I made the mistake of looking at /r/sauna on Reddit once or twice recently, and there was a lot of people doing very similar things.

"I take my preworkout, do my exercise, then I sit for 12 minutes at 90 degrees in sauna, before three minutes in the cold plunge-pool at 8 degrees, before going to sauna again for 19 minutes and I finish with a seven minute warm shower".

Just the thought of looking at a watch in a sauna, and timing things minute by minute sounded exhausting.

I assume going to sauna takes an hour, it might be I leave it on for a couple of hours, but beyond that the minutes inside/outside are a mystery and I like it like that. Same story with being outdoors in a cabin/cottage. I might dig up some plants, or move the hammock around, but whether I get (literally) dirty is just down to whatever random things I've done that day!

Your comment reminds me of

The Hustle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U

> Just the thought of looking at a watch in a sauna

You don't take your watch into the sauna! It's way too hot! I use a plain mechanical kitchen timer (outside the sauna). I've seen hourglasses that are designed to withstand the heat inside the sauna, but they're obviously not configurable to various increments.

More seriously: apparently studies show that using a Finnish (dry) sauna 5-7 times a week is good for longevity. You don't have to use them that way, but if that's your goal, it probably makes sense to fit it into your routine, and it's tough to do that without planning how long it will take.

Or people who can withstand saunas naturally love longer? Maybe even despite them?

If it's 90 degrees Celcius, I don't think you could sit there for an hour. If it's 90 american degrees, what kind of sauna is that?

I have a dodgy thermometer on the wall, and I tend to enter the sauna when it shows 80, by the time I leave it's usually been showing 90 for half the time. Celcius.

Perhaps we are missing some details with respect to humidity?

If it's a very humid sauna at 90°F, then your body can't regulate itself with sweat evaporation.

weird huh, in neither system does 90 degrees make for a useful sauna. that's either lukewarm, or cooking temp.

90C is a normal sauna temperature. It's on the hot side, but normal.

Right you are. It's little a bit warm for my personal taste, but sure, for a 10 to 15 minute session, ok. It was late, and I was thinking more of the 90F as not even as hot as normal outdoors for many parts of the globe.

It probably just comes from tweaking the routine. Maybe they started out at 15 minutes in the sauna and 5 minutes in the cold plunge, but found they were getting too hot in the sauna and too cold in the cold plunge.

> Just the thought of looking at a watch in a sauna, and timing things minute by minute sounded exhausting.

"Hey , set a timer for 12 minutes" doesn't sound very exhausting.

You will now be subject to the whims of a timer in the future. If that's not exhausting for you, go for it.

I'm not subject to the whims of anything except what I just asked for.

I can also cancel it just as easily, if it's exhausting. Which--I'm finding it hard to understand why it would be.

I don't schedule my life like that at all, I kinda wander around all day. But the idea of a reminder that I specifically asked for? It's the only kind of reminder I want, actually. It'll keep me from the actually-exhausting habit of checking my watch or wondering how long it's been.

I don't use a sauna. In my imagination some people might prefer to stop their sauna usage when it feels right. That doesn't require checking a timer.

That's certainly how it is for me; mentally I think sauna is an hour, of 5-15 minute chunks inside the warm room, but sometimes it might be more.

There are days when I walk in and immediately nope-out after a couple of minutes, and that's usually a sign that I'm getting sick.

But when it stops feeling good that's the time to leave, or stop for the evening.

If your smartwatch doesn't burn your wrist in the sauna, it's not hot enough ;)

If your smartwatch's Lithium Ion Battery Pack doesn't explode and amputate your arm in the sauna, it's not hot enough ;)

Do you mean you literally sit in the sauna for hour?

No, you would be cooked, but I had a hunch that obviously people already tried to see how long you could stay inside and yes there was a competition in Finland exactly for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Sauna_Championships#2010...

I said "was" because 2010 was, in fact, the last edition of the event:

> On 7 August 2010, two competitors were removed from the sauna and brought to the hospital in critical condition after six minutes of 110 °C (230 °F) heat

And one of them died.

> His death was aided by his use of strong painkillers and local anesthetic grease on his skin.

I don't think anyone is capable to sit in a 90-100C sauna for a whole hour without breaks, otherwise with breaks I surely have been in a sauna for more than an hour.

Just this summer I was at a cottage by Vänern (the largest lake in Sweden), the sauna was built right at the lake with a pier setup for jumping into it, we had a party going late into the night where you constantly moved from the sauna into the lake, out of the lake, have chats, a beer, into the sauna again, rinse and repeat for some 8-10 hours. I have no idea exactly how long I was in the sauna but it was definitely more than a couple of hours in the whole affair :)

>I don't think anyone is capable to sit in a 90-100C sauna for a whole hour without breaks, otherwise with breaks I surely have been in a sauna for more than an hour.

Yes, I definitely do agree with that. I too love what you're describing - we have some of that in Poland too :)

However, I was not sure if we're talking about it - or some American version I know only from various memes - where people are coming in with phones and in shoes.

If you ever basta in winter, try bringing ice into the sauna. Smearing yourself with ice while in the heat is really nice :)

Generally I assume "sauna" will take an hour, or ninety minutes, but the process is pretty much:

1. Have a shower.

2. Sit in the sauna, and throw water on the stones. Stay there for 5-15 minutes, drinking a beer and sometimes listening to music. Depends on the mood what kind of duration I enjoy, and what kind of music I have. If alone music is nice, if with a friend or two then we have silence and conversation instead.

3. Come out and sit on the balcony, to have a little break.

4. If I still feel like it go back to step one, and have a quick shower before going back. Otherwise have a longer shower, and check that the heater is going to shut down soon.

> I assume going to sauna takes an hour, [...] but beyond that the minutes inside/outside are a mystery...

I understand that as the general act of getting up, starting the sauna, going for your clothes change, resting a couple times, going to the kitchen for water, shower, switch off, kitchen again, whatever... you've filled an hour of your time.

That interpretation does make sense. Just heating the sauna can take even longer.

I don't know about you guys but if I started timing my sauna visits, I would get MORE stressed out.

Saunas have hourglasses (usually a multiple of 5 mins)?

Sounds like typical geek stuff you see on any enthousiast forum. You should check the coffee forums.

You forgot the app! You can connect our app to your smart dirt bucket so you can track that the correct composition of bacteria reaches your hands at all time! Collect points by completing challenges and watch a few ads for premium guides!

There’s a startup opportunity: a body cream with concentrates of beneficial microorganisms.

“Pair it with our full spectrum sun lamp and you can have all the benefits of playing outside from the comfort of your standing desk”.

FDA: “You’ve got E. coli in here.”

“Yes.”

You folks are having fun with the idea, but, well, in 2026 there’s absolutely a viable market for this.

I thought sun exposure was bad. Or is it good again? Was it good all along?

Do I need to wear sunscreen in front of my desk too now? Will the body cream include it?

Too many questions. I'm going outside.

> I thought sun exposure was bad. Or is it good again? Was it good all along?

It's good as long as you don't get sunburn or skin cancer...

> Do I need to wear sunscreen in front of my desk too now? Will the body cream include it?

That's the sort of thinking we need, champ - you just earned yourself a promotion to Chief Product Officer. :)

>It's good as long as you don't get sunburn or skin cancer...

too much sun ages you badly even without any sunburn. Hot dog skin.

Moderation is always the key. Although some people would be fine with a modest aging effect, given the other positive benefits of sun exposure.

I have some beef with the sunscreen people, mostly because of 3 things:

- Skin cancer is by far the least deadly type of cancer and nearly always just requires some low-risk skin removal.

- Getting a light tan feels amazing. Your whole body feels warmer.

- Vitamin D.

Skin cancer may be less deadly than other types of cancer, but it is still far more deadly than not having cancer. Rattlesnake bites in the US have a lower mortality rate than skin cancer, are you gonna go trying to handle rattlesnakes without protection or safety measures?

Maybe if handling rattlesnakes regularly was associated with improved mental and physical health, the way regular sun exposure is.

> Getting a light tan feels amazing. Your whole body feels warmer.

You know what feels even better? Not getting skin cancer.

> Vitamin D

Easily obtained from supplements.

One could also add positive mental health effects, and benefits of morning sunlight for maintaining a healthy circadian rhythm.

Sure, you can always come back that you can take anti-depressants, and try to use some sort of sun-mimicking light, but then we're really going to extremes to avoid the sun altogether.

So is exposure to the sun, at the right times, in moderation, with appropriate but not extreme protection okay?

> So is exposure to the sun, at the right times, in moderation, with appropriate but not extreme protection okay?

Depends on your personal risk tolerance. For majority of people, probably yes: the benefits (especially the mental ones) would outweight the small risks.

and now i'm bummed out

I find this amusing. We know that light has an impact on the body - so they make/sell lamps that emit light similar to sunlight, red light therapy, circadian smart bulbs...

Washing in the river used to be normal + good for the body - we do cold plunges now.

Probiotic supplements exist, we used to get those for free.

We're gamifying nature. Not saying it's a bad thing, just amusing to me that it used to be our entire lives and we're using technology to get it into our lives in smaller amounts.

I parodied this sort of thinking via my alter-ego, Brad Bradstone [1], in a post called "My Treadwater Desk" (https://web.archive.org/web/20190802085907/http://doublestea...).

--- My Treadwater Desk

If you're the CEO of company, like me, you do a lot of sitting and talking. And all the evidence points to sitting being a disaster health-wise. As a father it's my responsibility to take care of my health over the long term so that my kids, Dagwood and Spaniel, have their father around for a long time. Sure, they don't see much of me because I'm building Yellow Yellow, but I want to be there when we can all enjoy the fruits of my labors.

So, I looked into the current fads running through Silicon Valley. NoSitting has displaced NoSQL as the current buzzword and there are two current solutions: standing up and walking.

At Yellow Yellow we like to blaze our own trail and in NoSitting we're no exception. But rather than standing up all day (which kills your legs and leads to varicose veins---a major problem if you plan on spending your retirement years in the Caribbean on the beach) or walking on a treadmill (which causes wear and tear on your ankles, knees and hips) I've come up with a far better solution.

The Treadwater Desk.

In our basement we had a disused well from back before our brownstone had municipal water. It didn't take much to fill the well with water and a bit of carpentry later and I had my laptop and an Apple Magic Mouse (wrapped in Saran wrap).

Now my day starts by changing into a suit (in this case a wet suit) and plunging into the chilly waters of my treadwater desk. That blast of icy water is better than any espresso from the Daily Grind and really gets me in the mood for work. Also, the vasoconstriction of most of my body means more blood for my brain to keep Yellow Yellow running.

Then it's treading water while Skyping with my team. I've found that using Siri I can dictate emails without a problem and the Magic Mouse is working well.

And let's face it, we all came from the sea originally and so treading water is natural for us all. It's also aerobic and far easier on the joints than walking. It's also a full body workout. Rather than just working on my legs I get every muscle moving. And the health benefits of that are well known.

It's also a metaphor for what it's like to be a startup CEO: I'm literally keeping my head above water all day long and if I don't keep making an effort I (and Yellow Yellow) would go under.

Finally, I'm planning to add Epsom salts to the water to increase buoyancy and help keep my skin in tip top condition.

[1] The inventor of double stealth mode (the public doesn't know what we're building and neither do we). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4166183

There should be a remake of American Psycho where he's a tech VC and has this sort of biohacking routine.

You beat me to it: https://youtu.be/RjKNbfA64EE?si=dhk2K17kMndcTXT_&t=34

I'm sure the comments will be full of detractors scoffing at this claiming that all one needs is not to wash their hands. Or just go outside to handle that mud. With luck you might come across the king of Briton.

Holy heck, ain’t this the truth.

Really it’s the logical conclusion of living your whole life by studies-show. Studies show that friends are good for you. That’s why I have friends. Studies show that laughing is good for you. That’s why I indulge in merry company. Studies show that dirt is good for you. That’s why I go off the beaten asphalt.

Studies show that researchers are the last ones to learn what everyone already knew. That happens too.

It's more like researchers got paid to do something they love to prove, scientifically, something they believed, happens to be true.

> "I have a bucket of mud, in which I stick my hands for 15 minutes every morning.

Not quite but close enough :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWzWwx8T3nE

Lucky for you, you can buy a subscription to DirtPlus™, which has the proper ratio of Earthzymes™ to organic material to make sure you get your hands properly dirty, instead of just dirty.

There's something very sad about all these people spending so much energy on crazy intensive n of 1 experiments.

If we could only get them to collaborate, we could get some real knowledge out of it!

I blame Mythbusters!

Kidding… I love them.

N of 1 is actually pretty decent for physics type stuff, which is mostly what they do.

For medicine and nutrition...not so much.

Reminds me of this video: https://youtu.be/4ZK8Z8hulFg?is=HpS4BWeDbVRsnBPI

They'd be copying the greats! I have seen a distinct pattern of artists and photographers doing self portraits while rolling around in shit or mud.

GTD, lifehacking, quantified self... all coolness of the 2000s biting us hard now

Celebrities and influencers will be selling their own brand of mud, with their own special flavor!

Followed by HN readers asking for it in supplement/pill form.

Mud/Clay baths are a real thing in fancy spas

"sign up now and get free peptides your macrocolony needs to immunemogg those bacteria!"

So if I sign up for like 6 months, could I get 25% off?

We have this already: "touch grass" for the normies and "grounding" (standing barefoot on the earth) for the more hacker inclined