The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Marksissons and is narrated by Brock Armstrong.

Why, some like it hot.

We've explored the health benefits of cold exposure and cold water exposure, but what about heat?

I decided to explore the health benefits of acute heat exposure in the form of saunas, baths, and steam rooms for one main reason.

The sauna is a near-universal human tradition, and I'm always curious about those.

Indigenous peoples of North America had the sweat lodge, those of Central America had the Tamazcal,

the Romans had the Therame, which they picked up and refined from the Greeks,

and other famous traditions include Finnish saunas, Russian banyas, Turkish hamams,

Japanese Sento, or the natural spring-fed onsen, and the Korean Jimjolbang.

Are all these many billions of people across time and space sitting in heated rooms for the heck of it? As popular as it is to

deride traditional wisdoms and practices as outdated, irrelevant, or the delusions of superstitious

primitives, traditions don't arise out of nothingness. And when the same or similar tradition arises

in nearly every culture and people ever known,

it's time to pay attention and dig deeper.

Universal human traditions don't always harbor truth and insight into the human mind, body, and condition,

but they're always worth checking out.

Confirm before you discard.

Luckily, we don't have to guess.

Extensive research into the health benefits of saunas, steam baths, IR saunas, and other forms of acute heat exposure

confirms that the human universal of getting really, really sweaty, hot, and steamy on purpose has merit.

The latest piece of sauna research concerns something we're all thinking about.

All cause mortality.

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