin with what's called the venic and it's a bundle
of leafy branches like oak and maple and birch branches, right,
And by doing that, they're they're stimulating circulation because the
skin's like, what's gonna quit that? Send some blood there,
find out what's going on, right, let me know what's
going on after you get there. See, And um, that's
(21:53):
what that's what the skin is doing, right. Uh. And
it also um produces a mild euphoric effect apparently releases
the plant oils, which is also a good thing. And
uh yeah, he said. It stimulates the production of opiate
endorphins and it's like a mild narcotic effect crazy, which
I love that that those three words together. Mild narcotic effect,
(22:14):
that's great. It's almost like cellar door. Mild narcotic effect.
That's better than massive narcotic effect. Right, and then you're
in trouble. Then that shower doesn't work. Um chuck. Also,
saunas produce a mock fever. Yeah, I thought that was
kind of cool. So your internal body temperature can raise
as much as five point four degrease fahrenheight, right, and uh,
the temperature at your skin can increase by as much
(22:36):
as eighteen degrees fahrenheight. That's a lot. That is a
serious amount. And by doing that, your body is like, Okay,
I'm sick. I need to jack my immune system up.
So white blood cell count or white blood cell production
is increased. UM. The limph nodes, which are another internal
waste system, a very important one, UM, are flushed. Uh,
(22:57):
and you start to sweat even four even further. Yeah,
but it doesn't increase your blood pressure. Increases your blood
pump circulation circulation, but not your blood pressure. No, but
if you do have high blood pressure, we should say
saunas are not recommended for you. Well, we should just
go ahead and say, who all, it's not recommended for
kids and old people, it's not recommended pregnant ladies. Um,
(23:20):
but it is good. Um, like those people shouldn't get in,
but women definitely might want to get in because it
apparently alleviates menstrual cramps really well. Right, but if you're
pregnant again, you want to stay away from the sauna
if you're pregnant, right, very very astute point, Chuck, thank you. Um.
Lastly about physiology and saunaing, Um, what you want to
(23:42):
do is keep yourself very hydrated because the irony is
while you're excreting that one percent the go to excreaseing
excreting organs, the kidneys need water to excrete the other
and if you're sweating all of it out, things get
backed up toxic levels, raising your body and you can
do some real damage to yourself. So every time you
(24:03):
go into the sauna, you want to take a jug
of water with you with at least a leader. Right. Yeah,
I would say if you have gout, the sauna is
probably a good place to go. You think so, oh,
because you're a acid builds up. Yeah, it's your all
this is a build up. If you're a acid and
you're well, your is you're a acid. So if you
have gout, can get thee to a sauna. Okay Um,
And there was one other cool thing about the physical
(24:24):
Oh the reason they one reason they recommend heart patients
not getting saunas is because one of the traditions is
to jump from the sauna, either into a snow bank
or into a cool pool water in Finland, Yeah, and
shock your body. And the old urban legend that you
heard when your kids about going from the hot tub
to the pool and you'll you'll drown because your pores
(24:45):
are open. That's so not true. Actually, it's big in
Turkey too. There's the Turkish bath, which is like a
hot tub and then a cool tub, right, and you
go from one to the other. I did not know
that far as I know, that's what I've always heard it.
I had no idea. Um, Chuck, I think it's high
time we talked about the history of the sauna. And
saunas are very very old. Yeah, Neolithic tribes. I love
(25:08):
how he tied culture and uh humans like culture springing
up around human physiological needs and bathing he said was
like the first people that bathe and hot springs lead
to saunas. They're like, wow, this is fantastic. I really
like this. Yeah. Um, And I think in France and
Spain especially, a lot of the Neolithic settlements are located
(25:32):
very close to hot springs and not by accident either. Right. No, Um,
as people were remained nomadic, apparently, we started creating collapsible,
portable saunas that resemble like sweat lodges in Native America. Um.
And then as we began to settle down and become sedentary, uh,
(25:52):
they made more permanent structures like dugouts in Earthen dugouts uh.
And then eventually the Savo saunas, and then which remember
day back at least to the twelfth century, right, that's
the humily a lot further than that. Apparently, as Finland
settled by modern Finns, um, the the sauna was pretty
(26:15):
much brought with them. Yeah. And through the Middle Ages
it was like the common people. It wasn't just for
the rich or anything. The common like whole villages would
would sauna together, sweat it out together, men, women and children,
and at the local bathhouse they would actually feast inside
the sauna. Yes, is really gross. It is they would
(26:37):
get married, um, and they would get they would have
babes on. Yes, prostitution what they called the stews was
the nickname they had. Yes, Yeah, that's not a stew.
You want to eat with crackers, um maybe afterwards, yeah, perhaps.
So this this association, like we said, with saw and
(27:00):
places where you could find a prostitute and have sex
with said prostitute. Um. And just kind of that Roman
diane ie in orgiastic um kind of vibe going on
in the Saunus was one of the reasons why they
were eradicated by Europe because in the early sixteenth century
Europe got a little tense. Yeah, Protestant Reformation just ruined everything. Yeah,
(27:24):
they're kind of like, you can't do that you put
a put a hat with a buckle on right now. Yeah,
you can't do that either or that or that or
that right, get out to start crying right now, let
me teach you what guilt is all about. Right. And
then that lasted for about five hundred years, and then
finally in the late twentieth century, thanks to the nineteen sixties,
people began to loosen up again and get climbed back
(27:45):
into the sauna right, and the sauna immediately became associated
with sex again, like the gay bath houses that we
were talking about. Have you ever seen in the band
played on? Uh No, but my brother worked on that.
I think we talked about that. Um and I think
you said they your brother worked on it too, But um,
Phil Collins plays a bath house owner, and I think
it's Richard Gear who's like trying to track patient zero,
(28:08):
is trying to convince him to like shut down the
bath house because there's like this epidemic that no one's
paying attention to. That back then they called gay cancer,
which is now called HIV or AIDS. They called the
gay cancer they did originally crazy Yeah, um, and so
the bath houses featured prominently, and Sauna's feature prominently in
the bath Houses Phil Collins, Phil Collins SUSU studio was Yeah,
(28:30):
they did a good job the bath house. I think
we talked about what a good job Phil Collins did too. Dude,
that was a long time ago. So if that's the case,
then people, you know, that's like a two year old podcast.
So I don't mind repeating things every once in a while.
We should do one on things to do with the
Dead body or synesthesia. That'd be a great one. That's
what SKO shouldn't. That's what sk so chuck. The saunas
(29:13):
make their comeback now. You can find them at holiday
inns around the world. Actually it's not true. I've never
seen a sauna at a holiday in since they had
my last really crappy job. They had um a gem
in the building, which was one cool part because you
could go down, like during lunch and work out and
they had a saun in there and I would work
out and then I would could theoretically I did for
(29:35):
a time, and I would go sit in the sauna
and it's just the best man. Yeah, just sitting there
just like there's something. I see why the intercourse happened,
because there's something very primal about just sitting there naked
and just sweating and sweating and sweating. But I never
had a desire to like eat food or meet anyone special.
You know what I'm saying? Is that clear? Yeah? I
(29:59):
got it. I get hint hint um. For those of
you can't see, I just winked that, chuck um uh
so chuck. Let's say that you have been inspired to
go out to take a sauna from listening to this,
because there's actually something called sauna etiquette that you need
to know about. First of all, if you're in a
country and they speak German and you decide to go
to a sauna, there will be a person in there
(30:21):
named the sauna maister. The sona maister is in charge
for basically running a very strict ten minute session where
your entire job is to go in there and sit
down and shut up, right. Uh, basically follow the son
of Myster's lead. You're not allowed to leave once the
ten minutes has started. You're not allowed to come in
once the ten minutes. Definitely, never ever put your hands
(30:41):
on that later. No, that's the son of master's job.
Do not wet the rocks if you have a son
of mister. No, that's that's the song. And I got
the impression. I was looking around, I couldn't find anything
that wasn't in German and that I could translate. Um,
but I get the impression that the sona myster is
actually a paid professional. Well I hope, because if someone's
just doing that for kicks, then no, you know, there's
(31:02):
like jerks out there, They're like, I'm the so on
a monster, come here, all the time. Yeah, it's like
no one a mister. It just goes on like that
for a long time. And then they wrist wrestle and
what's that? Yeah, they like wrestle. Yeah with that with
just towels on. God, how about those guys that walk
around the gym with the towel over their shoulder but naked,
(31:24):
I know? And why are they always like seventy I know?
And they pretend like, hey, everybody else is subject to
the Protestant Reformation. I'm free. It's like put a towel on, hippie.
I don't even like, I'm this close to being a
never nude myself, are you? I don't like you have
the Denom jeans. Yeah, shower with Denom jeans now, But
I don't. I mean, I mean, I'm I'm not into that.
(31:44):
Put some clothes on. Protestant Reformation. No one can escape it. Yeah,
no one escapes the Protestant Reformation the sun myself. So lastly,
with sauna etiquette, basically the whole thing comes down to
putting the ladle on. If you're alone in the sauna,
feel free to add some loyally, Yeah, do whatever you want.
Somebody in there. It's probably one of those things where
(32:04):
you want to be quiet and then just say, hey,
do you mind if I put some water on the rocks.
It's supposed to be a pretty quiet environment. Don't go
in there like some chowder head with your cell phone. Right,
and um, when you go in and out, you want
to come in in out as fast as possible because
that open door changes the temperature very quickly. Right, and
just be considered, don't be a jerky. I saw him.
(32:24):
That just reminded me. I saw The War of the
Roses again the End of the Night for like the
fiftieth time. And remember Kathleen Turner locks Michael Douglas and
the sauna, and then the next shot after he like
some like falls out of the sauna is him drinking
gatorade in the office. The next day He's got like
a gallon of gatorade. And that was good. Didn't Danny
de Vito directly? Man, this is one of my favorite movies.
Has a brilliant mind. Lastly, Chuck, let's talk about the
(32:47):
world record for saunaing. Uh. There is a guy named
timok Conan. He is the world championship, Um, well, the
world record holder. Finish of course, finish. Yeah. In August
two thousand nine, he sat in a sauna. That was
he did to two hundred and thirty degrees parent height,
(33:07):
which is undred and ten degrees celsius, for three minutes
and forty six seconds. You can like warm food at
that temperature. You can cook food. Oh yeah, at that temperature. Uh.
That my friends of saunas. And again I think Chuck
and I would both endorse you going over to the
website how stuff works dot Com typing in saunas and
just reading this really well written article by Robert Lamb
(33:31):
in particular, enjoy it. Yeah, then informative. Uh. And since
I said how stuff works dot Com, I'm largely abandoning
the handy search bar thing. I think that's run its course. Really. Yeah,
So the new the new signal for for um listener
mail is how stuff works dot Com. Oh really? Yeah? Okay?
Watch I would say it again because I wasn't ready.
(33:52):
I was still in handy search bar mode. Okay. Uh,
you want to just go over and read saunas at
how stuff works dot Com watch us see so you
know I can say now it's time for listener mail.
I can't control it. I used to be able to
control a lot more when I said handy search barah.
But oh look it just happened that chu chiming all
(34:16):
over the I need to not say anything else. Okay,
let's just read the listener mail. How about that, Josh,
I'm gonna call this, uh take that Colbet. Oh yeah, Colbert.
I recently heard this from Scott in Connecticut. Is that
what c T is? Yeah? Okay, I recently heard about
your rivalry with Stephen Colbert's Keep a Team. Congratulations on
(34:39):
your success. I'm a fan of both your podcast and
his show, which is cool. But he has uh he
says he wasn't gonna choose sides until late one night
when this happened. I know, this is pretty amazing. It's
slightly harrowing. I was up late and winding from a
long day of working class. I was listening to some
vintage s Y s K the Bhutan's Gross National National
Happiness episode. After a little while, I noticed a strange smell,
(35:03):
a little like overheated electronics. Yeah, ozone, Yeah, this is
a scary smell. I sniffed around my computer and noticed
that it seemed to be stronger near the door to
the rest of my apartment opened it and this visible
wave of thick, acrid smoke and gas poured into my room.
I ran to wake my housemates, opening as many windows
as I could to vent out some of the gas.
(35:23):
I'm a smart guy. Uh. It literally tasted like burning.
Our eyes and throats were stinging, and we called the
fire department. They arrived. They found our oil furnace had
basically imploded. Um, those things are dangerous. What oil burnings? Yes,
this I don't know where he isn't get a letter
from the oil burning up board. Okay, remind me to
(35:44):
tell you about high for your toast corn syrup letter.
One day, the basement was loaded with carbon monoxide and
other compounds you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley,
and it had been leaking up into the rest of
the apartment. Not for your podcast, I would have gone
to bed earlier, never noticed that smell. This is why
I mentioned Colbert, you may wonder. As it turns out,
my roommate Caitlin, had been watching Colbert upstairs and she
(36:07):
fell asleep. She was tripping z s when I woke
her up and pulled her to safety. Where was Stephen
Colbert in our time of need. He may have a
space treadmill named after him and a high profile primetime
TV show, but he's no substitute for s Y s
K when it comes to riveting and informating, informative late
night life saving. I thought I would add another game
(36:27):
winning point for team s Y s K Scott in Connecticut.
He's also no s y s K when it comes
to raising donation loans for the developing world, because we
beat the tar out of him on Kiva. Yeah, Kiva
dot org slash team Slash stuff. You should know, Chuck,
we indirectly save these people's lives. You realize we've saved
(36:48):
it quite a few lives at this point, my friend,
if only we've been there for the family at the
end of storytelling. Yeah, I want to know if we've
killed and oh god, so awesome. You're so hooked on
us now. I love that guy. Todd Solins, if you're listening,
I appreciate your work, buddy, Yeah I do too. Yeah. Uh,
if you are Todd Solins, we want to hear from you.
(37:09):
Send us an email, wrap it up, spank it on
the bottom, and send it to Stuff podcast at how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
(37:29):
the how stuff works dot com home page.
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