Acute Improvement of Vascular Function with Finnish Sauna Bathing in Older Adults with Stable Coronary Artery Disease
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Frequent Finnish sauna bathing is associated with a decreased risk of cardiovascular mortality in middle‐aged men, including men with pre‐existing cardiovascular diseases. However, the potential physiological adaptations that mediate the protective effect of Finnish sauna bathing remain to be determined. In healthy young and older adults, hot water immersion acutely improves macro‐ and microvascular functions, two independent predictors of cardiovascular events. Therefore, improved vascular function may represent one adaptation by which Finnish sauna bathing confers cardiovascular health benefits. However, the acute effect of sauna bathing on vascular function has yet to be investigated in individuals with established vascular dysfunction. Objective To test the hypothesis that a traditional Finnish sauna session acutely improves macro‐ and microvascular functions in older adults with stable coronary artery disease. Methods Eleven older adults (68 ± 9 years, 10 men / 1 woman) with a diagnosis of stable coronary artery disease were exposed to 2 bouts of 10 minutes in a dry Finnish sauna (80°C, 20% relative humidity), separated by 10 minutes of seated rest outside the sauna. Before and ~45 minutes after sauna bathing, vascular function was evaluated by flow‐mediated dilation (FMD) of the brachial artery. Maximal dilation during reactive hyperemia, expressed as a percentage of baseline diameter (%FMD), was used as an index of macrovascular function. Peak and area under the curve (AUC) forearm vascular conductance were used as indices of microvascular function. Mean skin temperature (Tsk), intestinal temperature (Tcore), oral temperature (Toral), heart rate (HR) and mean arterial pressure (MAP) were monitored throughout the protocol. Results During sauna bathing, Tsk (32.8 ± 0.4 to 42.4 ± 1.3°C, P<0.01), Tcore (36.2 ± 0.6 to 36.9 ± 0.7°C, P<0.01), Toral (36.5 ± 0.3 to 37.6 ± 0.3°C, P<0.01) and HR (58 ± 11 to 85 ± 15 bpm, P<0.01) increased, whereas MAP decreased (94 ± 6 to 82 ± 9 mmHg, P<0.01). At the time of FMD measurement, HR, MAP and Toral had returned to pre‐sauna values (all P>0.16), while Tsk (PRE: 32.8 ± 0.4°C, POST: 34.3 ± 0.5°C, P<0.01) and Tcore (PRE: 36.3 ± 0.7°C, POST: 36.7 ± 0.8°C, P<0.01) remained elevated at the time of post sauna FMD measurement. There was a trend towards an increased %FMD (2.9 ± 2.2 to 4.1 ± 2.4%, P=0.07) and peak vascular conductance (3.4 ± 0.9 to 4.0 ± 1.1 ml/min/mmHg, P=0.06) following sauna bathing, while no change was observed for vascular conductance AUC (1.6 ± 0.6 to 1.9 ± 0.8 ml/mmHg, P=0.23). Conclusion These results suggest that macro‐ and microvascular functions are acutely improved following a typical Finnish sauna bathing session in older adults with stable coronary artery disease. Support or Funding Information Funded by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec ‐ Santé (FRQS) This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".