Bill lives in North Carolina and has been blessed with a good sauna at his local YMCA. He is a pilot instructor by trade and tries to go sauna bathing 3 - 5 times per week.

“Our sauna was recently rebuilt during a massive renovation of our YMCA and is better than ever, as far as public saunas go. Our sauna facilities are separated by sex and we have two saunas in each locker room, one at 165°F and the other at 190°F.  During the ISA Sauna Congress last year, there was a gentleman who had done a census of public saunas in the US, and based on the characteristics he was evaluating, the facility I use in Charlotte seemed to fall into the top 25% in the US even before the renovation, so we are quite lucky. I sauna because I love it! I like conversation with people when they're there, but I also enjoy the solitude when it's just "me, myself, and I" with a good book! I like to sweat 'cause it feels good and it MAKES me feel good!  😅

The topic of health benefits arises when interested -- but less informed -- friends or acquaintances assume the only real reason to go to sauna is to "melt off" pounds of fat. When I point out to them that this idea is largely fantasy, the next question is: "So why DO you sauna then?"

Social and communal explanations are looked on askance by the unknowing, especially in the USA where Americans still generally seem to believe that sauna bathing is some sort of excuse for naked old guys to meet up for surreptitious, unsavory sexual gratification of some sort.  This is when I launch into a list of all the health benefits I have experienced personally, objective benefits that further explain why I feel the need to sauna bathe three or four times a week even on 100° days in August in the Deep South.

The next question is: "So why do you have to be naked?" This too leads to health-related explanations in discussion of all the "creepy-crawlies" that grow in warm, moist textiles from body fluids and secretions, and how these distasteful sanitary concerns are much more in consideration of the others using the sauna facilities than they are of me, personally.  Naked is better for everyone, but, of course, you don’t “have to be naked”!

Transmission of COVID-19 to others is what led me to research the possible effects of sauna -- high temperatures and high humidity -- on the interpersonal spread of the virus. 

In the early days of the current hysteria, before the government actually shut down all gyms and health clubs, our local YMCA's first response to social-distancing concerns was, ironically, to close the very facilities that seemed LEAST likely to transmit COVID-19: the saunas and steam rooms! Yet they continued to maintain member access to sweat-stained weight machines & equipment, the slick plastic surfaces of the yoga & exercise studios, where the virus could live for days, and the locker rooms, where anyone was free to flail around their pollen and (potentially) virus-laden street clothing and footwear, within inches of each other.  This made no sense to me.

I ran across an article entitled “Can Sauna Kill Coronavirus?” on a website called Sauna Marketplace.  It made the case for high heat and humidity of the sauna as a viable means of reducing transmission of COVID-19, while also clearly acknowledging that sauna would do nothing to cure an infected individual exhibiting symptoms.

( https://saunamarketplace.com/can-sauna-kill-coronavirus )

Unfortunately, the news media picked up on the article, but missed the fine detail of "transmission vs cure", and misinterpreted the article as some sort of crackpot, Internet pseudo-cure for COVID-19.  They dismissed it out of hand rather than recognizing that heat and humidity at high enough levels -- as in a sauna bath -- could in fact kill the virus hanging around on hard surfaces, in textiles, and even on skin surfaces, as a credible means of mitigating the interpersonal spread of the virus. 

This idea was further supported by an academic paper published on March 9, 2020 by Wang, Tang, Feng and Lv, entitled “High Temperature and High Humidity Reduce the Transmission of COVID-19”, who accomplished a statistical analysis of actual viral transmission in 100 Chinese cities and found a significant correlation between the ambient environments and spread of the virus among residents.

( https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767 )

I sauna just because I love to sauna! I had the best time in Tornio and Haaparanda last year at the ISA XVII International Sauna Congress and it had very little to do with any health issues! Sauna bathing DOES improve my health in many ways, but I am by no means a "health nut".  But I’m also not shy about citing specific health benefits of regular sauna bathing as a way of promoting sauna bathing to interested individuals who don't know they, too, would love it if only they gave it a try!

На здоров'я!  

("Na zdrovya!": it means "to your health!" in Ukrainian, my ancestral home where we “banya” whenever we can.)

Bill P