Essentials: Benefits of Sauna & Deliberate Heat Exposure

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today we are talking about the science of heat. Heat is a remarkable stimulus. meaning when we are in a hot environment, it has a profound effect on our biology.

So we're going to talk about the science of heat and heating, both in terms of their mechanisms and, as I know many of you are interested in, the tools related to the use of heat, things like sauna, how often to do sauna, how long to be in the sauna, how hot to be in the sauna for particular goals and outcomes. We heat up two ways. We heat up from the outside meaning the things that we come into contact with, the clothing that we put on our body, whether or not there's heat in the room or whether or not it's cold outside or cold in a room, and we heat up from the inside. At every point across your entire lifespan, you have two distinct temperatures.

One is the temperature on your skin, what scientists call your shell, and the temperature of your core, your viscera, meaning your organs, your nervous system, and your spinal cord. It is vitally important to understand that you have those two temperatures and that your brain is constantly sending out signals to your body as to whether or not it should heat up or cool down depending on the temperature of the shell. So anytime we're talking about heat, meaning deliberate heat exposure, things like sauna, it's very important to understand not just the stimulus, how hot something is, how long you're in a sauna, et cetera, but the effect that has on your shell. and on your core. If you can understand that, you can design protocols that are literally perfect for your goals.

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