A trip to the sauna can be incredibly relaxing—just be sure to stay hydrated. In a new report this week, doctors warn of the potential danger of not sticking to this advice: a rare but life-threatening case of heat stroke.
Doctors in the UK detailed the unusual mishap, which involved a woman in her 70s who was found unconscious with heat stroke at her local gym’s sauna. Though the woman was hospitalized for nearly two weeks as a result, she eventually recovered. But the cautionary tale does highlight the importance of regular hydration during sauna days.
According to the paper, published Tuesday in BMJ Case Reports, the woman was an avid sauna goer who had never experienced any previous issues. But that fateful day, she was found unconscious at the sauna of her local gym 45 minutes into performing stretching exercises. She was rushed to the emergency room with a dangerously high body temperature, where she was quickly cooled down with wet towels and fans, as well as given intravenous fluids and blood products.
The woman developed a seizure soon into her hospital visit, and tests revealed she had also experienced a minor heart attack and damage to her kidneys and other organs. But two hours after her temperature stabilized, she began to regain consciousness. By day three, she was no longer confused or drowsy, and she had recovered well enough to be released 12 days after she was first hospitalized. A month after her heat stroke, she had just about fully recovered, outside of some mild fatigue and liver damage.
The woman did have a history of type 1 diabetes and hypothyroidism, but she also regularly exercised and avoided smoking and heavy drinking. So she wasn’t at an especially high risk for heat stroke from hot weather conditions, her doctors say. While rare, saunas have been known to trigger cases of heat stroke in low-risk people.
“Sauna use is a rare but potentially important cause of classical heat stroke in patients with few risk factors for the disease,” the doctors wrote.
How rare? Well, the doctors looked back through the medical literature and only came across nine other reported cases of heat stroke tied to saunas. In this case, the patient herself believes that it was her lack of hydration that sealed her fate.
“As a regular sauna user I never suffered any issues and, on reflection, I believe I had not drunk enough water,” the woman wrote in an accompanying perspective.
The most important aspect of heat stroke treatment is time, since rapidly cooling someone down within thirty minutes is highly effective at reducing organ damage from the condition, according to the doctors. So in addition to reminding people to stay hydrated, the woman also hopes that sauna-owning businesses do their due diligence in keeping an timely eye on their clients.
“My experience has emphasized the dangers of saunas and how important it is to be fully hydrated on entering a sauna and for them to be regularly checked by staff,” she said.
To which she added: “As a side note, considering what I have been through, I know that I am very lucky and cannot thank the medical staff enough.”
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