I have been on my journey for a while now and over time I have learned a lot about nutrition, how my body reacts to food and exercise but I took one thing for granted that scared me. Fat cells were a barrier that protected me in many ways but never thought that losing fat cells would affect my ability to resist heat in a sauna.
First before I get to what I am going to say is that when we lose weight our bodies are affected by the enviorment more easily, especially those of us who had or have a lot of weight to lose. What I mean is by cold and heat. This may not be for all but from other forums and pages I am part of, it is pretty common. When you lose weight you will notice that you may get colder or feel colder and that for me is very much true. I used to walk around in sub-zero temps with just a hoodie and even though I was slightly cold, I had a very high tolerance for the cold. Not any more.
I lost so much weight that I get very cold quickly. Before anyone makes assumptions of anemia or anything else. I go in for full blood panel tests every 3 months for my thyroid and have been monitored by my doctor for my weight loss for some time now. My panels are damn near perfect, But lets get back to what I am saying.
So a while back I started to notice I was getting colder even in moderate temperatures. I remember it was like 70 outside, we had all the windows open in the house and I was like wow I am cold from the wind blowing in WTF!! even the better half was shocked becuase I never got cold. Even during this summer I normally would suffer and hate the muggy hot weather we have and all summer long I wore pants and a handful of times put on shorts. I never once felt it was too hot outside. Okay this is getting long I will try to wrap this up.
5 days a week I swim and after my swims I go in a dry sauna for about 30 minutes. About 3 months ago I came out of the sauana and went to take my shower and almost blacked out. It scared the piss out of me but I had a reasonable explanation. I was just coming off a 72 hour fast and expending that much energy to swim and then the sauna just wasn't a good idea. If you are water fasting, in my opinion, you should not really be working out, you are using needed energy that you are not replenishing. Three days, all of them, I swam and used the sauna. That was part of the problem but not fully. Then about a month back I had it happen again, not so intense as it was when I was fasting but still scary to be standing there in a shower surrounded by concrete and tile almost blacking out thinking to yourself "stay awake, stay up" because if I do pass out it is going to be bad if I hit this floor. And then it happened one last time three weeks ago and this one really scared me. I couldn't understand why so I did some research and called my doctor.
After some research and talking to my doctor I got an understanding what was going on with me. And it makes sense. Remember when I said I could stand sub-zero temps with just a hoodie but then recently I was getting colder in moderate temps. It all has to do with how much fat was on my body. The fat cells act like a blanket. It kept me warm during the colder months and made me hotter during the summer months, kind of like walking around with your own personal blanket on. So what was happening?
Blood vessel expansion and then constriction. Ever have a lid not come off a jar and you run it under some hot water and POP!! it comes off? Well heat makes things expand and cold can makes things contract. Before when I was 500pds sitting in a sauna really didn't affect me as much as it does now. I used to tell a coworker who also sits in a sauna that it wasn't hot enough in the sauna and our sauana sits about 170-180f. That is hot. Really hot. It used to take me 20 minutes just to start to get a good sweat. Now it takes me about 5 minutes to start sweating and by 15 minutes I am in a pool of sweat and am baking, literally baking lol.
I have lost so much weight that I do not have that barrier anymore. It takes less time for my body to heat up and cools down even quicker. When the body heats up the blood vessels are expanding to allow more blood flow. But when I step out of the sauna I am going straight to the shower and I am making the biggest mistake ever. I am taking a shower almost right away. I should be letting my body reacclimate to the temperature outside of the sauna. Even by taking a warm shower the water is cooling my body down rapidly and that is causing the blood vessels to constrict very quickly and causing less blood flow and since I am standing that blood is not getting to my brain as quickly as it is needed causing me to almost black out.
It made sense so I changed up my sauna routine the last couple of weeks and I feel a big change. I now only sit in the sauna for 15 minutes, if I want to sit longer I will jump out for a few minutes, let my body cool down and go back in for a little bit. But I also am not going to the shower right away, I wait 5 minutes before I do to cool down. And after realizing my mistake I now understand why I see so many people who sit in the sauna, go out, go back in and do this multiple times, It is just easier on the body to adjust rather than forcing it to rapidly adjust. I made a mistake and hopefully others wont make the same one. It could have meant injury to myself as well. I got so confident in how well I used to be able to withstand the heat in the sauana that my ego got the best of me. So if you are experiencing anything that is affecting you abnormally, listen to your body and make sure you are not forcing it to do thigs it cannot do as it once was able to do.
Have a great day people!!
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