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I just cannot fathom comments like this. I’m preeetty sure that the vast majority of people spend half an hour a day doing nothing, in front of a screen of some type. How many people do you think there are there who don’t have thirty minutes of leisure time once per week?!
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There's a world of a difference between being able to carve out 30 actually uninterrupted minutes (and realistically more; most people don't have a sauna in their home, so they'd need to spend some time getting there and back) and being able to zone out and stare at a screen for 30 minutes in bed or on public transit.
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> and realistically more; most people don't have a sauna in their home

Most people have a sauna in their home, this is Finland.

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Is this actual stat? Or do you mean “have access to” instead of actually “at their home” i.e. a private sauna they can use at any time 24/7, because from my lived experience I doubt the latter.
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And those that don't have usually access to one in the building that they can use.

Or if they don't have that, can just go to one of the numerous public saunas.

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Not having an hour of uninterrupted leisure time per day, never mind per week (most Finns don’t go to sauna every day) still sounds pretty unfathomable, except maybe in some specific circumstances like being a fresh single parent or similar. In any case, in Finland people go to sauna together with even fairly young kids (like 3+ years old), with breaks as needed of course, even most adults don’t usually spend thirty continuous minutes in a 80°C sauna.
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Virtually everyone everywhere can find free 30 minutes. And turn their devices off. Those who think they cannot would do well getting to a state where they can do this, at least 6, preferably 7 days a week.

Skipping screen time between waking up and getting up will might solve this problem for a significant fraction of the first world population. My 2c.

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And it is so hot that you can't use your phone full of addicting apps that ruin your sanity.
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You're describing a tool. It can destroy your sanity yes, but it also enables sanity if that makes sense.
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Fresh parents without relatives to help out.
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If it's winter, put the baby in the pram outside, while you do a quick sauna session?
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We still managed fine. All young kids sleep quite a lot. Newborns a crapton. Older kids who don't are old enough to sauna too.
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Check out the screen time log for fresh parents.

I remember the first few months being so crazy. Feedings every two hours, and each feeding took an hour.

But still time for naps, short walks, etc. part of the survival was to work in little microbreaks when the baby was sleeping.

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Huge difference between constantly being in passive alert mode waiting for the kid to wake up and cry their heart out, and proper uninterrupted “I know have x minutes for myself, no matter what” time.
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> being in passive alert mode

AH, MANY THANKS! That was the wording I was actually looking for when our twins arrived - I couldnt even sit down to read a printed newspaper article with 2 pages....

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I've never read as much on my kindle as when my son was born. I didn't want to use my phone so any micro break was spent reading. Much harder to do now that my son is 4 years old, I'm less sleep deprived but there's less opportunities for micro breaks when I'm with him.
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Are you even living if you're not spending every single minute breathing and shitting your work and/or kids?
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You "cannot fathom" the privilege your have or life experience you lack to believe this unconditionally.
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Less doomscrolling, less bing watching of dumb Netflix series. Sensible working hours. And a society that doesn’t demand constant reachability when being off work.

It is not a luxury. It is living with common sense.

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Sensible working hours is a luxury for many people, at least in the United States. Especially the ones considered low socioeconomic status. 40 hours a week at minimum wage will barely pay the median rent in my state. That leaves nothing for food, health care, utilities, transportation, etc.
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Who doesn’t have 30 minutes per week to do nothing? I am genuinely asking.
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That might have an effect, but these studies are probably mostly selecting for people who can tolerate a hostile environment for longer, which are usually healthier. I find it unlikely that sauna alone explains the fantastic, almost miraculous hazard ratios that these studies report.
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As an American: I soak in a hot tub for 30 minutes or more, at fairly high heat. At least a few times a week.

Sometimes posting on Hackernews.

It’s one of the high points of my day (the soak, not the posting).

This “I wonder” just screams lazy thinking.

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just make sure your charger is faaar away from the tube, please. (and thats also true for your phone charger :-)
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Thanks for the warm thoughts :) (yes, I went there).

My phone charge lasts longer than 30 minutes. And it’s provably water resistant to tub depths.

I certainly don’t code in the tub. Strictly reading and discourse.

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I'm curious what harm you think could come from that?
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Got any from countries with electrical codes from this century? GFCI protection has been required by code in bathrooms basically everywhere for 50 years.
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Doing nothing for 30 minutes does not release cytokines.
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But it _will_ reduce cortisol, which is known to increase the likelihood of infections
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I nearly made a screen time comment but you are right, its facility availability and travel time issue more than anything
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Finland has saunas everywhere, having a sauna at home isn't even expensive average people have that, its just a cultural thing its like having a toilet at home it isn't something normal people can't afford.
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Not all saunas are the same though. Traditional hotbox-ed wood burning saunas and modern electrics are the same thing but also kinda not.
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I don't think they used wood burning saunas in this study, basically all saunas today are electric.
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Correct, most saunas at homes were they apartments or family homes, businesses, public saunas etc. were built using electric stoves when they became commonplace during -70's.

But traditional summer cottages and villas have been either intentionally or still built wood burning stoves unless three phase power is easily available not bring cost up too much because remote location and long distance to grid. We have about half a million summer cottages in Finland. Which almost all have saunas and I would guess that perhaps 5% would have electric saunas as most summer cottages are built quite long time ago and off grid.

There are fancy (luxury) summer cottages where there is not one but either two or even three saunas built or moved there. All different types of course if having many. One electric inside for convenience.

Traditional (continuous) wood burning sauna, "jatkuvalämmitteinen" in Finnish, right next to lake because that type is consider to give better 'löyly' (steam in sauna) than you get from electric stove and thus preferred by many.

Third if some have is usually oldest type, the smoke-sauna. Which is really nice to have if you can afford keeping and have patience to make use of it few times a year. It takes lot of time and bit of knowledge too to warm it up which can take up to 6-8 hours, before it's ready to start bathing there. This was most common type about hundred years ago in country side.

Fourth type is or mostly was between smoke-sauna and continuously burning stove sauna. Its stove burns wood during heating, but then during bathing it's just releasing heat accumulated during heating. This type name in Finnish is "kertalämmitteinen kiuas" ie. onceheated-stove. And was most common in towns and cities before continuously warming stove was invented and became popular about 60 years ago.

I go sauna four times a week, once evening where I live and three times a week early in morning when I go swimming to (county owned) swimming baths.

e: typos, and clearer expressions.

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In the USA, you do not need 3 phase power for a good electric sauna. Residential is all supplied with single phase 240AC which works just fine.

[EDIT: I should have single phase, which is more conventional ]

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In Finland and most of Europe have 230V one phase, 400v in three phase. And bare single phase subscription haven't even been available new houses for at least 45 years any more.

But if you buy an old summer cottage further away from permanent living areas it may well be that a) you don't even have grid there or b) if you have it's single phase and three phase upgrade would be too expensive because you are being billed building cost for that work all in front.

Using that single phase for sauna stove needs then so much that it's not allowed by code or if you would be able to convince some electrician do some kind fo switching other devices off when stove is on most perhaps do not like to pursue that and choose wood stove their sauna instead. That's known working solution and remote location it's also a secondary heat source incase grid were down due some storm fallen trees on wires which mess cleaning takes several days etc.

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1. I should have said single phase, since that's the typical (if somewhat inaccurate) description of US residential power.

2. If you have 230V single phase, not sure why you couldn't run a sauna from that, unless there is some other heavy load to be run concurrently.

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No travel time. Most Finnish houses have a sauna built in.
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And Swedish houses, particularly detached houses built or renovated the 70s. Typically used for storing boxes.
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That is growing trend in Finland too. GenX and younger seemingly use less sauna compared to older generations.

Thus when it was common to build sauna for a while all new all least family size apparments late -80's and -90's that has been less common later decades. And it's become so common people not using saunas already built bathing and instead use it additional storage. Which has unfortunately caused even some fire accidents if stove circuit breaker was not disconnected. Last year we had this kind of happening when child apparently had played with the sauna timer switch and activated it.

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People with high socioeconomic status work much more and have less free time. It’s absurd to claim otherwise.

EDIT: please before being outraged at my comment have a look at actual evidence, e.g. Time and income poverty by Tania Burchardt; bottom decile compared with top decile has 12 hours more free time a week!

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Your point is even more graphically illustrated if you compare the extremes... Say trust fund babies to homeless people. The trust fund people spend at least ten hours a week reviewing investment and disciplining their entourage, whereas homeless people's time is completely their own.
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It's funny that you make this flippant remark, while people completely seriously use as absurd reverse scenario (for some reason asking to restrict analysis just to people working 2 minimum wage jobs and exclude people that are unemployed). I already know that people do not update their beliefs even when they are shown evidence that clearly shows they are wrong, but it's frustrating to experience every time nonetheless.
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People with 2 minimum wage jobs have even less time.
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> People with high socioeconomic status work much more and have less free time

I think you are misrepresenting (or perhaps, misunderstanding) the conclusion of these studies. The increased "free time" is most entirely due to high unemployment at the lower end of income.

If you control for unemployment and under-employment, the graphs pretty much flatten out (as you can observe in the later graphs of the publication you linked below)

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Why should you exclude unemployed or underemployed? What would be the reason for that, other than to turn statistics into lies?
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No, I think considering only employed people is dishonest, there’s zero reason to do so. And if graph becomes flat then obviously assumption that high income people have more time is not true
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If you want to make that argument, then we have to discuss whether those people choose to be underemployed, or are in that state due to fiscal policy that explicitly aims to prevent 100% employment
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In the context of this discussion not at all - the comment I was replying to hinted that perhaps benefits from 30 min in sauna might be due to confounding stemming from time availability. Also all I'm saying is that poorest people (bottom 10%) generally have more free time than richest people (top 10%). I'm not discussing why, if it's system failure, their choice or anything else and I don't know why should I? Would this discussion somehow change how much free time each decile has? Of course not.
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I don't get how you have considered all these details yet didn't try to steelman the "hint" better, e.g. 30 minutes of relaxed meditation compared to 30 minutes of sauna usage, as opposed to some vague definition of "do nothing" and whether different social classes effectively have very different baselines of doing nothing, such as their stress levels, does playing golf count as free time, or sunning on the deck of a cruise ship is that "doing nothing", etc. at which point the discussion about confounders really gets in the weeds. Unlike CPUs human in/activity is not like a no-op instruction
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You can read the reports and then you will know what counts as a free time, it's clearly defined. Note that I'm not saying that socioeconomic status might not confound results - I'm just saying that available free time most likely does not and that poorest decile generally has much more free time than richest decile. I don't get why is it so hard to accept?
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Citation needed.

Edit: it’s absolutely not true universally and it’s ridiculous to suggest it is. Comparing averages will be very tricky as well.

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Sure - https://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/cr/CASEreport57.pdf The difference between bottom and top decile is huge - bottom has approximately 12 hours more of free time a week! It’s consistent result that’s replicated multiple times in literature.
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how utterly disconnected from reality you are
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I’m afraid it’s you that’s disconnected from reality. I know it’s unfashionable to actually consider evidence, but please have a look at eg Time and income poverty by Tania Burchardt. Low income people have MUCH more free time.
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Don’t know. But I am in the top 1% of this country regarding income as an engineer (staff/fellow level). I don’t work more than 32h-35h per week - actually I never have and was never expected to. Living and working in a sane society and country. I fanatically turn off work email or work msgs when not working. I am not available for no one. Not even the C-levels or any clients. I concentrate on me and my family. No need to be a slave to “commitments” that don’t mean a thing in the long run.
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Good for you!
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And everyone has the same 24h. And it is just their choice and will to either dedicate 30min to their well being or not. It is not about having less time. Just prioritizing the same 24h that everyone has differently. Everything else is just finding excuses which of course is much easier than changing your life.
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