Saunas Are the Next Frontier in Fighting Depression

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Health,Mental Health,Medicine

The preliminary results of a clinical trial of using heat exposure to combat depression are in—and are fueling cautious optimism that sauna practice could become an accepted treatment.

Depression runs hot. In the 1980s, psychiatrists began noticing that patients with depressive symptoms had higher body temperatures compared to people without, and that their body temperatures didn’t ebb and flow as much throughout the day. The more severe a patient’s depression, the higher their temperature tended to be.

“The premise of this is great,” says Earric Lee, a physiologist with the Montreal Heart Institute, who was not involved in the study but has led sauna studies since completing his doctoral research in Finland. “Trying to move away from pharmacology is a good thing.” More than 250 million people worldwide have major depressive disorder, and tens of millions of people don’t respond to any available treatment. Such a small study doesn’t prove that sauna therapy can treat depression.

 

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