Saunas & Ice Baths: Key Takeaways from the Helsinki Biohackers Conference

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Biohackers Collective

4 min readDec 23, 2016

Saunas — the next big performance enhancing drug.

Finland, the land of a million saunas. Hardly surprising saunas were the theme of the Biohacking summit, with a sauna at the conference hall for people to detox during the day.

Saunas are a great way to relax. We know they’re good for us, but before Finland, I had no idea how and why.

There’s real science behind the benefits of saunas

Saunas work by stressing the body to improve health and fitness.

Introducing stresses to our bodies forces positive changes. Its stress in the gym that builds muscle. The breaking down and rebuilding of tissues.

Keynote speaker Dr Rhonda Patrick has a PhD in biomedicine and has researched cancer, ageing and nutrition.

Some of the science:

In Finland, people using saunas three to five times a week were more healthy and lived longer than those that never used them.
Worms exposed to heat live 20% longer.
Heat benefits are seen deep inside us, at the level of our cells.

Top health benefits of heat therapy

Beyond the benefits we all know about, that saunas flush toxins from the body by sweating, saunas also help with health by:

Longer life — seen in surveys done in Finland
Heart health — reduces resting heart rate and blood pressure.
Fitness — Red blood cell count increases. Heat tolerance increases.
Muscle Growth — if done after exercising.
Injury –speeds up repair of injured muscles.
Brain — helps builds new brain cells. Can reduce symptoms of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
Diabetes — better blood sugar control

So many benefits, seen in surveys, studies and in the science. Take fitness for instance — studies show 30% better endurance in workouts with two 30-minute saunas a week for just three weeks.

We can Biohack with cold therapy as well

It just works in different ways to heat.

Cold therapy improves sleep, immunity and helps burn fat among many other uses.

Hardcore Biohackers are even going for regular cryo sauna’s (liquid nitrogen cold air). Dave Asprey recently had one installed in his house.

Immunity increases with cold shocks

Wim Hoff, Dutch dare-devil, goes under the name ‘the iceman’. Wim has climbed to the top of Kilimanjaro wearing just shorts.

Wim has used cold therapy to boost his immunity to such a level he can fight off an injected toxic bacteria without getting sick. He can train others to do the same in a week.

Cold helps win obstacle course races

Ben Greenfield, a top performance coach and has competed in many Spartan races.

Ben talked about how most people doing obstacle course races are not cold-tolerant. Athletes who can run marathons are dropping out of the race after the cold swim. People just don’t train for the cold.

Training for the cold gives people massive advantages.

Top benefits of cold therapy

Burns fat — generating heat burns calories
Immunity — increases white blood cells
Depression — releases positive brain endorphins
Muscle — improves endurance
Reduces inflammation — for treatments like osteoarthritis or back pain
Sleep — cold triggers sleep hormones
Diabetes — better blood sugar control

Hot and cold biohacks can we use now to improve our health

Take regular saunas to improve fitness
Take a sauna after a workout to increase muscle growth
Take cold showers before bed to get to sleep quicker

Note — leave cold therapy for more than an hour post workout for strength training. Cold just after a workout reduces growth hormones needed to build muscle.

Blog Post Series

Over the next few posts, I’ll dig into more of what I learned in Helsinki.