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The mindbodygreen Podcast

642: The science of sweat, saunas & stress | best-selling author Bill Gifford

The mindbodygreen Podcast

mindbodygreen

Alternative Health, Health & Fitness

4.52.1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2026

⏱️ 44 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“Sweating is our superpower," explains Bill Gifford. Gifford, a veteran science journalist and author of Spring Chicken, a New York Times bestseller on longevity. His latest book, Hotwired: How the Hidden Power of Heat Makes Us Stronger, dives deep into the emerging science of heat, sweating, and what happens when we stop running from discomfort. ​​00:00 — Sweating as an evolutionary superpower 03:00 — The science of ancient heat rituals 05:45 — How long & how hot? 07:55 — The dehydration trap 09:52 — All about Finnish sauna culture 12:50 — Heat acclimation training 16:41 — Elite athletes & what they can teach us 18:50 — The science on hot-cold contrast 21:49 — The case against cold plunging 29:08 — Sauna as a social ritual 33:20 — Heat as a mental health tool 36:34 — A beginner's guide to safe heat exposure Referenced in the episode:  Find Bill Gifford on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/billgifford/  Get his book here: https://a.co/d/01osyyRH  Learn more about The Culture of Bathing here: https://www.instagram.com/thehighlineguy/?hl=en Mayo Clinic review of the effects of Finnish sauna bathing (2018): https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(18)30275-1/fulltext  Journal of Exercise Science & Fitness study on the effects of hot yoga (2011): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1728869X12600033  We hope you enjoy this episode, and feel free to watch the full video on YouTube! Whether it's an article or podcast, we want to know what we can do to help here at mindbodygreen. Let us know at: podcast@mindbodygreen.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to the Mind Buddy Green podcast. I'm Jason Wachab, founder and co-CEO of My Buddy Green, and your host.

0:10.4

What if one of the most powerful tools for your health has been hiding in plain sight? And most of us have been actually avoiding it.

0:18.3

Today's guest is Bill Gifford, a veteran science journalist, author of

0:22.0

Spring Chicken, a New York Times best-selling author on longevity and co-author of Outlive. His latest book,

0:29.1

Hotwired, How the Hidden Power of Heat Makes Us Stronger, Dives Deep into the Emerging Science of

0:36.5

Heat, Sweating, and what happens when we stop running from

0:40.5

discomfort. Phil spent his career translating cutting-edge science for real people, writing for

0:46.7

WIRE, Bloomberg, Business Week, Scientific American, Outside, and more. In this episode, we get into

0:52.5

why sweating is one of humanity's greatest evolutionary

0:55.4

superpowers and what we lose when we live in perfectly climate-controlled comfort 24-7. We discuss

1:02.6

the Finnish sauna tradition, what the science says about minimum effective dose, and why heat

1:07.7

exposure may be one of the most underrated tools for cardiovascular and

1:12.5

mental health. We also tackle the cold punch debate. Bill makes a compelling case for why the

1:17.8

cold side of the equation is far less settled than what one would believe. This one challenged

1:23.6

some of my own assumptions and I think it will challenge yours too. Let's dive it.

1:30.7

Heat challenge some of my own assumptions and I think it will challenge yours too. Let's dive it. Heat, sweating. You argue that sweating, which many people do not like, is a superpower.

1:39.1

Let's talk about that. What did we lose when we moved into this world of constant climate control?

1:45.7

And how do we get it back when we reintroduce heat?

1:49.8

Yeah, so our ability to sweat is this evolutionary anomaly.

1:56.4

And it kind of happened by accident, they think, more than a million years ago the series of genetic

2:03.8

mutations that took these existing sweat glands that our ancestors had in their feet and their

2:11.2

I guess pause spread them all over their body these are our prehuman like ape-like ancestors right so they had these all of a sudden they had these sweat glands all over their body. These are our pre-human, like, ape-like ancestors, right?

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