Sauna: the sweat bath

My new gym, at the basement of my current office building, has a sauna. It's nice and calm to sit there for a few minutes after a brief workout, so I thought I should read up on it's benefits, and feel even better about myself. What if the sauna is more beneficial than the dreaded treadmill? That's an easy way out right there!

Given my short attention span, I didn't read too much - just enough to know a little bit about it. If you want, you can start from the article right here. Follow the links to Sweat, a wonderful site with way too much detail about saunas than I ever saw or cared about. Most of the information here is quoted from Sweat.

In brief, a short 15 minute sauna time will cleanse your body of toxins that takes the kidney 24 hours (duh!), lower your blood pressure by dialating the blood vessels and letting it flow easily, open up all the pores that get clogged by anti-perspirants and pollution, cleanse the skin and keep it soft, and generally keep all your internal organs ship-shape.

If you trust the Finnish way, douse yourself in cold water right after the sauna.

Last note: as mentioned here, the correct pronunciation is sow-na, not saw-na.