Photo credit: I took this photo at the Craig Tracy Gallery in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Craig Tracy is a world-renowned fine-art body painter who elevated body painting from a temporary novelty into a celebrated fine-art form. Can you see the woman on whom the fiery heart was painted?
Today’s Brain Booster is: Turn up the heat!
For thousands of years, humans have deliberately exposed themselves to heat: Roman baths, Turkish hammans, Finnish saunas, indigenous sweat lodges, and Japanese onsen (natural hot springs).
And it turns out that sweating it out in a sauna on a regular basis:
- Lowers blood pressure
- Improves overall heart health and blood vessel function
- Reduces the risk of a heart attack, stroke and dementia
- Helps with blood sugar regulation
- Brings down inflammation
- Decreases depression and anxiety
- Improves mood
- Induces better sleep
- And prolongs your life!
How could doing something so effortless and relaxing enhance your health to such an incredible extent? It sounded too good to be true, so I did a deep dive into the science of saunas. Tune in to find out what I uncovered.
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Today’s Health Headline is: Our decisions determine our destiny.
A remarkable study published in Nature Medicine in 2025, challenges one of the most fatalistic assumptions in medicine: that our genes are our destiny.
Researchers have been studying a man named Doug Whitney because he has a rare mutation in a gene called Presenilin 2. This gene is supposed to guarantee that a person gets early-onset Alzheimer’s (also known as younger-onset Alzheimer’s). That means they can get the disease as early as 40 years of age, but the average age of onset is about 54 years — still extraordinarily young.
However, Doug is 76 years old and remains completely symptom-free and cognitively intact. So researchers started searching for what could be protecting Doug from getting Alzheimer’s. They found two potential explanations.
The first explanation — a speculative one — is that Doug possessed genetic variants not previously recognised as protective against Alzheimer’s, but which could potentially modify the disease. Scientists are looking into this.
The second — more compelling — explanation is that Doug’s life may have inadvertently provided him with a form of long-term heat therapy similar to regular sauna use. From the age of 18, he spent two decades working as a mechanic, deep within the engine rooms of steam-powered naval ships, where temperatures could soar to around 50°C (122°F).
The heat was so extreme, that workers sometimes had to be sprayed down with water to prevent them from dangerously overheating during long shifts. Researchers speculate that repeated exposure to these intense conditions may have stimulated the production of unusually high levels of what are known as heat shock proteins in Doug Whitney’s cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). These specialised proteins:
- Help cells cope with stress
- Repair damaged proteins
- And maintain cellular function under adverse conditions.
And they’re one of the mechanisms by which sauna use dramatically reduces dementia risk.
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When I recorded this podcast episode, I spoke for over 40 minutes on just the Brain Booster and Health Headline so I’ve decided to split this episode into 2 parts because the feedback I’ve received from you is that you’d like me to keep my episodes to under one hour. I’ll continue with What’s Missing from Modern Medicine? and the Whether Report next week.
Thank you for your comments and questions — I’ll respond to them all in due course. I really appreciate your engagement.
Click here to watch the episode on my YouTube channel, or listen to Healing with Dr Helena on your preferred podcast platform.
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