A lot of the benefit you get out of exercising comes from simply sweating. By working your body to exertion and increasing your heart rate, your body will start to produce sweat as it tries to cool you down. Sweating has all sorts of benefits, and when you start to sweat, you know you’re really making a difference as you work out.
Sauna suits try to replicate the experience of sweating by making your body sweat more. Of course, if you’re working out or simply wearing the suit, you will sweat a lot more than you normally would. Is that good for you? Should you really be wearing a sauna suit while exercising?
Let’s look at some of the benefits to wearing a sauna suit and why you may want to think about getting one if you don’t have one already. You can find one for a decent price and enjoy the benefits it offers, and we’ll discuss here what many of those benefits are and why so many people swear by sauna suits as a way to improve their exercise routines.
Oxygen Volume Increase
Study performed by researchers at the Western State Colorado University showed that wearing a sauna suit while exercising can improve the body’s ability to generate volumes of oxygen. The study’s participants wore a sauna suit 45 minutes a day, five days a week while exercising. Researchers noticed a few different kinds of health improvements in those who are wearing the sauna suits as opposed to those who did not. One of those improvements was in the area of VO2 max, which measures the amount of oxygen or volume of oxygen that a person can use while they exercise. This is one of those indicators that determine how aerobically fit a person is.
In their study, the people who wore a sauna suit while exercising experienced an increase of 11.7% in maximum oxygen volume. The people who didn’t wear a sauna suit while exercising only saw a 7.3% increase over the same period of time while exercising the same amount.
This may not seem like a lot, as this comes down to a difference of a little over 4%. But what it means is that you can exercise for longer and be more effective when you exercise if you are training with the sauna suit.
Burn More Fat
The VO2 max increase is probably the most surprising change researchers noted with the use of the sauna suit, but it wasn’t the only one. There are other benefits of wearing a sauna suit while exercising that they discovered, including increased fat burning.
This is one of the very reasons why people will wear sauna suits while exercising. They want to burn more fat, tone their body, and get a healthier appearance, and the sauna suit helps them to do that. The more you exercise, the more you sweat, and the more fat you burn, particularly while wearing the sauna suit. It helps to enhance most of what you’re trying to do while you exercise.
Also, wearing suit boosts the number of calories burned not just while exercising but also while in a state of rest. That’s quite an achievement in itself, as burning calories after a workout while resting is an important way to boost your gains over time. It means that you don’t have to work as hard to see the kind of results you’re wanting.
Blood Sugar Control
We’re not done talking about the benefits. There’s plenty more talk about, and one of those that gets overlooked sometimes is the improvement in blood sugar levels. This was another discovery from the Western State Colorado University study. It showed that those who wore the sauna suit while exercising had better blood sugar levels, specifically lower blood sugar levels. That means their blood sugar was at a safer level, and they didn’t have to watch so carefully what they’re eating and how much sugar they were consuming.
This is good news for diabetics who are struggling to control their blood sugar levels. By wearing the sauna suit, they can improve the effectiveness of exercise and help get their blood sugar levels under control all the same time.
It Might Help Immunity
Wearing the sauna suit can improve your body’s ability to fight off and prevent disease, according to one study conducted in 2012. This study looked at heat stress, which is known to be a trigger for cell-repairing proteins. As your body experiences heat stress, these proteins are released. Those proteins can regenerate or repair cells, and they provide maintenance for cells that aren’t very strong. They can aid your immune system and help to keep your body from getting sick. Sickness many times will get into our body through weak cells and cells that are damaged. Perhaps those cells that are affected by extreme cold are the ones that are more susceptible to disease and infection. This is why we get colds during the winter time.
Heat stress, which is definitely boosted by wearing a sauna suit when exercising, can help to build up the weaker cells. So, by increasing your body’s heat levels as you exercise, you can help stave off infection and disease that make your body less likely to get sick. Your immunity may be stronger because you’re wearing the sauna suit when you work out. The thermal stress your body experiences can definitely benefit your immune system.
Helps with the Recovery Period
After you do a strenuous workout, your body needs time to recover. If you don’t give your body time to recuperate, you can experience a lot of muscle soreness and even tearing. Without proper recovery time and without using proper recovery methods, your body can take longer to repair itself. You may struggle to get back into exercising the next day because your body is still trying to recuperate.
The sauna suit can help your body with this recovery process. It enhances the body’s ability to recover after a workout, which means less downtime and a stronger, faster recovery. That means you are less likely to experience muscle strain or muscle tearing, and you’re more likely to be able to get back into the next day’s exercise with less difficulty.
One of the ways the sauna suit does this is to the keep your body from building up a lot of lactic acid. The sauna suit provides heat therapy to your body, which staves off lactic acid buildup. That lactic acid can cause discomfort and soreness after a workout. So, the sauna suit is working to make your recovery period more effective.
Know the Disadvantages as Well
While there are lots of benefits to wearing a sauna suit while exercising, there are some negatives too. You want to know about these drawbacks so that you understand the risks involved with wearing this kind of suit when you work out.
There is a risk that your body will overheat. This is especially true of people who work themselves too hard, or those who are not were used to working out, as well as people with poor health. All of these people are at risk of overexertion and overheating their body.
The sauna suit exacerbates the risk of overheating, and you can suffer from heat stroke or another heat related injury by overdoing it. If you have any health issues, or you want to start exercising but aren’t used to exercising, it’s a good idea to consult with your doctor before you start a workout. You should also ask your doctor about wearing a sauna suit. This may be an adaptation to exercise that you need to ease into. You may just want to use it occasionally, like once or twice a week, rather than for every exercise session for the week.
This way, you can let your body adjust to wearing the sauna suit and not overdo it at the start. You can gauge your body’s reaction to wearing this suit and how it affects your workout sessions and your heat levels. From there, you can increase the amount of time you wear the sauna suit or decrease as necessary.
