Most sauna users in an online survey said sauna helped their sleep
This 2019 Complementary Therapies in Medicine paper reports the Global Sauna Survey. Sauna users volunteered to take it, and 482 of them answered questions about their habits and health.
The paper
A hot topic for health: Results of the Global Sauna Survey
Hussain JN, Greaves RF, Cohen MM. Complementary Therapies in Medicine, 2019;44:223-234.
See the study at a glance
- Design
- Online cross-sectional survey
- People
- 482 sauna users
- Who they were
- Sauna users who chose to answer an online survey between October 2016 and October 2017. Just over half were men (51.3%), and most were educated non-smokers who exercised.
- What they did
- A 71-item online questionnaire that included a short standard health survey called the SF-12. Most respondents took one or two sessions a week.
- How long
- One year of data collection
These numbers came out of it
83.5%
Of the respondents, 83.5% said sauna use helped their sleep.
482
Of the 572 people who logged in, 482 gave valid responses.
93.1%
Minor problems such as dizziness and headache made up 93.1% of the reported side effects.
2
Two reports (0.3%) described a reaction that needed hospital care.
The researchers did this
The Global Sauna Survey ran online from October 2016 to October 2017. Of 572 people who logged in, 482 gave valid responses to a 71-item questionnaire that included the SF-12 health survey.Source 1 · Cross-sectional studyA hot topic for health: Results of the Global Sauna SurveyHussain JN, Greaves RF, Cohen MM. Complementary Therapies in Medicine, 2019.Read the paper ↗PubMed ↗
Most respondents were educated non-smokers who exercised. The typical habit was one or two saunas a week.
Asked about sleep, 83.5% said sauna helped. People who took 5 to 15 saunas a month scored slightly higher on the SF-12 mental health scale than those who took fewer than five.
Most of the side effects people reported were minor. Things like dizziness or headache accounted for 93.1% of them, and two reports (0.3%) described a reaction that needed hospital care.
The study can't tell you these things
- People chose to answer, and a sauna survey draws sauna enthusiasts.
- Everything was self-reported, including the sleep benefit.
- There was no comparison group of people who don't use saunas.
- A survey can't show that sauna caused anyone's sleep to improve.
People quote it like this
The line "83% of sauna users sleep better" comes from this survey. The number is the share of volunteers who said sauna helped their sleep. The survey never measured sleep, and it had no comparison group.Source 1 · Cross-sectional studyA hot topic for health: Results of the Global Sauna SurveyHussain JN, Greaves RF, Cohen MM. Complementary Therapies in Medicine, 2019.Read the paper ↗PubMed ↗
From our sister magazine
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We cited these sources
- 01Hussain JN, Greaves RF, Cohen MM. A hot topic for health: Results of the Global Sauna Survey. Complementary Therapies in Medicine. 2019;44:223-234. doi:10.1016/j.ctim.2019.03.012 PMID 31126560