In search of places other than bars to connect with people, Susie Whitlock visited a Minneapolis sauna with an old high school friend.
“She said she’d been doing a ‘fire and ice’ activity; I was like, ‘I’ll try that,’” Whitlock recalls. “But what I ended up loving more than the heat was the cold water. It is calming in a way few self-care activities are.”
Some researchers theorize that the physiological stress induced by temperature changes can enhance our capacity to manage mental and emotional challenges. Hence that calming response — which can be better than a gin and tonic.
What Whitlock once sought as a social activity quickly turned into a routine personal practice. Now she seeks out hotels with saunas whenever she travels. When she’s home, she visits a local sauna and cold plunge as often as she can.
Public baths were a centerpiece of many ancient societies, so Whitlock is far from the first to seek out community at the local sauna. The social connection these sites provide is just one of many ways modern-day contrast bathing can support mental health.
“You’re sitting in a room with strangers and chatting, which is a muscle many people don’t get to flex very often anymore,” Whitlock says. The close quarters of public saunas encourage face-to-face dialogue, an increasing rarity in our digitally mediated world.
In fact, the challenges of heat and cold therapies — physical, mental, even social — are the whole point. That good stress is how these therapies make us stronger.
Good vs. Bad Stress
The benefits of thermal bathing are familiar to multiple cultures.
For centuries, people in Japan have bathed in hot springs called onsen to loosen muscles, improve healing, and promote overall relaxation. The traditional Shinto practice of misogi is a cold-water ritual meant to cleanse the mind and spirit. Many North American Indigenous cultures use sweat lodges for physical and spiritual purification.
Saunas have been a central part of Finnish culture for more than 2,000 years, typically pairing time in a hot sauna (between 150 and 195 degrees F) with a plunge into an icy shower or a hole cut into a frozen lake. The Turkish hammam ritual also involves time in heated rooms and steam baths followed by a cold-water rinse.
Thermal therapies like these are forms of eustress. This term was coined in the 1970s by endocrinologist Hans Selye, MD, PhD, to describe how some types of stress can be positive, enhancing motivation, focus, and performance. Exercise and intermittent fasting are other examples.
Unlike distress, which is typically chronic and overwhelming, eustress is short-term and challenging but manageable. It often occurs in those moments when you exercise with vigor or engage in other exciting challenges — like jumping into an ice-cold lake.
The nervous system initially responds the same way to all forms of stress. It’s the duration and frequency of stressful events that determine their overall health effects.
“During a period of short-term stress, cortisol will rise and then go back to baseline,” says integrative epidemiologist Chris D’Adamo, PhD. “[Then] you may have some greater adaptive capacity.”
Intermittent stressors trigger hormesis — a process during which moderate, short-term doses of stress activate the protective mechanisms in the body. These help turn on the genes involved in cellular repair and stress tolerance. This process can improve adaptability and resilience by helping the brain and body manage stress more effectively over time. If the stress becomes chronic, however, the salutary effects are lost.
“If you have prolonged stress, cortisol could rise and rise and rise, and ultimately the body’s stress-response system may become dysregulated,” explains D’Adamo. “You’ll get to a point where you can no longer produce adequate cortisol, potentially leading to a constant inflammatory state and other issues.”
Yet when we build resilience with deliberate, short-term exposures to stressors, we can better cope with long-term difficult conditions. Therein lies the beauty of thermal-stress techniques.
The Benefits of Heat Therapy
Hot springs, saunas, hammams, and other heat therapies boast a range of benefits for body and mind. These are just a few.
Physical Health
Exposing your body to intense heat can initiate a host of adaptive responses. An increased heart rate triggers greater blood flow to the skin and helps you cool off, and sweat can help the body excrete small amounts of heavy metals, pollutants, and other toxins.
The body responds to a higher core temperature by producing heat-shock proteins, which enhance your ability to manage stress and build resilience.
“Heat-shock proteins play a crucial role in cellular repair by addressing misfolded proteins caused by mutations in gene sequencing, translation errors, or environmental changes,” D’Adamo explains. Scientists are examining how misfolded proteins contribute to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurodegenerative diseases.
A Finnish cohort study linked frequent, consistent sauna use with a 50 percent reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease mortality and a 40 percent reduction in all-cause mortality compared with less frequent use. Some researchers argue the benefits may stem from improved vascular function, reduced blood pressure, and better heart-rate variability, all of which reduce strain on the cardiovascular system.
Another Finnish study found that, compared with those who used a sauna once a week, individuals who used saunas two or three times weekly lowered their stroke risk by 14 percent. Those who visited four to seven times per week saw a 61 percent reduction.
Heat exposure can improve cellular function in the lining of the blood vessels and decrease blood pressure, two major risk factors for stroke.
Heat therapy can even produce some of the same effects as exercise, a potential game-changer for people with mobility issues.
Environmental physiologist Christopher Minson, PhD, codirector of the Exercise and Environmental Physiology Labs at the University of Oregon, studies the effects of heat therapy on vascular health in sedentary individuals.
“The increase in body temperature, heart rate, and increased blood flow caused by heat therapy mimics the physiological effects of moderate exercise, such as improved blood flow and stress tolerance,” he explains.
Mental Health
Heat therapy can also have a powerful effect on depressive disorders. “Heat therapies boost neurotransmitter levels and have shown significant benefits for people with depression,” Minson says.
These are vividly illustrated by a 2024 study published in the International Journal of Hyperthermia. Researchers used heat beds to induce “whole-body hyperthermia” (high body temperature) in study subjects with major depressive disorder. The treatments were paired with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a therapeutic approach that cultivates awareness of negative thinking (learn more about this gold standard in psychotherapy here).
Twelve participants completed the eight-week study; they had an average symptom reduction of 15.8 points in the Beck Depression Inventory. (A three-point reduction is clinically significant.) Eleven of them no longer met the criteria for major depressive disorder.
“We observed reductions in depressive symptoms that were much higher than we would have expected from receiving CBT without heat treatment,” notes lead study author Ashley Mason, PhD, in a news release.
Researchers are unsure of the exact mechanism at work, but some speculate that heat’s effect on the production of the mood-enhancing neurotransmitters serotonin and norepinephrine may be a factor. Additionally, once the body cools down from heat exposure, it remains cooler longer. This may benefit people with depression, whose baseline body temperatures tend to be higher.
Optimize Your Heat Exposure
If you’re new to heat therapy, start with shorter sessions — a few minutes in the sauna at most — and lower temperatures. Infrared saunas tend to be cooler, so they’re a good place to begin. Increase time and temperature as your body adapts.
Use regularly. There are competing viewpoints about what frequency, duration, and temperature provide maximum benefits. Both Minson and D’Adamo say the sweet spot seems to be about three to five sessions per week, 15 to 20 minutes at a time, in temperatures around 170 degrees F. Infrared saunas typically heat to about 120–150 degrees F, so you can stay in one for up to 40 minutes.
Hydrate. During heat therapy sessions, drink water like it’s your job. Hydrating before, during, and after helps maintain electrolyte balance and prevent dehydration.
Recover. After a heat session, allow ample time for your body to cool down. Wait until you’ve stopped sweating to get dressed. Follow with rest and proper nutrition to help maximize your body’s adaptation and repair.
Use caution. If you’re pregnant, have cardiovascular issues, or tend toward low blood pressure, consult a healthcare provider before beginning heat therapy. If you experience dizziness or intense fatigue during a session, seek cooler temperatures immediately.
If you know you’re sensitive to heat or prone to fainting, consider using an infrared sauna because they run slightly cooler. D’Adamo recommends sitting in the middle of an infrared sauna, away from heating elements, to avoid any potential exposure to electromagnetic fields.
The Benefits of Cold Therapy
If the idea of regular icy morning showers leaves you cold, you’re not alone. Fortunately, the upsides of cold-water immersion begin with a single exposure.
Physical Health
Cold has a dramatic effect on the body: Step into a cold shower or jump into an icy lake, and you’ll likely feel your heart race and your lungs gasp for air. Your blood vessels constrict (a process called vasoconstriction), and you may start shivering.
Your newly alert brain activates cold-shock proteins, which bind to nucleic acids and other proteins to help your body adapt to the cold. The molecules regulate various cellular processes, including metabolism and the stress response.
Specifically, cold shock stimulates the release of norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter that plays a key role in your body’s fight-or-flight stress response. Norepinephrine also functions as a hormone, and it signals brown adipose tissue (BAT), or brown fat, to burn calories and produce heat to regulate body temperature in cold environments.
BAT is rich in mitochondria, which are responsible for its brown color. (Mitochondria are essential to energy, focus, vitality, and metabolism. And yet most of us have no idea how our mitochondria work. Learn how to tune up your body’s quadrillions of “energy factories” at “The Care and Feeding of Your Mitochondria.”) Brown fat generates heat by burning calories through a process called nonshivering thermogenesis, which involves breaking down glucose and fat molecules.
Unlike white fat, which stores energy, brown fat’s primary function is to maintain body temperature by burning energy. Researchers have been studying BAT’s potential to improve glucose metabolism and insulin sensitivity.
A growing body of research suggests cold exposure may be one way to increase the amount of brown fat your body produces.
Mental Health
Cold-water therapy may ease depression. To understand how this works, it helps to know what happens in the body during depressive cycles, says Claudia Skowron, MS, LCPC, CADC, a mental healthcare provider who recommends cold-water immersion to her patients.
“When someone is actively depressed, they may have low energy levels, low levels of serotonin or dopamine in the brain, high cortisol levels, and low metabolic functioning,” she explains.
Immersion in cold water increases endorphins, which can elevate energy and improve mood. “Endorphins help lower cortisol, which plays a significant role in managing depressive symptoms,” Skowron says.
Cold-water immersion can also spike dopamine, the so-called feel-good neurotransmitter. “Cold-water exposure has been remarkably helpful for clients battling substance use disorder,” she notes. “Its ability to boost dopamine helps manage cravings and impulsivity, making it a valuable tool in addiction recovery programs.”
There’s not enough research to prove indisputably that cold-water immersion improves mental health, Minson says. But one small study he conducted showed a decline in participants’ cortisol levels three hours after spending 15 minutes in cold water. Their moods got better, too.
He believes at least some of the mental health benefits of cold therapy come from the sense of accomplishment it offers, which can create a positive upward spiral.
Skowron adds that “submerging yourself in cold water is always unpleasant, but doing so regularly builds mental resilience. It teaches us that we can push through discomfort, which translates into being better equipped to handle stressful situations in life.” (For more on the benefits of cold conditioning, visit “The Health Benefits of Cold Conditioning.”)
Optimize Your Cold Exposure
Research has shown that the therapeutic benefits of cold-water immersion start with a single exposure. This is how to build a healthy tolerance for cold.
Take care. If you have cardiovascular issues or Raynaud’s phenomenon, check with your healthcare provider before you begin. Cold exposure is likely to exacerbate Raynaud’s symptoms. When cold plunging outdoors, go with a friend or a group for safety.
Keep it brief. Begin with a 10-second cold shower or plunge and work up to one to two minutes in water temperatures around 50 degrees F. Extend the time as your body adapts.
Breathe deep. When you first submerge yourself in cold water, your body’s shock response is activated. Practicing controlled-breathing techniques can help.
“Breathwork plays a critical part in cold-water therapy,” Skowron says. “Learning how to control breathing, such as with the Wim Hof Method (learn more about this breathing technique here), reduces the panic in the body and subsequently increases alpha brain waves, which aid in calmness and relaxation.”
Recover. Allow ample time for your body to warm up and repair. If you’re doing plunges outside in cold weather, be sure to dry off and get dressed immediately afterward. And take a moment to relish your sense of accomplishment.
This article originally appeared as “Say Yes to Thermal Stress” in the May/June 2025 issue of Experience Life.
The post The Health Benefits of Thermal Stress appeared first on Experience Life.
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