August 24, 2024

How Long Should You Stay In a Sauna & Pro Tips for Optimal Use

Wondering how long should you stay in a sauna for maximum benefits? Discover the ideal sauna time to optimize your wellness. Learn more in this informative guide!

Saunas offer a range of health benefits, but like anything in life, it's best to enjoy them in moderation. Picture this: you've just stepped into a warm, cozy sauna, and after a few moments of letting your body adjust to the heat, you start to feel a pleasant wave of relaxation wash over you. But before long, you wonder how long I should stay here? If this sounds like you, you're not alone. Many sauna users wonder how long they should stay in a sauna for health benefits while also enjoying their time inside. While you can use your best judgment to determine when it's time to come out, this article will help you come up with a target sauna time to strive for next time you use the sauna so that you can gain the most out of your DIY cold plunge session for improved mental and physical health.

Ready to learn more about how long should you stay in a sauna? GoPolar's cold plunge app can help you achieve your sauna objectives, like improving your mental and physical health with sauna sessions, by offering helpful insights on how long to stay in a sauna for optimal recovery.

What Is Sauna Bathing & How It Works

a sauna room - How Long Should You Stay In a Sauna

Saunas have been used in Scandinavia for thousands of years. Historically, saunas began as earth pits covered by animal skins that evolved into traditional saunas where wood is burned in a stove, with or without a chimney. There’s also a basket of rocks above the stove where water can be thrown to increase löyly, or steam and make the sauna more humid. There are several types of saunas used today, and the most common are:

Wood-burning: Stoves are used to heat the sauna rocks, allowing you to keep temperatures high.
Electric: These are the most commonly used saunas today, thanks to convenient, safe, and easy-to-use electric heaters.
Infrared: Instead of heating the air around you, infrared saunas radiate heat that warms your body directly

While this isn’t technically a traditional sauna, it offers similar benefits at lower temperatures. Smoke. Like a wood-burning sauna, a stove burns wood that heats the air and the rocks on top of the stove. The smoke sauna doesn’t have a chimney. After the sauna warms up, smoke is vented, and the door is closed while the heat remains.

What Is Sauna Bathing

Sauna bathing is a form of heat therapy in a room heated by burning wood, electricity, or special infrared light waves. A sauna may reach temperatures between 158 and 212 Fahrenheit. It’s considered dry heat, the relative humidity in a typical sauna tends to stay between 10% and 20%. Many people sit in saunas for relaxation and general wellness. Experts believe sauna bathing may benefit:

Arthritis
Chronic fatigue
Cold symptoms
Muscle soreness
Psoriasis
Stress
Sauna and heart health

Heart Rate Spike

Sitting in a sauna may be particularly good for your heart. The heat can raise your skin temperature and cause heavy sweating — a short time in the sauna can produce a pint of sweat. As your body attempts to keep cool, your heart rate increases and may reach 100-150 beats per minute.

The Benefits Of Regular Sauna Use

Sauna bathing increased heart rate
Causes blood vessels to open
Increases circulation
Reduces stress levels — like the effects of low or moderate exercise

As a result, sitting in a sauna also benefits blood pressure. Evidence over the past few decades shows that bathing has an immediate positive effect on blood pressure. But for a bigger benefit, combine your sauna bathing with exercise. Recent research finds that using the sauna for 15 minutes after a workout, three times a week results in a more significant improvement in blood pressure than exercise alone.

Cholesterol Reduction

Total cholesterol High blood cholesterol — a waxy substance in your cells — is a significant risk factor for heart disease. Lowering your total blood cholesterol by 10% can decrease your risk of heart disease by 30%. The good news is that sweating can raise your good cholesterol levels (HDL) to improve your total cholesterol.

Exercise will help you work up a sweat, and sauna bathing alone can also reduce total cholesterol levels. But combining the two — sitting in a sauna after your workout — significantly affects total cholesterol more.

Cardiovascular Respiratory Fitness Level

Cardiovascular respiratory fitness (CRF) is your body’s ability to deliver oxygen to your muscles and organs during physical activity. A higher CRF level can decrease your risk of heart disease and death. Regular exercise is one way to improve CRF levels. Whether your CRF levels are high or low, research shows that sauna bathing following exercise is beneficial. If your CRF level is low, exercise followed by 15 minutes in the sauna improves CRF more than exercise alone.

If your CRF level is high, adding sauna bathing to your workout routine can reduce your risk of heart-related death, including sudden cardiac death.

Risk Of Death From Heart-Related Disease

Heart disease causes one out of every five deaths in the United States. Sudden cardiac death (SCD) often has no warning signs. Research shows that bathing sauna may help lower your risk of heart disease. One study followed 2,300 sauna bathers for 20 years and found that participants who visited the sauna more frequently (four to seven times a week) had:

Lower heart disease
Stroke death rates

Why Is Spending the Right Amount of Time in a Sauna Important?

a sand clock - How Long Should You Stay In a Sauna

When it comes to cold therapy, timing is everything. You do not want to plunge into an ice-cold tub right after a workout. Instead, allow your heart rate to return to normal and let your body initiate its natural recovery process before subjecting it to cold water shock.

The body needs time to clear out lactic acid and other metabolic byproducts built up during exercise. Jumping into a cold plunge too soon can hinder this natural recovery process.

Duration: How Long Should You Stay in a Cold Plunge?

Emerging research suggests that cold therapy is most effective when done consistently over time rather than after one big session. For this reason, you should establish a cold plunge routine that works for you and your body. Shorter, more frequent sessions may be less shocking and easier to acclimate to than longer sessions.

Many people find success starting with a minute or two and gradually increasing their time in the cold water as they build tolerance. While you can benefit from just a few minutes of cold therapy, there’s no hard and fast rule about how long you should stay in a cold plunge. It depends on your personal preference and goals.

How Long Should You Stay in a Sauna?

How long should you stay in an infrared sauna for benefits? The optimal time to spend in an infrared sauna for the most health benefits is 25 minutes at 55ºC at least 3 times a week over a minimum of 3 months.

This recommendation comes from analyzing a list of sauna clinical studies on the amount of time used to achieve multiple health benefits, determining the length of time in the sauna and the frequency of exposure for each study.

Soothe Inflammation & Muscle Soreness

How long should you sauna for inflammation and muscle soreness? Frequent sauna use for 30 minutes at 55ºC is how long you should spend in a sauna for sore muscles. Heat therapy can reduce muscle soreness because the heat stress on the human body causes blood vessels to widen and the cardiovascular system to increase, which then increases blood flow and supplies muscles with nutrients needed for repair while also removing any built-up waste products stored in muscles and joints, especially after exercise.

Detox Benefits for Sauna Use

How long should you sauna for detoxification benefits? To use a sauna for detoxification, you should stay in a sauna for 15 - 25 minutes at 55ºC-60ºC. This is due to the infrared rays penetrating the body directly and causing the subcutaneous fat cells in the adipose tissue to vibrate and release heavy metals and toxins. This unique property makes infrared saunas for detox such a powerful tool.

Weight Loss & Sauna Use

How long should you stay in the sauna for weight loss? How long you should spend in a sauna for weight loss is 45 minutes at 60ºC, 4-5 times per week over 3 months. This is because frequently using a sauna increases your metabolism and causes you to burn calories in a sauna at a higher rate than you would otherwise.

You can use a sauna calories burned calculator to determine how many calories you burn depending on your weight and how long you spend in a sauna.

Mental Health Benefits of Sauna Use

How long should you sauna for mental health benefits? The mental health benefits of using a sauna for anxiety and depression are achieved by staying in a sauna for 15-20 minutes at 60ºC.

Sauna use helps lower cortisol levels and allows the nervous system to reset, providing users with:

Increased relaxation
Improved sleep quality
Improved mental health

Using a Sauna for Colds & Flus

How long should you sauna for a cold or flu? The answer is absolutely zero because you shouldn't sauna with a cold or flu. You should stay in the sauna for 15 minutes if you are looking to boost your immune system to help prevent getting sick in the first place.

15 minutes is all you need for your body to induce an artificial fever, increasing white blood cells and ATP production, allowing your cells to:

Repair
Better fight off pathogens

Heart Health Benefits of Sauna Use

How long you should sauna for heart health benefits is 20 minutes, 4 to 7 times a week at 55ºC. Cardiovascular disease is one of the world's leading causes of mortality, and frequent sauna sessions improve cardiovascular health by a staggering 63%, reducing the risk of sudden cardiac death.

Heart Health Saunas

Infrared sauna use not only releases muscle tension but also supports healthy blood pressure. Lower temperature saunas are a comfortable and enjoyable activity that activates the cardiovascular response for improvements in some types of high blood pressure and cardiovascular issues.

The most famous randomized clinical trial for heart health examined middle-aged Finnish men over an extended period of time. It determined frequent Finnish sauna visits improved longevity from cardiovascular disease-related deaths.

Skin Benefits of Sauna Use

How long you should sauna for skin benefits such as anti-aging, purification, or reduction in cellulite, scars, and wrinkles is 15 minutes, 2 times a week. Regular sauna use is beneficial for:

Skin elasticity
Collagen production

Infrared sauna, in particular, activates an enzyme beneath the skin that supports the regeneration of skin cells. Sauna use has also had skin acne benefits.

Diabetes Support from Sauna Use

How long you should sauna for diabetes support benefits is 25 minutes, 2 times a week at 85ºC. Because the sauna warms the inside of the body

Blood vessels widen
Blood circulation increases

This causes glucose to better be taken up by your cells and a sauna session has been shown to increase insulin absorption by up to 110%.

8 Factors Affecting Sauna Duration

woman in a sauna - How Long Should You Stay In a Sauna

1. Sauna Type: How Does the Type of Sauna Impact Duration?

There are different types of saunas, each with varying temperature and humidity levels, which can influence your sauna duration such as:

Traditional Finnish Sauna

Such saunas use an electric or wood-burning heater to generate dry heat. The temperature in a Finnish sauna is typically between 160 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit, with humidity levels around 10-20%. Because of the high temperature and low humidity, Finnish sauna sessions are usually shorter, between 10 to 15 minutes.

Infrared Sauna

Infrared saunas (such as the Dynamic Sauna Barcelona) use infrared light to heat the body directly rather than heating the surrounding air. The temperature in an infrared sauna is lower, usually around 120 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. So, infrared sauna sessions can be longer, between 20 to 45 minutes.

Steam Room

Steam rooms use steam to create a hot, humid environment, with temperatures around 110 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit and humidity levels close to 100%. < NBC News notes that high humidity levels can cause:

Drowsiness
Fatigue
Muscle cramps
Headaches

Therefore, sessions in a steam room are typically shorter than those in a dry sauna, ranging from 10 to 20 minutes at a time.

2. Age: Do You Need to Worry About Age When Using a Sauna?

Your age significantly affects how often and for how long you can safely use a sauna. As you age, your body composition changes, with a decrease in muscle mass and bodily fluid and an increase in body fat. Cleveland Clinic explains that this change in body composition can decrease your thirst sensation and decrease your body's ability to conserve water, increasing the risk of dehydration.

Safety Precautions

Older adults may need to spend less time in a sauna or opt for lower temperatures to avoid overheating or mitigate the risk of dehydration. Children can also struggle to regulate their body temperature during a sauna session. They typically sweat more since they have a higher surface area to body weight ratio.

Children also have smaller fluid reserves, so they rapidly become dehydrated. Young children, especially infants and toddlers, can also not communicate their thirst effectively; it is recommended that children so young do not use saunas. Limiting sauna sessions to 10 to 15 minutes is generally recommended for children and older individuals to ensure a safe and enjoyable experience.

3. Health Conditions: Should You Talk to Your Doctor About Using a Sauna?

Your overall health and pre-existing medical conditions play a vital role when it comes to how long you should stay in a sauna. Research indicates that individuals with specific health issues, including:

Coronary artery disease
High blood pressure
Respiratory issues
Skin conditions, may need to limit their sauna sessions or avoid them altogether

It's best to consult a healthcare professional before using a sauna to avoid adverse reactions. They can help guide you better on the appropriate duration and precautions to take before planning your sweat session.

4. Comfort Level: What's Your Comfort Level?

Ultimately, it all comes down to your personal preferences and comfort level. While some individuals prefer shorter sessions of 10-15 minutes as part of their workout regimen, others may enjoy longer sessions of 20-30 minutes to:

Unwind
Relax

The most important thing is to listen to your body and enjoy the sauna's benefits. If you are new to a sauna, start with a shorter duration—preferably 15-20 minutes—and gradually increase it as your body acclimates to the heat.

5. Hydration Levels: What's Your Hydration Level?

The first factor you should consider when determining the ideal duration is your hydration level. If you drink plenty of water, you should be able to comfortably visit an infrared sauna for over half an hour. Otherwise, avoid spending more than 20-25 minutes to prevent:

Dizziness
Nausea
Other related issues

Another important detail is whether or not you’ve worked out before your sauna bathing. If yes, you should wait at least 10 minutes before going inside. If you step inside an infrared sauna immediately after a workout, you risk dehydration during an extended session. This is mainly because a sauna can mimic a light exercise (regarding heat response), making the body think it’s still under stress.

6. Level of Experience: Are You Experienced With Sauna Usage?

Although saunas can help alleviate various conditions, this doesn’t mean you can jump in as easily as someone visiting infrared saunas for years. The higher temperatures can be a real curveball, especially if you live in a cold region.

If you’ve never visited a sauna, avoid going all the way the first time around. Rather than go through an entire 45-minute session, start by staying for 15 minutes to avoid being overwhelmed by the heat.

7. Overall Goals of Sauna Usage: Why Are You Using the Sauna?

Not everyone expects the same from their trip to an infrared sauna. How long you spend inside determines the benefits you experience. Here’s an overview of how long you should be in an infrared sauna, depending on your goal:

Improving skin health: Twice a week, at least 15 minutes
Heart health: Twice a week, 10-15 minutes in the first few weeks; moving up to three to four times a week for at least 30-45 minutes per session later on
Accelerating weight loss: Four times a week, at least 30 minutes per session Improving detoxification; Three to four times a week, at least 15-25 minutes per session Muscle recovery and alleviating pain; Three to four times a week, between 30 and 60 minutes per session

8. Individual Considerations: What Are Your Personal Considerations?

Your body might be worlds apart from someone else’s. The differences manifest themselves in many ways, including the ability to withstand high heat. A number of factors govern this ability, but the most significant consideration is whether or not you have underlying health conditions. If you have high blood pressure and other cardiovascular problems, you shouldn’t push yourself to the limit from the get-go.

Instead, take it easy and spend 10-15 minutes in an infrared sauna machine once or twice a week in the first month. Consult your cardiologist for more specific advice. Likewise, eczema, atopic dermatitis, and other skin issues may limit your time in an infrared sauna.

Profuse sweating can exacerbate these problems, so you should limit your sessions to 15-20 minutes at a time. Talk to a dermatologist to determine the optimal duration.

6 Sauna Tips for Maximum Health Benefits

1. Shower Before and After Using Your Sauna

Some sauna enthusiasts find that showering before stepping into a sauna makes them sweat

more rapidly and heavily, giving them an extra refreshing, restorative experience. Showering also helps stimulate blood flow through the body while removing dirt, lotions, and other residues that clog pores, allowing you to perspire freely.

Post-Sauna Shower

Many people shower immediately after a sauna session because it leaves them feeling:

Clean
Invigorated
Energized

After the last sauna session, don’t wash your body with shower gel. Instead, rinse off as your body is already immaculate and rejuvenated from the sauna.

2. Sauna Bathing Au Natural

Ideally, wearing no clothing in saunas optimizes the health benefits of sauna bathing. Clothing interferes with the ability of infrared heat to penetrate your skin and body. If you suffer from fibromyalgia, arthritis, or other pain conditions, reducing inflammation as entirely as possible requires exposing painful areas directly to infrared light waves.

No Clothes Needed

For traditional sauna users, clothes can hamper sweat evaporation. The body produces sweat to keep the body cool, and if the sweat doesn't evaporate, it isn't successful in cooling. You want to keep the loop going:

Heat
Sweat
Evaporate
Repeat

Maximizing your skin exposure in the sauna allows your body to sweat freely for maximum benefit.

3. How Long Should You Stay in a Sauna?

How long it feels comfortable to stay in a sauna differs, depending on your:

Tolerance of heat
Age
Certain health factors

Sauna Cycles

Typically, sauna users remain there for 10-15 minutes before taking a break to cool off and then entering the sauna again. Some people enjoy a quick dip in cool water followed by a brief cool-down period before re-entering the sauna and repeating the process. Three rounds of sauna bathing and cooling off are typical, but you should increase or reduce the number of cycles depending on what feels good.

As for how often you should use a sauna, studies have shown increased benefits with more frequent use. While 1-2 days per week saw some improvement, 3-4+ days per week resulted in maximum benefits.

4. Exfoliate and Boost Circulation

While you’re in the sauna, there are a couple of ways to boost the circulation to the skin and maximize the benefits you feel. When you sit in the sauna, brush, lightly scratch, or tap the skin on your:

Arms
Legs
Belly
Back

This will stimulate your pores to open more while you’re in the sauna and boost the circulation at the surface of your body. Some sauna users enjoy adding a vasta or vihta (the name varies by region) to their sauna routine. The term refers to a bundle of fresh birch twigs used to gently whip yourself. As odd as that sounds, you’ll notice the smoothness of your skin afterward.

5. Stay Hydrated to Maximize Health Benefits

Don't drink alcohol before or after a sauna session for the same reason you should drink 2-4 cool glasses of water after sauna use–hydration. You’ll be sweating profusely during sauna use, so you want to make sure you’re replacing the water you lost. The average person will lose about a pint of sweat during a brief sauna.

It evaporates so quickly in the dry air that a person may not realize how much he is perspiring. Some sauna users enjoy drinking tomato juice after a session, which helps replace the potassium lost through sweat.

6. Stretch Out!

Instead of sitting upright in your sauna, stretch out your legs and arms to enjoy the full benefits of sauna therapy. If possible, lie down because then the whole body is affected by the same temperature equally. This also helps increase range of motion/flexibility and can expedite the reduction of:

Pain
Stiffness

Pro Tip: A Cold Plunge After Sauna Can Help You Feel Pumped Up!

woman in a bathtub with mountains in the background - How Long Should You Stay In a Sauna

A cold plunge is exactly what it sounds like—a dip in icy cold water. This phenomenon can be natural, like plunging into a frigid lake, or artificial, like an ice bath or cold pool. You can even replicate the experience with a cold shower.

Unlike a sauna, which heats your body, a cold plunge rapidly lowers your body temperature. The shocking temperature change:

Jolts the body
Activates numerous natural responses

How Cold Plunges Work and What They Do

Plunging into icy cold water after a sauna session can do wonders for your physical and mental well-being. Experts, also called the Nordic Cycle by experts, which includes:

Releasing endorphins (the feel-good hormones)
Increasing your blood flow
Soothing your nervous system

Sounds interesting, doesn't it? There's more to the benefits of the Nordic Cycle using the ice pod. But before we get there, let's look at the right way to follow a sauna and ice bath routine.

Cold Plunge Before or After Sauna: What's the Right Method?

Fascinating as the concept of sauna and ice plunge is, it is equally confusing for sauna bathers. At the heart of it lies the question: which should you choose first, the sauna or the cold dip? According to most health and fitness experts, you should first go for a sauna, then a cold plunge. These experts cite the example of contrast therapy, where your body (or part of it) is first immersed in hot water followed by icy cold water.

They suggest that sauna to cold plunge works similarly to contrast therapy, where your body kick-starts a fight-or-flight response, enabling thermoregulation and naturally releasing norepinephrine. A cold plunge after sauna can help you reap maximum health and wellness benefits.

What's the Best Time of Day for a Sauna and Cold Plunge?

A million-dollar question for those following the cold plunge sauna routine is the perfect day to follow this regimen. You see, saunas are associated with deep relaxation, where you let your body and mind:

Loosen up
Decompress

Timing Tips

As per wellness experts, evening hours, preferably before bed, are the best time to have a sauna bath. They even suggest that a sauna before bed can make you sleep like a baby. Be it morning or evening, you can avail the health benefits of a sauna at just about any time. Coming to the cold plunge after sauna bathing, we suggest you do it in the morning rather than in the evening.

Why, you might wonder? While saunas are all about unwinding, a cold plunge is linked to wakefulness. This means that switching from a sauna to a cold plunge can wake you up and make you feel energized and alert. So, a cold plunge after sauna is best suited for morning hours as it can make you feel invigorated and help you have a productive day.

How Long Should You Cold Plunge After Sauna?

When it comes to the benefits of sauna and ice bathing, they're not linked to the maximum time you spend in hot and cold temperatures. Your regular sauna session followed by a short plunge in cold water should be enough to reap the health benefits. As such, we suggest you go for a 20-30 minute sauna session followed by a 2-5 minute cold plunge or ice bath.

If you're just starting with a cold plunge sauna routine, 20 minutes in the sauna and a 2-minute cold plunge should be apt. You can gradually increase the time in the sauna and cold water as your endurance improves. Going forward, you can spend 30 minutes in the sauna and 5-6 in the cold water.

Note: Even though spending more time in the sauna and cold shower doesn't hurt, we suggest you don't overdo it. That's because while exceeding a sauna session can dehydrate you, overdoing a cold plunge can cause hypothermia.

GoPolar’s Cold Plunge App

Our cold plunge app is the go-to resource and tracking app for people who like to do cold plunge and sauna. With GoPolar's cold plunge app, you can track your cold plunge or cold shower, and your sauna sessions with your Apple watch. After your plunge or sauna session, you can review your heart rate during a session, see trends in the app with Apple Health data, and track your scores in our leaderboard/community.

With our app, you can also find the best spots to cold plunge in your area! Download our cold plunge app for free today to level up your cold plunge and sauna sessions with our tracking features and the GoPolar community leaderboard.

5 Must-Know Benefits of a Sauna Cold Plunge Regimen

woman in a bathtub - How Long Should You Stay In a Sauna

1. Enhances Your Body's Natural Healing Process

The sauna and ice bath combo helps boost your body's natural ability to heal itself. When you alternate between the hot and cold temperatures, your body’s red blood cells travel to injured or sore areas more efficiently. The process increases oxygen flow, aids in developing antibodies, and helps transport essential nutrients to the damaged tissue.

Together, these effects speed up recovery and ensure the injured cells get the proper care they need.

Bonus: The sauna and cold plunge routine can also help reduce swelling.

Swelling can occur due to poor blood circulation. The sauna and ice bath combo helps improve circulation not just through your cardiovascular system but also through lymphatic systems. This, in turn, helps eliminate lymphedema and the swelling resulting from it.

2. Relieves Pain and Makes You Feel Better

The Nordic Cycle also helps relieve pain and makes you feel better. The sudden change in temperatures, from hot to cold helps trigger an instant release of:

Adrenaline
Endorphins

Natural Pain Relief

These hormones are associated with our body’s emergency response system, which, when activated, leads to an enhanced state of alertness. The process also helps shift our brain’s focus away from the pain, thus making us feel relieved.

This proves helpful for natural pain alleviation after an injury or surgery, thus reducing the need for medications. Furthermore, it also makes you feel better overall.

3. Improves Blood Flow in One Go

You might have heard about the benefits of a sauna for improving blood flow. But what if we told you that adding a cold plunge to your sauna bath can help do this better?

Switching between hot and cold can help trigger a quick dilation of your blood vessels, which instantly increases the blood flow. Also, this improves your cardiovascular response and, in turn, promotes a healthy heart.

4. Converts White Fat into Brown Fat

Pairing a sauna with a cold plunge helps convert white fat into brown fat. But what is

brown fat in the first place? For starters, brown fat is found near the spine and is considered healthy. In fact, from boosting metabolism to helping our body regulate its temperature to responding to obesity and increased blood sugar, a range of benefits are linked to brown fat.

The more you expose yourself to the cold, the more brown cells your body will build. And that makes for a solid reason for cold plunges after sauna sessions.

5. Boosts Immunity

While saunas and steam baths are known for their immunity-boosting potential, adding a cold plunge into the equation can help you boost immunity even more. As we discussed earlier, a cold plunge right after sauna bathing triggers the fight-or-flight response. This also facilitates thermoregulation, where your body adjusts its internal temperature, keeping it steady despite the external temperature fluctuations.

The Best Sauna and Cold Plunge Routine For Compounding Benefits

Research indicates that cold plunge and sauna therapy offer numerous benefits, especially when combined. To maximize these benefits, it is essential to understand how to create an effective routine.

There are two methods for alternating between saunas and cold plunges. The first method starts with a sauna session, while the other starts with a cold plunge. Both methods yield similar results, but some people may prefer one over the other.

The First Method: Sauna First, Then Cold Plunge

Take a warm shower to prepare for the sauna
Get into a sauna and sweat for about 10-15 minutes
Plunge yourself into cold water for 30 seconds
Rest for a few minutes
Repeat Steps 2 to 4 two to four times in total

The Second Method: Cold Plunge First, Then Sauna

Take a cold plunge for half a minute
Go for a 10- to 15-minute sauna session
Take another 30-second cold plunge
Repeat the sauna session
End with a cold plunge

The Benefits of Sauna Sessions

A sauna session promotes vasodilation—widening the blood vessels—and increases heart rate. Heat therapy through a sauna temporarily speeds up metabolism, allowing it to process blood faster and open smaller blood vessels throughout the body. This increases total blood flow and allows more oxygen-rich blood to enter deeper into tissues.

For optimal results, a traditional sauna (non-IR) dry sauna with an ambient humidity of no more than 20% will work best. The dry heat promotes heart health without heavily affecting breathing.

Sauna Temperature

The temperature range for the sauna can vary greatly depending on whether you stick to a traditional sauna. Still, temperatures around 130 F are the most commonly used for traditional heat therapy.

The amount of sweat you shed won’t impact whether the sauna portion of the contrast therapy has been successful. In some cases, such as when using an infrared sauna at home, you might not sweat much. If you’re concerned about what it means if you don’t sweat in a sauna, it might just be your genetic makeup providing you with a higher heat tolerance.

The Benefits of Cold Plunges

A cold plunge, sometimes called an ice bath or cold water immersion, is a relatively simple therapy tool that utilizes the body’s natural response to exposure to cold. The actual bath can vary in type and severity from a combination of ice and water (at around 50F) to simple cold water (with temperatures from 60F to 68F).

The immersion itself doesn’t have to be complete. You can plunge into the water up to the waist or neck, get most of the benefits, and minimize the shock.

Cold Shock Therapy

The point of the cold plunge lies solely in shocking the body with a cold environment. The cold exposure causes rapid vasoconstriction—narrowing the blood vessels. While initially an instinctive defense mechanism to protect vital organs (heart, lung, and brain) from shutting down, controlled vasoconstriction allows therapists to restrict blood flow to the muscles.

The restricted blood flow and reduced sensation provide near-immediate soreness and fatigue relief when used after an exercise session. The method is also helpful for quickly reducing core body temperature, which can help in some cases of sunstroke or overheating due to exertion.

Morning Focus Boost

The jolt of cold and the associated shock can provide an instant focus boost and refresh you. Cold plunges are often used first thing in the morning to:

Improve awareness
Wake you up faster than drinking coffee

New research has also posited that a cold plunge can promote the conversion from white fat to brown fat. White fat, also known as adipose fat, covers the internal organs or is spread out in large cells across the body, typically in the midsection. It’s a slow-burning, long-term energy storage that the body taps into slower.

Brown Fat Benefits

By contrast, brown fat resides mainly around:

Muscles
The neck
The shoulders

It is more energy-dense and quickly burns up for immediate energy release.

Creating more brown fat allows the body to keep more energy reserves for immediate use rather than long-term storage. The more rapid cycling of fat storage means the body is less inclined to build up fat reserves. As such, cold plunges can be a potential weight loss or control method and positively impact blood sugar levels.

The Sauna to Cold Transition

While it might seem that saunas and cold plunges work in opposite directions, combining them creates an effect greater than the sum of its parts. The long-term benefits include:

Improved circulation
Mental well-being

The body naturally doesn’t want to be in rapidly changing environments. Too much heat or cold shock can have detrimental effects or not trigger the appropriate metabolic response, making part of the process futile.

Start Slow

If you’re new to contrast therapy, taking things slow and steady is usually best. Start with less severe temperature fluctuations. Turn down the heat on the sauna to a lower temperature and skip the ice in the bath altogether, using only cold tap water.

While you can usually work out in a sauna, reducing the strain on your body and rest might be better to avoid compounding your fatigue too much. You can rest for a minute or two between each part of the contrast therapy session to let your body start acclimating to the ambient temperature.

Start Gradual

If you’re not used to a cold plunge, stepping right into icy water after a sauna can cause you to breathe more rapidly or experience harsher cold shock. When starting, it might be best to avoid plunging your head into the water. The rapid temperature change can instinctively cause you to take a breath, which can be deadly if your head is submerged.

Sauna Cold Plunge Routine Timing

Regardless of the method you choose for alternating saunas and cold plunges, it’s best not to overdo either.

Research has suggested that the optimal time to spend in a cold plunge is 11 minutes weekly. Note that this is a weekly limit. When spread around 3-4 sessions, each session should have no more than 4 minutes of cold plunging.

Start Short

If you’re a beginner, keep the plunges closer to 15-second sessions, then move into 30-second sessions until you feel you can last longer. Avoid spending more than 2 minutes in an ice bath at once. The National Center for Cold Water Safety points out that spending even a minute in cold water can be deadly due to losing breathing control.

As such, if you opt for longer sessions, do not submerge your head. There’s also a diminishing return on the time spent in a sauna. Going for 15 minutes in a sauna at a time with multiple cycles should be enough to trigger your body’s heat response and fully benefit from the upcoming short plunge.

Minimize Breaks

You can spend 10 minutes in the sauna per cycle if you're just starting. It also helps to minimize the time between the sauna and a cold plunge. While it might take time for the body to get used to the shock and require a short break, immediately going from one extreme to the other provides the most long-term benefits.

Muscle Recovery and Soreness

Saunas help relax muscles and reduce fatigue, and a sauna after deep tissue massage can remove some of the soreness. A cold plunge:

Curbs muscle fatigue
Removes pain associated with muscle strain

With contrast therapy, these benefits provide the ultimate muscle relief method. The sauna helps by improving:

Blood flow
General heart health

Norepinephrine Spike

A cold plunge takes things to a new level. It causes a spike in norepinephrine, a powerful hormone that:

Promotes alertness
Creates an anti-inflammatory response
Constricts the blood vessels

It’s also been connected with converting white fat to brown fat.

Muscle Recovery

Since the sauna doesn’t create this response, including a cold plunge in your therapy can greatly accelerate muscle recovery after exercises or particularly strenuous activity and sometimes help repair muscle damage.

The sudden cold also causes a rush of adrenaline and noradrenaline, spiking alertness levels. As an additional benefit, this makes you ache less, allowing the sauna to work magic to relieve muscle soreness.

Wellness and Overall Health

The combined heat and cold can have a long-term effect on your physical well-being and mental health. The release of endorphins during a sauna session followed by norepinephrine and adrenaline in a cold plunge can:

Relieve stress
Regulate your nervous system

Emotional Balance

The sauna's calming environment can help you meditate, while the increased alertness from a cold plunge can wake you up. Together, contrast therapy creates a balancing act on your emotional state, allowing you to process your emotions and thoughts through a new lens. Doing it early in the day also creates an energy boost that tapers off naturally and allows you to sleep better.

Both therapy options have also been suggested to improve your immune response in different ways. By utilizing them in quick succession, you can reap the benefits of contrast therapy to create a more holistic healing experience.

Reminders for Your Post-Sauna Routine

Maximizing the benefits of your sauna and cold plunge routine involves more than alternating between hot and cold temperatures. Here are some tips to enhance your experience:

Stay hydrated by drinking water before, during, and after your sessions.
Relax and meditate in the sauna to reduce stress and promote mental clarity.
Gradually acclimate to the cold by starting with lukewarm water and reducing the temperature over time.
Listen to your body and adjust durations based on personal comfort and health conditions.

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GoPolar is an app that tracks and enhances your cold plunge and sauna sessions. With GoPolar, you can:

Track your cold plunge
Shower
Sauna sessions

After your plunge or sauna session, you can review your heart rate during a session, see trends in the app with Apple Health data, and track your scores in our leaderboard/community.

With our app, you can also find the best spots to cold plunge in your area! Download our cold plunge app for free today to level up your cold plunge and sauna sessions.