Russian sauna. Instructions for use. Part 2

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Part two

Removing toxins from the body

From the point of view of the maximum removal of various toxins from the body in the bath, the most effective method is described by "Professor AP Stoleshnikov." It consists in the repeated repetition of the cycles of the park in the steam room and cooling with cold water. The physiological meaning of this process is that during parka, the capillaries of the periphery open up, increasing blood flow and cleansing the surface layer of the skin. At the same time, the blood in them is warmed up. On sharp cooling with cold or even ice water, on the contrary, a sharp closure of the capillaries occurs. At the same time, this closure occurs so quickly that the blood in them does not have time to completely cool down and is squeezed out, as if squeezing a sponge, deep into the body, warming it up.

Each subsequent cycle of heating and rapid cooling increases the depth of the body's warming up. At the same time, with the capillaries, which are not only in the surface layer of the skin, but also permeate all internal tissues and muscles, when heated, the same process occurs as on the surface. They expand, thereby increasing blood flow, which helps to cleanse them and remove accumulated toxins from deeper levels.

The heating of the inner layers, which is achieved by repeating the cycle of heating - sharp cooling, activates the work of the sebaceous glands, since the fat simply begins to melt and become more fluid. And together with fat, as I said earlier, fat-soluble toxins, which the body deposited in the subcutaneous fat layer, are excreted. To obtain a good cleansing effect, one cycle of parka and douche is not enough. To feel the difference, you need to do at least three cycles. “Prof. Stoleshnikov in his article says that he himself does five cycles, although more is possible. It all depends on your mood and well-being.

Since my friends and I tested this technique on ourselves, for the first time, as recommended, we did exactly five park-cooling cycles. It happened in winter, so cold water and snow outside near the bathhouse were used for cooling. We have been steaming in the bath regularly for many years, but the difference after applying this technique was very noticeable, especially the morning after the bath. Such a feeling of lightness, even weightlessness, which was in the morning, I have never felt before.

In order for you to do everything as it should, and also so that you do not harm yourself during this process, it is necessary to explain in more detail some of the important technological and physiological aspects of this procedure.

The first important point is a properly prepared environment in the bath, that is, the optimum temperature with optimum humidity. Moreover, it is the correct humidity that is one of the main conditions, which is not so easy to achieve as it seems at first glance.

What happens with the so-called "dry steam"? The temperature in such a "sauna", or rather an electric dryer, may well be 120 degrees and higher. But due to the very low humidity, you will be able to tolerate this high temperature quite easily. First, because at low air humidity, its thermal conductivity is very low. In fact, you will heat up from the heat radiation that comes from the heated walls of the room and the electric fireplace itself or the stove with stones, and not from the heated dry air. And secondly, in dry air, the sweat released by the body will immediately evaporate, intensively cooling the body. As a result, being in such a "dry sauna" your skin can be practically dry for a long time. From the point of view of cleansing the body, this is precisely the main disadvantage of "dry steam", since it only seems to you that you are not sweating. In fact, the release of sweat occurs, only it immediately evaporates. And since our sweat, as we already know, contains not only water, but also many different salts and toxins, then during evaporation, an insoluble precipitate is formed, similar to the scale that forms in an ordinary kettle in which we boil water. Moreover, a lot of this scale is formed, since sweat contains a lot of various impurities, but unlike a kettle, where scale settles on the walls, in the case of visiting a "dry sauna", all this scale, consisting of salts and toxins, settles on the surface of our skin, including clogging her pores, through which, among other things, sweat is released.

Thus, if our task is to remove as many toxins from the body as possible, then the "dry sauna" is the worst suited for this. And since some of the toxins and salts are removed to the surface of the skin, where it dries up, after visiting such a "dry sauna", you should thoroughly wash your body in order to wash them off.

The other extreme is the "Turkish bath" or "Roman baths", where the humidity is very high, almost 100% at a relatively low temperature. The fact that the temperature is kept there is very simple to explain. With so much humidity, you simply cannot stay there at higher temperatures. But from the point of view of removing toxins from the body, this environment also has its drawbacks.

Firstly, when you enter such a room with very high humidity, then you immediately become covered with abundant "sweat", which very quickly begins to flow down you in streams. But in fact, this is not at all the sweat that your body excreted. If you take a large cobblestone in your hands and enter this room with it, the stone will also “sweat”, since water droplets will appear on it. Only this is not sweat, since stones cannot sweat, but condensation that falls out of very humid air on any cold surface. In other words, when you enter the "Turkish bath" from a cold room, where it is very humid and moderately warm, your still cold body, like that cobblestone, is abundantly covered not with sweat, but with condensation. To be convinced of this, it is enough to taste this "sweat". The sweat that is secreted by the body tastes noticeably salty-bitter, but the condensate either does not have this taste at all, or it is very weakly expressed. And since your skin has become moist and the cooling process has begun, then the body does not make sense to excrete its own sweat, so its own sweating process is inhibited.

Secondly, the lower temperature in the "Turkish bath" slows down the heating process, and hence the opening of the capillaries, which also slows down the process of elimination of toxins from the body described above.

As a result, in order to achieve the maximum effect for cleansing the body, you need something between a "dry sauna" with low humidity and high temperature, and a "Turkish bath" with high humidity and medium temperature, that is, we get a classic Russian bath, where the humidity should be so that the body does not dry out, but there is also no very intense condensation of water from the moist air on the skin, and the temperature is high enough to ensure effective heating, but not so strong that there is enough time in the steam room for steaming and warming up.

As for the temperature, based on personal experience, this is about 90 degrees, plus or minus 5 degrees, that is, from 85 to 95. In this case, it is necessary to take into account the design features of the bath, that is, how it keeps the temperature, how big the stove that serves heat accumulator, etc. That is, it is possible that in some saunas, before starting, they will need to be heated a little more, if they keep the temperature worse and cool down quickly.

With humidity it is already a little more difficult, since creating the correct humidity in a Russian bath is already a kind of art that comes only with experience. Moreover, each bath has its own character, which must be studied, since each bath has some design features. Like people, there are no identical baths, even if they are built according to the same project, although there are similar ones.

General guidelines for determining the optimum moisture content are as follows. If you go into a steam room and your skin stays dry for a long time, then the humidity is too low. If, upon entering the steam room, abundant drops immediately appeared on the skin, then it is not sweat, but condensation from humid air, therefore the humidity in the steam room is too high.

If you cannot stay in the steam room long enough to properly steam when your capillaries open, as evidenced by a pronounced reddening of the skin, then either the humidity is too high or the temperature is too high. Moreover, if there is no abundant release of condensate in large drops, then the temperature is too high.

In the correct Russian bath, when you enter the steam room, there should be a lower humidity than necessary. If you have just heated the bath, then there should be no moisture there. But even if you just took a steam bath and went out, the humidity in the steam room should drop by the next call, as moisture from the air will gradually condense on the walls. In a proper Russian bath, walls should always be made of wood, and wood has the ability to absorb moisture that forms on its surface. It is for this reason that the wooden walls in the steam room should not be varnished or with any kind of moisture-proof or water-repellent composition, as this will disrupt the natural mechanism for regulating humidity in the steam room. By supplying steam, you increase the humidity; when you stop supplying steam, the wooden walls gradually absorb moisture and lower the humidity. If the walls in your steam room do not absorb the moisture condensing on them, then the total humidity in the steam room will gradually rise higher and higher, since the water condensed on the walls will evaporate back again.

But wood cannot absorb moisture indefinitely, in addition, high humidity has a bad effect on the durability of the tree. Therefore, in order for your Russian bath to serve you longer and work correctly, you need to let it dry after use and get rid of excess moisture. To do this, firstly, it is necessary to ventilate it, and secondly, after use, it can be additionally flooded and heated, while leaving the doors and / or ventilation holes open. In general, proper ventilation both in the bathhouse as a whole and in the steam room is very important, which I will dwell on in more detail below. In the meantime, let's go back to the steam room.

Give steam in the steam room to obtain the desired humidity, carefully, in small portions. There is no point in splashing a large bucket of water on the stones, and then jumping out of the steam room after two minutes, without really warming up, simply because you can no longer stand it due to too high humidity. The point of a proper Russian bath is not at all to warm it up as hot as possible, and then try to sit there as long as possible. The main thing in a Russian bath is to start an effective process of cleansing the body, and this does not require either too high temperature or humidity, or too long incubation in the steam room. This requires the alternation of the process of opening the capillaries and the release of sweat with the process of sudden cooling by pouring cold water or diving into an ice hole or wiping it off with snow in winter.

Here we come to the second important point related to the physiological processes that occur in our body during the cyclical alternation of steaming and cooling the body, ignorance or ignorance of which can lead to very negative consequences, up to death.

To begin with, for the body, getting into a very hot or very cold environment is an extreme situation, to which it reacts by switching to an extreme mode of operation in order to ensure survival. And this is not only the expansion of the capillaries of the peripheral circulatory system described above. This also includes strengthening the work of the heart, increasing breathing, and releasing adrenaline into the blood to support these processes. This also causes a general strengthening of the metabolic process, since any intensification of processes in the body always requires additional energy. But with the cyclical repetition of heating and cooling the body, we repeatedly intensify this process, loading all body systems even more, that is, we create a superextremal situation for it. And if at the same time you do not carefully control your well-being, then instead of benefit from the bath, we can get harm.

When we steam in a steam room, our blood vessels expand and blood flow increases. The heart begins to work more actively to provide this strengthening. But then we left the steam room and doused ourselves with cold water or even jumped into an ice hole. At the same time, we will have not only a sharp compression of the capillaries, because the heart has dispersed the blood, switched to a more intensive mode of operation, and this process cannot be stopped by the body as abruptly. Capillaries receive blood flow from the major arteries. If they shrink, then the blood has nowhere to go further and the pressure in the arteries rises sharply, which means that the load on the heart, which is still pumping blood in an enhanced mode, also increases sharply. Therefore, if you have problems with the heart or blood vessels, there is a possibility of a heart attack or stroke, the formation of blood clots or the separation and blockage of blood vessels (for example, after surgery), then such extreme loads, and therefore the procedure for alternating parks and cooling, are contraindicated for you. This does not mean that you should not use the bath at all, but you need a different regime that does not create extreme stress on the heart and circulatory system, which I will discuss below.

From personal experience, I can say that the alternation of heating and sharp cooling creates a very strong load on the body. When you first tried this technique, at the end of the fifth cycle, the feeling was as if you had run a three-kilometer cross at a good pace. Ringing in my ears and my heart was about to jump out of my chest. Therefore, when carrying out such procedures, as I said above, you must carefully monitor your condition. If you feel that something is wrong, you need to stop the procedure immediately. You don't have to try to prove anything to anyone or try to perform the procedure exactly five times. The bathhouse does not tolerate violence, we go to the bathhouse to enjoy the process, and not to go to the ambulance to the hospital. For the same reason, all these competitions do not make sense, who will heat it hotter, give in a little more steam, and then sit in the steam room longer. It is easy to harm yourself with such "competitions", but there are actually very few benefits from them for the body.

As a confirmation, the story of 2010, when the Russian “athlete” Vladimir Ladyzhensky died at a “competition” in a Finnish sauna. In this case, as in all “big sport”, there was a substitution of meaning. Physical activity is necessary for a person to maintain his body in a normal healthy state, but in “big sport” money and the creation of a show for the audience are paramount, again for the sake of money, and no one is interested in the health of athletes at all. Therefore, many of those who try to break into the "sport of great achievements" eventually become disabled or crippled, and some, like Vladimir Ladyzhensky, generally say goodbye to life.

But back to the bathhouse. When visiting a bathhouse, our task is not to get to a hospital or, God forbid, to a cemetery, but to improve health and cleanse the body of toxins, and for this everyone must learn to feel their condition and choose the right one for him. mode. We are all different, what is good for one may not work for another. Moreover, on different days your well-being and mood may be different, and this will also affect which regime you should choose at this particular time. Therefore, in the bath, you do not need to be guided by friends and acquaintances with whom you came to steam. If you feel that it is time for you to go out, then go out without waiting for everyone else to leave the steam room.

The same applies to cooling the body after the steam room, that is, dousing with cold water. Water for pouring does not have to be exactly icy, it can just be cool. You can choose the temperature that suits you the most. For example, for the first time, you can make the water a little warmer, and for the next cycles, lower the water temperature. Moreover, the further you go, the less discomfort you will feel from being doused with cold water.

If you still feel that dousing with a large volume of cold water gives you discomfort, your pressure rises sharply, or you fear for your cardiovascular system, then you can apply the method of gradual dousing, because the point is not at all to abruptly cool the entire organism at the same time. The point of the procedure is to cool the entire surface of the skin, which should cause compression of the capillaries of the peripheral circulatory system, but in order to achieve the desired effect, this does not have to be done everywhere at once. It is possible in parts. To do this, we do not pour a large bowl of water over ourselves, but take a ladle and begin to water ourselves in small portions so that ultimately cold water spills over the whole body. It usually takes me five to seven buckets to do this. The left and right arm, chest, left and right parts of the back, and if there was not enough water from the chest and back to douse the legs, then we also pour over the right and left legs separately. The advantage of this method is that the closure of the capillaries occurs gradually, which means that the load on the heart and circulatory system increases more smoothly.

Another important point is that you should not pour too much cold water on yourself, otherwise we will lose the heat that has gone into the body. This is especially important if we dive into an ice hole in winter. It is diving into an ice-hole that is the most extreme and strong way of cooling the body, which is completely immersed in ice water. Therefore, in order not to overcool and not to lose excess heat, the time spent in the hole should be minimal. They jumped, plunged headlong, jumped out and again into the steam room. If you are a fan of swimming in ice water, then it is better to separate these processes. Separately, winter swimming and swimming in the ice hole, and separately cleaning the body by a cyclic process of park and cooling.

But with snow rubbing, the situation is somewhat different. When you jump out into the street after the steam room in winter, then in fact you just don't even really feel the cold air, especially if the humidity outside is low. As I said above, the thermal conductivity of dry air is very low. And when you start wiping yourself with snow, it will be more like the process described above gradually pouring cold water over it. In fact, snow does not take away heat from the body as much as ice water, since snow is very porous, especially fresh, and there is a lot of air in it. Snowflakes that touch the skin will melt very quickly and the water contained in them will heat up, and then the cooling will noticeably decrease. And even if you completely "dive" into a snowdrift, when the maximum surface area of the body comes into contact with the snow, the cooling will still be less intense than when swimming in an ice hole or pouring a large amount of ice water. Based on personal experience, I can say that we managed to achieve the best effect from this procedure precisely when rubbing it with snow, because in this case, firstly, a gradual cooling of the body surface occurs only in the area that you are rubbing with snow at the moment, and then secondly, the cooling is exactly sharp, and precisely superficial. And by the third time that the snow is cold, the body generally ceases to feel. Also, it was precisely when rubbing with snow that it was easiest to achieve a state when, after returning to the steam room, the whole body begins to tingle slightly, when the capillaries of the surface layer begin to open again, which is one of the indicators that we were able to achieve the desired result.

Now for the headdress and shoes. When visiting the steam room, it is highly recommended to wear a hat on your head, which will protect it from excessive overheating. In fact, the head is the only organ on the surface of which, on the one hand, the described process hardly occurs, and on the other hand, it makes no sense from a physiological point of view. The fact is that just below the surface of the scalp there are strong bones of the skull, in which there are no capillaries. Therefore, there is no point in trying to heat it up and cool it down sharply. The brain is a special organ that works very differently than everything else in the body. And this is probably the only organ where toxins do not accumulate, so there is no point in trying to remove them from there with the help of a bath. On the other hand, overheating is extremely contraindicated in the head, or rather the brain inside it. Putting on a hat when visiting the steam room, we thereby protect the head from heating up too quickly, and the brain from overheating.

In the bathhouse itself, neither in the washing department, nor in the steam room, we do not need any shoes, unless it is a public bath. But when you run out into the street in winter, then in order to prevent hypothermia of the feet, the use of slates or any slippers is highly desirable, especially if you decide to run to the river in an ice hole, which is at some distance from the bath. These are, of course, only recommendations, so if you are well trained or have been practicing walking barefoot in the snow and swimming in an ice hole for a long time, then you can continue to do as you are used to. For everyone else, I recommend just trying both options, comparing the sensations and choosing the one that you like best. But if your yard or paths near the bathhouse are lined with stone or tiles, then the use of shoes when walking on them in winter is highly desirable, since jumping out of the steam room heated up you may not even notice how hypothermia of the body will occur through the feet. The trick here is that there are no heat receptors inside the body, they are only on the surface of the skin, which, in general, is logical. When you walk barefoot on cold rocks or ice, blood flow increases to compensate for the cooling. In this case, cold blood from the feet almost immediately collects into the veins and goes into the body. As a result, we get a situation when our upper layers of the body were warmed up in the steam room, and cold blood began to flow into the body from the intensely cooling feet, which can lead to various negative consequences.

It is also interesting that while you are warmed up, the cooled blood from the surface of the skin cannot enter the body, since it will inevitably have to pass through the capillaries through the heated internal areas, where it will be heated again, and only then it will collect into the veins and enter the body.