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According to a recent study, saunas may be more useful than ice baths in treating depression. Dimensions / Getty Photos
In addition to psychotherapy, antidepressant medication, which occasionally has unpleasant side effects that damage a person’s quality of life, may be offered as a sort of treatment for a number of mental health conditions.
As an alternative to or in addition to antidepressant medication, alternative therapies like heat therapy or cold exposure may help lessen the symptoms of depression.
A new discovery by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco indicated that persons suffering from depression have increased body temperatures.
This discovery, according to scientists, presents the possibility that cutting-edge treatments that lower body temperature, such ice baths or saunas, may have favorable benefits on mental health.
According to study, 5% of adults globally are considered to suffer from depression, a mental condition that has a severe impact on mood.
Depression rates grew both during and after the COVID-19 pandemic Trusted Source, and they are continuing rising as a result of problems like social support inefficiencies, inequality, and job loss Trusted Source.
Antidepressant drug use has increasing since depression therapy typically incorporates medicine.
Although antidepressant medicines are typically safe to use, they might have unpleasant effects that can occasionally decrease a person’s quality of life, such as headaches, nausea, problems sleeping, sexual dysfunction, weight gain, and anxious feelings Trusted Source.
Because of this, persons suffering from depression may seek out complementary and alternative therapies like meditation, acupuncture, herbal remedies, vitamins, yoga, and psychotherapy alongside dietary adjustments.
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco have now discovered that individuals suffering from depression exhibit higher body temperatures than those without the condition. This finding raises the possibility that cutting edge treatments that lower body temperature, like heat therapy in a sauna or hot tub, may have positive effects on mental health.
Scientific Reports Trusted Source, a journal, has released the report.
Increased body temperature and sadness
The lead author of this study,
Dr. Ashley Mason, is an associate professor of psychiatry of anxiety at the University of California, San Francisco’s UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences and the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Health. She claims that depression significantly lowers quality of life and that the current treatments do not adequately address the clinical needs of the population.
This encouraged Dr. Mason and her colleagues to study a possible relationship between depression and higher body temperature.
“The connection is especially intriguing because research indicates that people’s body temperatures tend to return to normal after they overcome depression, no matter how they recovered,” she told Medical News Today. Then, more recent research indicates that temperature-based therapies might lessen the symptoms of depression. For instance, research indicates that using heat-based therapies—such as infrared saunas—causes sudden spikes in body temperature.
According to Dr. Mason, these temperature surges drive the body’s self-cooling processes, such sweating, and can produce subsequent reductions in body temperature. Sweating helps the body cool down.
“Moreover, a study revealed a correlation between a person’s reduced body temperature in the days following a single heat treatment and a reduction in their depressive symptoms during that same time period,” Dr. Mason said. The fact that the connection may function in a variety of ways is intriguing, but what’s novel is the possibility that we may be able to directly influence body temperature to treat the symptoms of sadness.
Dr. Mason and her colleagues examined data from 106 different nations, comprising almost 20,000 research participants, for their investigation. For seven months, the participants self-reported their body temperatures and depressive symptoms every day while wearing a device that measured their body temperatures.
Researchers discovered that when the severity of the study’s participants’ depression symptoms increased, so did their body temperatures.
Dr. Mason stated, “Our finding that rising body temperature was associated with rising depression levels is novel.”
“Earlier research has revealed a possible association between depression and raised body temperature, but to the best of our knowledge, our study is the largest of its kind to demonstrate a dose-response relationship, meaning that the higher the depression, the higher the body temperature. We discovered what past data indicated we would.
— Dr. Ashley Mason
Dr. Mason noted, “There are a lot of unsolved questions regarding the relationship between body temperature and depression.”
We are studying the possibility that inflammation has a role in our current research. Thermosensory pathways, which transport sensory data from our skin and other peripheral organs to our central nervous system, might also be implicated. They can be considered as “gateways” to brain systems that affect our emotions and mental functions, the speaker concluded.
Sauna verses ice bath therapy for depression
These results, according to the research team, show that body temperature-lowering new depression treatments may be conceivable.
According to the study of anxiety, these results might encourage the use of treatments like hot yoga, infrared saunas, and hyperthermic baths (Trusted Source), which momentarily boost body temperature.
According to a research that was presented in August 2016, whole-body hyperthermia (a treatment that entails modestly elevating a person’s body temperature) may also be a viable therapy for depression.
“It’s ironic that warming someone up can cause a longer-lasting rebound drop in body temperature than just cooling them down, like in an ice bath,” she explains.
Here at UCSF in the heart of San Francisco, we are actively researching the use of heat therapies, notably sauna treatments, as a body-based intervention for symptoms of depression. We are currently pairing sauna treatments with cognitive behavioral therapy for depression in an ongoing trial for patients with clinical depression, the spokesman continues.
Conversely, studies have studied the use of cold therapies—like cryotherapy and
ice baths—as a viable antidepressant in anxiety.
According to a June 2020 study, whole-body cryotherapy Trusted Source can help minimize the loss of mental health related with mood disorders including depression.
A single soak in cold water can improve someone’s attitude, according to a December 2021 study Trusted Source.
The topic of biological cooling strategies needs more research.
MNT also spoke with Dr. Gary Small, the chair of psychiatry at the New Jersey-based Hackensack University Medical Center, regarding this study.
It is hardly unexpected, says Dr. Small, that body temperature and depressed symptoms are related.
The study’s author said, “This suggests that our body’s ability to cool down from such warmed states may yield the antidepressant effect. Previous research has shown that hot baths help mitigate mood symptoms.”
