If you’re like most people, you work hard. You know what it’s like it feel the pressure of needing to get your job done and feeling like you have more work than time. You might be at the point where all the obligations that you’re having to juggle can make free time seem like a luxury you can’t quite ever reach.

This kind of pressure can take a toll on your body’s physical health and that impacts your heart. One of the first things that people start experiencing trouble with when they’re leading busy lives is a sleep schedule that’s not heart healthy.

In order to get everything done and stay on the busy track of their lives, most people end up cutting out some sleep hours. While you won’t necessarily feel the impact of this right away, your heart feels it immediately.

Like all your other organs, it needs rest. And when it doesn’t get that rest, just like you do, it can get overworked. Some people start to experience insomnia or they just don’t sleep deeply enough to actually feel like they got a good night’s sleep.

You’ll feel the effects of this when you wake up but still feel tired. You feel groggy and like you’re just trying to make it through the day but your energy level is way down. One specific benefit saunas can help you with is sleep.

When you use a sauna in the evening, it can help you get the rest that your heart needs. And because you use a sauna, your sleep will end up being far more relaxing and you’re less likely to wake up or experience a problem with insomnia.

Saunas work to help you sleep because your body temperature lowers after leaving the sauna and it makes you sleepier. The calm that you experienced from the sauna stays with you and you feel ready for sleep.

Another benefit a sauna gives the heart is the time to simply “be.” You’re not doing anything but relaxing. This kind of break from your day to day activities gives your mind a chance to relax and that in turn helps your heart.

A calm mind equals a calm heart. Just like exercise, saunas offer cardiovascular benefits. Exercise enables the heart to go through a period during the movements where it elevates and pumps faster.

Your heart is a muscle that needs regular exercise in order to function well. When you use a sauna, your heart rate will go through stages of elevation just like what happens when you exercise.

Most people have a fairly normal resting heart rate. While resting is good, your heart isn’t strengthening itself through rest. The heat from the sauna can cause your heart to double its cardiac function.

This workout can improve the ability of your heart to pump blood and it benefits certain cardiac conditions. Another benefit that saunas can give you is that they can keep sickness at bay.

The heat from the sauna forces a response from your body in that it stimulates the body to up its production of white blood cells. This production gives you protection against things that might make you sick.

The Healing Heat of a Sauna

There are millions of people who battle a health concern that impacts the heart. Many of these conditions can be helped by the healing heat of a sauna. One specific condition that a sauna can help with is high blood pressure.

When you have high blood pressure, your heart is working harder than it normally would to get the blood pumped throughout your body. Long term, this strain on your heart can impair its ability to function and the decline can take a toll on your entire body.

A suggested treatment that doctors often prescribe for people with high blood pressure is exercise. Though some people think high blood pressure is no big deal, it can lead to heart disease, heart attacks, stroke and kidney disease.

When your blood pressure numbers stay high, that means that damage is happening to your internal organs and you need to lower those numbers. But the problem with exercising is that many people don’t have the health to be able to exercise.

And there are times when exercising just isn’t feasible for some people for reasons not associated with health. Sometimes high blood pressure goes hand in hand with other issues that can make exercise a struggle and so people end up feeling a bit discouraged.

But there is another way that you can lower your blood pressure. Saunas can give you the cardiovascular benefit of exercise, especially if you use one on a regular basis. The way that saunas work to help people who’ve been diagnosed with high blood pressure has been shown in various medical studies.

The heat from the steam in a sauna causes the blood vessels to relax and what this does is allow the blood to flow easier, faster and more freely. It immediately lowers the blood pressure.

You end up feeling better and your heart isn’t working as hard. Studies have also shown that the regular use of a sauna can lower certain conditions that can put your heart at risk.

One of these conditions is cholesterol numbers that aren’t conducive to good heart health. A sauna can help lower the total cholesterol count and that means that you’ll lower your risk of developing heart disease or having a heart attack.

And the use of a sauna doesn’t just lower your cholesterol, it can help to raise the level of your HDL or the good cholesterol. The reason that a sauna can do this is because the elevated temperatures in the sauna make your heart beat faster, it pumps more oxygen throughout the body just like it does when you exercise.

It has the same cholesterol lowering potential that a workout can give you. Helping your heart with issues like high blood pressure and cholesterol aren’t the only health areas where a sauna can bring healing.

Medical studies have shown that saunas can help those who struggle with heart failure. The regular use of a sauna can boost the ability of the heart to function. When someone who has been diagnosed with heart failure uses a sauna five out of the seven days in a week for between 15 to 20 minutes, his or her heart is greatly benefited.

The benefit that it gives is that the heart can pump blood more easily. The inability to pump blood easily is one of the reasons that heart failure is so devastating. When your body doesn’t get the right amount of blood supply, it means that your organs aren’t getting the proper amount of oxygen.

With that reduced oxygen ability, it’s more difficult for someone who has heart failure to be able to exercise because they end up feeling winded very quickly. Since a sauna can give the same benefits as exercise, this helps their heart be able to work better.

Studies have shown that people with heart failure who do regularly use a sauna can experience an increase in their ability to do tasks as well as exercise. Studies have also shown that the regular use of saunas can work to stimulate the production of certain cells that can improve the heart’s ability to function.

Should You Install a Sauna in Your Home?

It’s true that using a sauna can offer you a lot of benefits. Among these are helping to relieve stress, detoxifying your body and improving your heart health. But does that mean that you should install one in your home?

It’s a known fact that having one does add value to your home. With a sauna that’s convenient, you’re more likely to use it regularly and in turn reap the health benefits. Even if you’re not someone who has any issues with your heart, you can use a sauna to help keep many potential heart problems at bay.

There are two types of saunas that you can look at if you want to put one of these in your home. You can use the wet or the dry kind. Most saunas have a dry heat while wet heat is usually labeled as a steam room, but they’re both technically a sauna.

If you choose to use a dry heat one, the way that this kind works is through having a pile of rocks in the room with you. These rocks are heated up through the use of a sauna heater and the heat from the rocks is what makes the temperature of the room rise to varying levels.

Many of these saunas give users the ability to use water over the rocks and that generates the steam that you’ll find in the space. If you choose to use a wet sauna, the heat is produced through the use of boiling water.

The difference in the two types of heat is the level of humidity. You’ll find that a dry sauna doesn’t have the same high level of humidity. There are different models of saunas that you can buy for your home.

One model is especially well recommended by users and that model is the JNH Lifestyles 2 Person Far Infrared Sauna, which has the carbon fiber heaters. This model is made of eco friendly or green wood, so it’s a great choice.

It has good insulation that help the heating panels keep the heat in the room. There’s also an AUX control along with speakers so that you can listen to something such as music or a program while you’re using the sauna.

The push control access lets you set the temperature and the length of time that you want to use the sauna. The heat from the panels gives you an even heating experience. You’ll be able to sit back against the wood without ending up with your skin getting too hot.

Another recommended model is the Radiant Saunas BSA2409 2-Person Hemlock Infrared Sauna. This one has 6 heaters placed throughout the room. These heaters can put out 1725 watts of heat that can heat the area as much as 141 degrees.

The construction of this model is made of Hemlock with buckle construction so you can put it together pretty easily. When you want to adjust the temperature, you can use the LED control panel.

This one also comes with a sound system. Not only will you get a radio, but it also has a CD player along with connection capability for MP3. The built in speakers will let you listen to soothing music and more as you enjoy the sauna benefits.

It also has a chromo therapy light, which promotes healing and enhances the experience. You also get both a towel and a magazine rack. Since this is a two person sauna, it also has two rest areas for you to relax back against.

Using a sauna as your only source of heart health isn’t going to prevent or reverse heart disease. But it’s another item in your arsenal of weapons to fight plaque and coronary decay, and the fact that it’s soothing, instead of stressful, means it’s something you’ll want to try.