Russian sauna. Instructions for use. Part 1

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

Unfortunately, most of these books and articles reproduce many of the myths prevailing around the bathhouse, which in fact are very far from reality. To understand how to use the Russian bath correctly, what benefits can be obtained from it when used correctly, and at the same time, what danger it poses if it is used incorrectly, it is necessary to understand the physiological processes that occur with the body while visiting the bath.

The most complete and detailed issue of physiology and therapeutic use of the bath is sanctified in the article of the author, who publishes his materials on the Internet under the pseudonym "Professor AP Stoleshnikov". But a somewhat chaotic style of presentation, as well as a very peculiar worldview of the author, complicate the perception of information and do not allow recommending his article to a wide audience. In addition, it contains some actual minor errors. Therefore, I decided on the basis of this article, as well as personal practical experience and the experience of my friends, with whom we tested these methods, to write my own article, which I bring to your attention.

The main types of baths

To begin with, it is necessary to give a classification of the various types of baths, which are the most common, with a description of their main features, since this is important for further understanding of the processes taking place in the bath.

1. "Turkish bath" or "hammam", which is actually not Turkish, but Byzantine, since the Turks got acquainted with a similar bath during the capture of Constantinople, which was once the capital of the Byzantine Empire. She is also "Roman terms". This type of bath is characterized by a very high, almost 100% humidity at a relatively low temperature of 35 to 60 degrees Celsius. The classic "Turkish bath" has a large room, in which sometimes there is a swimming pool in the center, with stone shelves or benches. The room itself and the shelves / benches are heated by heated steam, which is supplied through internal channels under the floor and inside the walls. It is steam heating that explains the very high humidity in this type of bath. At the same time, a feature of the ancient Byzantine and Roman baths was that some of them were built on natural thermal springs, that is, they used hot water and steam that came from the bowels of the Earth.

2. "Russian bath", the most common in our country. I hope that the general structure of the Russian bath is well known to most of the readers. The most common arrangement now includes a dressing room, where they undress and leave their clothes, a washing department and a steam room. The washing department and steam room are heated by an oven located inside these rooms. At the same time, special wooden shelves and a heater are made in the steam room, which is necessary to create steam and maintain the necessary humidity. In the washing compartment, there is usually a tank with hot water, which is heated from the oven, as well as containers with cold water.

The optimum temperature in a Russian bath is from 80 to 95 degrees Celsius with an average humidity.

3. "Sauna", which was originally distributed in Finland, from where it later spread throughout the world. A modern sauna differs from a Russian bath in that it has a very low humidity at a higher temperature, which in the sauna ranges from 90 to 120 degrees. Therefore, when talking about a sauna, the term "dry steam" is often used.

In fact, "dry steam" is a later variation of the sauna, which appeared relatively recently and became most widespread with the advent of the so-called "compact" or "home" saunas, which are small rooms with a shelf and a heating element, usually electric. which are not a complete sauna. Similar "saunas" cabins are often installed in luxury hotel rooms, where they are combined with an ordinary shower or bathroom. And since the creation of the necessary waterproofing is a separate problem, it is often prohibited in such saunas-cabins to use water and splash it on heating elements to create the necessary humidity.

If we talk about those baths that are actually used by the Finns, then they do not fundamentally differ from the Russian bath. It is also customary there to give in steam and to steam with brooms.

4. Another fairly well-known type of baths, which has begun to gain popularity in recent years, is the "Japanese bath", which in its structure is actually quite different from the Russian, Finnish or Roman. The general scheme of the Japanese baths is the same, but they differ depending on the number of people for whom they are designed. A home bath designed for washing a small amount, usually 1-2 people, is called "furako" and is a room where a washing area is located, usually in the form of a bench and a set of washing utensils, as well as a special wooden font with hot water. That is, unlike the European types of baths, in a Japanese bath everything is built around a hot water font, the temperature of which should be 45-50 degrees Celsius. This is the main part of furako. In this case, you can plunge into the hot tub only after the ablution procedure.

In addition to the small and domestic "furako" baths, there are also large public baths in Japan, called "sento", which are designed to serve a large number of people. There is a sento where more than 100 people can take procedures at the same time. At the same time, they are divided into male and female parts, have large changing rooms and large washing compartments, as well as huge bathtubs with hot water.

A Japanese bath can also contain "ofuro", special rectangular containers filled with sawdust and / or pebbles that are mixed with aromatic roots and herbs, moistened and heated to 60 degrees. When you immerse yourself in such a container, your body begins to sweat intensely, while the sweat is immediately absorbed by the sawdust.

The basis of the physiology of the body in the bath

In order to use any bath correctly, it is advisable to have an idea of the processes that occur in our body when we are in the bath, and how changes in certain environmental parameters, such as humidity or temperature, affect these processes.

Many of those who go to the bath know that the main thing in any bath is precisely the opportunity to steam, that is, to warm up the body with a high temperature, and not at all to wash off the dirt, since you can wash in the bathroom and under the shower, and in extreme case and just in a basin of water. The main thing in the bath is the steam room, and the whole main process in the bath is connected with the steam room.

When the human body begins to heat up, we begin to sweat to cool the body. This can happen during active physical or mental work, when there are active metabolic processes that release a lot of excess heat, which the body needs to remove into the environment. The second option, when the ambient temperature is higher than the body temperature, therefore, excess heat, and it is always formed in the body, there is simply nowhere to be removed. Water sweat, which the human body emits on the surface of the skin, absorbs a lot of heat during evaporation, which is one of the possibilities for the body to somehow lower its temperature in such conditions.

But our body can actively evaporate water, spending extra heat on it, not only from the surface of the skin, but also from the surface of the lungs. In many mammals covered with hair, and therefore do not have water sweat glands on the surface of the skin, intensive breathing is the only way to remove excess heat from the body. Moreover, the area of the lungs is actually several times larger than the area of human skin. The total area of the alveoli changes for honey by inhalation and exhalation from 40 sq. meters up to 120 sq. meters, while the area of the skin is only 1.5 to 2.3 square meters. meters. Therefore, when we are in a room with a high temperature, our breathing instinctively quickens, but most importantly, it becomes deeper, and in exhalation there is more water vapor.

By the way, this feature is used by many peoples who live in deserts, when in hot weather they wrap themselves in multi-layered robes just like we do in cold weather. Since the area of the skin is much less than the area of the lungs, additional thermal insulation reduces the heating of the body from the environment, and excess heat is removed from the body through breathing. In this case, another feature is used, that during breathing, despite the fact that the area of the lungs is larger than the area of the skin, the body loses much less water, since after evaporation during exhalation, part of the water vapor has time to condense again and return back to the body, while like water, which is released in the form of sweat on the surface of the skin, evaporates and is lost by the body irretrievably.

Two main ways of removing excess heat from the body are determined by two main modes of the park in the bath:

1. 1. Warming up at a high temperature for maximum perspiration and removal of as many toxins as possible through the skin. That is, in a sense, it is an "extreme" steam room on the top shelf, performed in a multiple heating-cooling cycle.
2. Long-term heating at medium temperatures, that is, a steam room on the bottom shelf, with intense and deep breathing, that is, active inhalation of the lungs, as well as the removal of excess moisture from the body through sweat and breathing, which is useful for sick kidneys, edema and other water retention in the body …

To understand the first process, you need to understand what is peripheral circulatory system and how it functions.

The heart is a pump that pumps blood into central blood vessels called "aortas", which gradually branch out and eventually end in a dense network of very thin peripheral blood vessels, also called "capillaries," that permeate all organs and tissues of the body, including the skin. It is known that despite the fact that the diameter of each of the peripheral vessels is very small, the total total cross-section of the outgoing vessels is always larger than the central one, from which they depart. Due to this, the flow rate and blood pressure decrease as the vessels divide.

In the above image, the peripheral circulatory system is presented in the form of a translucent "cloud" of densely intertwined thin threads that repeat the general shape of the body.

After the blood has exchanged oxygen and nutrients with the cells of the body, taking away carbon dioxide and toxins formed during the vital activity of cells, it again enters the second excretory part of the peripheral circulatory system, the thinnest vessels of which are gradually merged into the veins.

There are a lot of capillaries in the human body. The total length of the capillary bed in the human body, if connected to one another, is equal to the length of the three equators of the globe, that is, about 120 thousand kilometers.

Internal microcirculation inside organs and tissues of the body works synchronously with the external, visible microcirculation in the skin. This allows us to speak of the peripheral circulatory system (hereinafter simply "periphery" for brevity), as a single specific vascular organ of a person, the correct functioning of which is as important for the body as for all other organs, such as the heart, kidneys or liver.

When we find ourselves in an environment with a high temperature, in order to ensure the active secretion of sweat from the skin, the body needs to increase the supply of blood to the skin and sweat glands, since blood is the only source of all substances in the body, including water. This is achieved by expanding the diameter of the capillary vessels of the periphery, which is visually manifested in reddening of the skin. Redness of the skin is a result of the periphery expanding and a sharply increased blood volume begins to pass through it. The blood flow rate, according to Poisel's law, depends on the radius of the vessel to the 4th power! That is, if the diameter of our capillary increased by only 10%, then the blood flow rate increased by 1.5 times, and if by 2 times, that the share of capillaries is not such a focus, then already 16 times! In this case, the blood flow velocity directly determines the amount of blood that flows through the capillary per unit of time.

In other words, the expansion of the capillaries in the periphery of the skin leads to a significant increase in blood flow, which has a very significant physiological effect. So significant that the effect of a good steam room is comparable to the cleansing effect of "hemodialysis", that is, "artificial kidney", and even surpasses it, since in the steam room not only the release of water sweat is triggered, but the work of the sebaceous glands is also activated.

The fact is that the kidneys, like hemodialysis imitating their work, remove only water-soluble toxins from the body, while fat-soluble toxins also enter the body, which neither the kidneys nor hemodialysis can remove from the body. Fat-soluble toxins, and there are thousands of them, including gasoline vapors and food dyes, can be excreted from the body through the liver, which part of them tries to convert into water-soluble through the decomposition of fats, the other part is excreted by the liver with bile into the intestines, from where they are removed from the body together with feces. But there is a third group of fat-soluble toxins, especially synthetic ones, which did not previously exist in nature, with which the liver simply does not know what to do, and therefore cannot remove them from the body. As a result, the body has only one way to neutralize these fat-soluble toxins - to deposit them in the subcutaneous fatty tissue, which is also a dumping ground for dangerous fat-soluble poisons.

By the way, one important conclusion follows from this. The problem of obesity, which many people suffer today, especially in the "developed" countries, arises primarily not due to overeating, but due to the consumption of so-called "junk" food, primarily produced in various "Fast foods" which contains a large amount of fat-soluble toxins that the body simply cannot remove from the body, and therefore has to deposit them in the subcutaneous adipose tissue. That is, the treatment of obesity does not consist in limiting the amount of food, but in a fundamental change in both the diet and the quality of food, which should consist in returning to the use of natural products grown in natural conditions and prepared according to traditional recipes of the old cuisine.

But back to the steam room. When we get into the steam room, the periphery opens up and our body begins to sweat intensely. Since "sweat" is a joint product of sweat and sebaceous glands, we get a unique chance to remove from the body the most dangerous fat-soluble toxins and poisons deposited in the subcutaneous fatty tissue. Taking into account the current life with the presence of pollutants around the mass and the impossibility of reliably checking the quality of the products that we have to consume, it is advisable to provide the body with such a chance more often.