Comment on Power is not energy: why the difference matters [Technology Connections]
Dasus@lemmy.world 4 weeks agoIt’s perfectly commonplace to have at least a 100 degree sauna.
I think something like 140 is around the hottest I’ve been in.
The air is that temperature, but there’s also a ton of moisture in the air. You can take it for a few minutes at a time, then optimally you go take a dip off a pier into a lake or the sea. When I was in that 140c sauna it was a proper wood heated large sauna at my confirmation camp, it was on an island in the Baltic so we could run out the sauna and jump into the Baltic Sea. It wasn’t warm at all, but the intense heat of the sauna having warmed all the top tissues and muscles, you get a sort of immunity to the cold. Which lasts for a little while, and when you start getting cold enough, you go back to the sauna, and because the cool water has now cooled the skin and muscles, you get a resistance to the heat for a while.
Rinse and repeat. Literally.
This cycle supposedly has benefits for circulation and muscles.
And having done it ton in my life I don’t doubt that at all.
Usually I have to settle for the sauna in my apartment though. (I live in a cheap rental but a sauna is default in pretty much all buildings built after the 90’s.) And then either going to balcony to cool off a while or take cool shower. It’s not as nice, but it’s more or less the same.
Although I don’t rip the most out of my electric stove to get the most heat. I have it set on pretty low and I just use a lot of löyly. Probably I’d say my normal saunas are maybe around 90-110 degrees at the most. A sauna below 80 degrees is considered a “Swedish sauna”, which is to say we mock them as not being strong and manly as us and so Swedes would be afraid of having a “proper” sauna.
And to be honest the Swedes are pretty on board with this whole stereotype I guess, seeing us as brutes or something. Here’s a cool Swedish commercial featuring a Finnish man. They made it.
Inkstainthebat@pawb.social 4 weeks ago
I’d really like to try that someday
Dasus@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I believe, internationally, lots of places which have saunas also have pools or even cold pools. I imagine. Like high class gyms or smth.
But I’ve heard several stories of Finns being abroad and going to a sauna and being prevented from tossing water on the stones (löyly = it’s sort of the water and the heat that results from throwing it, roughly how you’d use “gas” in relation to cars, more gas can mean more petrol or pressing on the gas pedal harder, that sort of word), and the employees saying “you can’t do thaw to it’ll break the stove” because they don’t understand how saunas work.
And to do this to the best effect you need a proper löyly to the point you pour cold water from the löyly bucket on top of your head to bear it for a while longer for all the muscles to really warm up. And then for maximum shock quick jump to cold water, or sometimes just a snowbank. That’s common as well. Hurts like bitch though if you do it with the wrong kind of snow, like jumping on a bed of freezing razors. (The top of snow that was quite soft earlier had frozen and I didn’t see it in the dark and jumped into the bank and there was like a half an inch of raspy ice on top before I broke through to the softer snow. Or I just didn’t care being either so young as not to or so drunk as not to. Probably both.)
And if you’re gonna throw a strong löyly, or even löyly at all in a public sauna, it’s proper etiquette to ask for consent from everyone. Although now that I wrote that I have a feeling asking for consent in some non-Finnish public saunas may have a different meaning, as far as I’ve understood from popular media.