Risks of Traditional Sauna Use
While there are lots of common sense reasons to keep children or people with lackluster senses away from the heat, studies have not linked careful sauna use to serious medical problems in healthy children. The main injury found seems to be scalding or burns from be careless or unsupervised.
Whirlpool or hot tub baths appear to be much more dangerous to children and adults alike. The main risk being drowning, especially where strong whirlpool mechanisms trap a small or weak body. Another risk is bacteria in whirlpools that are not properly maintained, but again this is a risk to anyone who uses communal pools, spas, and saunas.
Most of the reviews and studies we find are coming out of Finland, where studies show that most children are taken to their first sauna at the average age of just 5 months. The Finnish studies found that there were no harmful cardiovascular responses after a 3-4 minute exposure to the high heat of saunas. The review did admit that the sauna did put bigger demands on the childs circulatory regulation than on that of an adult, and it reported a study of 20 children ages 5 to 10 years old found moderate hormonal changes. The review concluded that healthy children older than 2 could be allowed in a sauna with adequate adult supervision.
There were some specifics for children who had specific disorders but a study of sauna-like heat treatment, use of infrared saunas and infrared heat could be used as a treatment to dilate blood vessels in some very young infants to prevent heart failure due to ventricular defects. Infrared sauna technology is now being used to avoid surgery in many cases now.
Notes: New York Times – Science
