I sauna three or four days a week. I know it's good for me. I just can't prove it.
Nobody can, yet. Not the companies selling backyard saunas. Not the influencers selling the perfect protocol. Not the scientists either, and they will be the first to tell you.
That gap is why the Sauna Research Foundation exists. And this past September, it started what it is built to do.
Why the foundation is needed
The best evidence for the sauna comes from Finland. Researchers followed more than two thousand middle-aged men for about twenty years. Men who used a sauna four to seven times a week had a 40 to 60 percent lower risk of heart disease and death than men who went once.
That's a remarkable number. It's also an observational one. Finnish men who sauna every day may differ from those who don't in a dozen other ways.
Smaller heat therapy trials point in the same direction. Heat works the heart and blood vessels much like light exercise does. Other studies suggest benefits for blood sugar, sleep, and depression.
But most sauna studies enroll fewer than 40 people. In the most recent review of the field, 42 percent had no control group. Researchers don't share definitions of heat therapy or methods for measuring it. So nobody can tell you how hot, how long, or how often. Or what the cold plunge that follows does to your body and your mind.
Meanwhile, sauna culture is booming with backyard barrels, members' clubs, and social saunas on city waterfronts. The interest is growing fast, but it is outpacing the evidence for its health benefits.
So what started as an idea to run one more sauna study the field didn't need became the Sauna Research Foundation. It is the brainchild of my friend Glenn Auerbach and me, hatched on the sauna bench.
Glenn has spent years building sauna culture through SaunaTimes. I'm an entrepreneur who builds. My passion is creating things that ought to exist and don't. Together, we knew there was more to do with sauna. We want more people to engage with what we, and everyone else who saunas, know but cannot prove.
In 2025, two respected heat therapy researchers, Dr. Hans Hägglund of Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm and Dr. Earric Lee of the Montreal Heart Institute, joined the board of the Sauna Research Foundation. And the mission launched.
What happened in Oslo, Norway
This past September, the foundation convened the 1st International Heat Therapy Research Symposium at The Well, outside Oslo. The working group has 21 researchers from 14 institutions in nine countries. Fifteen of them came to Norway.
They spent two days on the least glamorous work in science. Designing a Delphi study that will produce working definitions for heat therapy research. A shared glossary. A checklist that tells researchers how to report how the study was conducted. And a ranked list of the biggest gaps in what we know and what the field should study next.
The Delphi study will now ask an outside panel of 30 to 40 researchers and clinicians to weigh in on the working group's statements. They will go round by round until 80 percent agree. Then the results get published. They become the foundation on which every future trial is built.
Dr. Lee, the foundation's lead scientist, called it the most useful thing anyone has done for heat therapy research in a decade. I agree.
The symposium was held on the eve of the International Sauna Congress (ISC), which happens every four years. That's where the foundation announced its mission to the world. Hundreds of sauna enthusiasts from around the world welcomed it as an important and meaningful step forward for sauna culture. NPR ran a story on it. And Glenn carried a recorder through the hallways of the ISC, and you can hear those conversations on his Sauna Talk podcast.
What's in it for me
I've spent my entire life engaged in health and wellness. Sometimes knowingly, often not. My drive for good health and wellbeing is innate. I never needed to be told to exercise. I enjoy eating clean, and I love being outdoors. In many ways, wellness has been a defining part of my life.
So much so that I wrote a book on it, Healthy Wealthy Longevity. In it, I describe how your health builds the scaffolding for the rest of your life. And I argue it's the only thing I know of where you can go all-in with no risk of loss. That's a big deal.
Growing up, sauna was something that happened in the basement or a men’s locker room. It was a hot, dark room with a sign listing 20 reasons I should not be there. That is how most people think of sauna. And that is wrong.
I was reintroduced to sauna about a decade ago, on the rooftop of a hotel, on a cold January night. That evening, I experienced the heat and the cold and felt renewed in a way I had not felt in years. Since then, sauna has become a steadfast part of my wellness routine.
Sauna is a gateway drug to wellness, because almost anyone can do it. Young or old. Fit or not, on a good day or a hard one. Sauna makes everything better.
More people need to know this. More people need to do it. They need to learn what the Finnish people have known for centuries. Being outdoors with family and friends in the sauna will heal your mind, body, and soul.
That is what is in it for me.
I know this to be true. I want science to document it. And I want others to know.
What I am not wrong about
More people in more saunas would make healthier people and a healthier society. According to the CDC, 90 percent of the $5.3 trillion America spends on health care each year goes to people with chronic and mental health conditions. A habit this simple that held off heart disease even a little would pay back for decades.
And the benefits may turn out far greater than anyone expects.
I'm supporting the science that could prove me wrong. But I bet I am not wrong. So I'll keep going in the sauna three or four days a week, no matter what. Everyone else deserves an answer built on evidence, not marketing.
Jon Sabes co-founded the Sauna Research Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and serves on its board. LongevityFP, the company he founded, sponsored the symposium.
NPR on the Oslo symposium: https://www.npr.org/2026/10/11/nx-s1-5996655/heat-therapy-sauna-thermoregulation-health-benefits
saunaresearch.org: https://saunaresearch.org
Sauna Talk podcast: https://www.saunatimes.com/sauna-talk-podcast/the-future-of-sauna-research-15-scientists-9-countries-one-mission-sauna-talk-141/