What If Heat Is A Missing Piece

Heat can feel like comfort, but I see it as something more useful than that: a hands-on tool for pain relief, mobility, recovery, and nervous system support. I walk through thermotherapy in plain language, starting with the basics of why warmth helps tight muscles relax, why stiff joints often move better once you warm up, and how improved circulation can deliver oxygen and nutrients while clearing metabolic waste that adds to soreness. If you deal with arthritis, back pain, fibromyalgia, or that brutal “I can’t move yet” morning stiffness, you’ll recognize a lot of what we cover. 

From there, I zoom out to the everyday ways people actually use heat therapy: hot baths, warm compresses, heating pads, topical warming ingredients like capsaicin or ginger, and the deeper heat of sauna, steam room, and infrared sauna sessions. We talk about stress reduction, the relaxation response, and why warmth can help you get sleepy even if a cool bedroom helps you sleep better once you’re out. I also touch on specific situations where heat is commonly helpful, including menstrual cramps, chronic injury recovery after the initial phase, and sinus congestion where steam can loosen everything up and make breathing feel easier. 

Then we get into the “respect the tool” side: sweating, skin effects, heart rate changes, metabolism, and the real need to replace fluids and electrolytes. I share simple hydration ideas that avoid the sugar load of typical sports drinks. Finally, I connect heat to immunity and discuss hyperthermia and cancer treatment as an evolving area, including how heat can sometimes enhance other therapies and why careful limits matter to avoid burns or overdoing it. If any part of your health routine could use a smarter, safer approach to heat, this conversation will give you a solid starting point. 

Subscribe, share this with a friend who lives on a heating pad, and leave a review if the show helps you think more clearly about your health. What’s your go-to heat therapy method: sauna, hot bath, steam, or a simple warm compress?

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Welcome To Thermotherapy

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Well, hello, and welcome to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and today we're going to be talking about heat. And you know, I've talked about this a little bit in the past, and as I've talked about my journey to health from cancer, I've used heat in a number of ways, and we're going to get into the health benefits of heat in general. It'll open up the doors for some future episodes where we talk about probably sauna and sweat lodge, Temascal, that sort of thing. But today we're just going to talk about the principles and different modalities of applying heat as a therapeutic tool. So, you know, there's actually a concept of heat therapy or excuse me, thermotherapy. And really the idea of this is pretty broad sweeping, covers a lot of ground, and we're going to kind of get into a lot of it, just kind of going through some bullet points. So pain relief is one of the first ways that heat can be helpful. It can help m relieve tight muscles and spasms. So, you know, if you get an injury to a muscle or just even strain, stress, your muscles tighten up in this spasm, and that causes a lot of pain. And so when you apply heat to it, it you know feels good, feels relaxing, and you know, cold generally tightens things up, and heat generally loosens them. So when you put something warm, a warm compress, or soak your foot in a warm bath of whatever, whether it's just water, Epsom salts, whatever it is, you can go from you know cramping and and spasming muscles to the beginning of relaxing and ultimately relaxing. Joint pain relief as well. So, you know, when your joints get sore, a lot of times that happens when you're cold. You know, if you've got arthritis or even just getting a little older, as I'm finding, you get up in the morning and you start moving your hands around, my shoulders in particular feel sore, you know, the joints moving around from one side to the other, move your arm around, windmill position or whatever, and damn, it can be it can be awfully painful. But you get moving around after a while, and whether it's just the move, you know, the heat from movement, the friction of your muscles moving around, or temperature, you know, sometimes you put a couple of shirts on, a sweatshirt, whatever, before you get moving. It ultimately ends up increasing blood flow. So as you get warmer, your blood starts moving a little better, and that makes a big difference. Things like um fibromyalgia and lower back pain can be helped by heat therapy. Like I was saying before, the blood circulation is important. You can apply heat to an area, or even just put in like a topical application with capsaicin or ginger, cinnamon, one of the other heating elements, and it increases that blood flow. And really think about it. When you're bringing more blood in, you bring in more oxygen, you bring in more nutrients, and it helps with everything. You know, when you're talking about healthy cells, healthy tissue, healthy muscles. The more you get moving, the better everything works. So it gets more more energy brought, more food, more oxygen, more everything, and it helps to heal, it helps to perform all of it. And then also when you have additional blood flow, it helps bring metabolic metabolic waste away from the muscles as well. And that can help that can help move soreness away. So, you know, you move you work those muscles hard, and you know, they do produce metabolic waste, lactic acid, that sort of thing, and it helps to remove all that. So that's super helpful. There's also an area that can help with flexibility. So, you know, when you're feeling sore in the morning, you're also stiff, you try to move around, and oh man, it's hard to push your arm to move past a certain point above your head or around behind your back. And part of that has to do with you know your joints, some of it has to do with connective tissue, your tendons, ligaments, and that sort of thing. And heat can help that a well as well. And so it'd be definitely good to add heat. Like I was asked one time to create a warming cream for a fighter who was an amateur, but she was looking at going professional. And she said when she first gets up and you know starts her workout, she wanted something to help warm herself up so she could get into a rigorous workout a little quicker. And so I worked on something like that for her. It seemed to help out quite a bit. So there's lots of ways that we can get into applying heat, not just you know, actual heat, but topical compounds that generate heat, friction. There's a lot of ways to bring heat around. And then one of the things that I think is really important with the value of heat is it helps reduce stress and relaxation. So, you know, when you're cold and you're shivering, you're you're in a stress point. Your body, your body attempts to be at a certain temperature. And when you start getting cold, your body has to do things to warm it up, and it'll ultimately shut systems down to allow more blood flow to the core, to your heart and your vital organs, and it'll make your muscles start twitching and shivering and and all of that. And that's all stressful. So when you get yourself good and warm, you loosen up, you relax, and it takes stress away. You know, if you ever sat in a sauna or you know, just sitting out on a warm beach, it just feels nice, right? Just on your skin, you feel warm, you feel relaxed. You just it's it's very comforting and calming and things like a hot bath. You know, think about uh I've had a rough day at work, you know, you get yourself in a hot bath or a hot shower, just sitting in warm water. Oh, it feels so darn good, doesn't it? And it can lower, you know, the relaxation response once you start to relax those muscles and you start to you know loosen up your neck a little bit, close your eyes, your jaw starts to relax a little bit, all of those things. You start lowering your levels of cortisol, which of course is your stress hormone, and that is good for you. You don't want that cortisol up. We talk about cortisol all the time on this show, and you know, it has its purpose, and there's a reason that your body makes it, but we go overboard all the time, and increased levels for long periods of time are harmful. Excuse me. Another thing is you know, your improved sleep quality. So while it's healthy to actually sleep in a cooler environment, to get yourself to sleep a lot of times can really help to promote relaxation and help you start to feel sleepy. You know, a lot of times it's it's a cycle you get into. You know, you got all of the stress, and people will do things like drugs and drink and eat a big meal or you know, sex or whatever it is to relax themselves. But frankly, just a warm bath or or sitting in a sauna or just put a blanket around you and just you know be warm for a little while, and it could definitely help you to feel sleepy. There's a lot of things that heat can do specifically, like for women, heat applied to the abdomen can help with menstrual cramps and discomfort. And again, I've made a a warming lotion, and one of the reasons I made that specifically was for menstrual cramps. And we've had a lot of women come back and say, wow, that's really helped out a lot, you know. Fortunately, uh, as being a man, I don't know anything about menstrual cramps, but I know a lot of women, and it's a real and difficult thing that, you know, imagine going through difficulty like that, you know, on a regular cycle. That's you know, anything that we can do to make that better for the men and the women. If the men can help the women to feel better, then it's going to help the men feel better as well. We know that for sure. Injuries, he can be good for chronic injuries and help with healing. But generally, initially, when you get an injury, they want you to put ice on it. But when you have an injury that's you know begun healing over time, things like sauna, steam room, whirlpool, hot tub, that sort of thing, again, it it can help out bring blood flow to the area and and and help it to recover. Even things like sinus congestion, you know. If you get yourself a, you know, you'd sound hear me all the time. I've got a nasal condition all the time. I got this terrible radio voice, but it doesn't matter, got a lot of good words to say, so we do it anyways. But a warm compress can really help out with sinus congestion. I love the sweat lodge and the sauna and and all of that, and it definitely helps relieve my sinuses. And also, you know, I've got a lifetime of respiratory issues as well. And although I do have a formula that I make for that, I don't always take it. And when I get myself in the steam, um, it definitely helps loof loosen up congestion and uh definitely helps me breathe better and easier, especially when you put things, you know, like a little menthol or some good molin or some ocean root, some good herbs to go along with it, and all of a sudden it can really help out. Another thing it can do and just be generally helpful is you know, a sauna or steam room, it can help elevate your heart rate. So when you go sit in that sweat lodge, one of the first things that you'll notice happen when they start to, you know, put that steam over the rocks, and you're sitting in a dark place, and all of a sudden, you know, you feel the start breathing in that warm air, your heart starts getting increasing, you know, and your heart rate grows up. Well, what happens? You your metabolism rises, you start burning more calories, and it's just a natural way of things, and so for short periods of time, you know, you they it's not advised to you know stay in that type of a situation for too long, and that's why, you know, when you go into a sauna, you're generally not sitting in there for four hours, you'll be there for a little while, and but even still, there's a lasting effect, just like when you work out after your workout, your body continues to burn calories at an accelerated rate. Once your heart rate goes up, there's there's kind of a lingering after effect, and it can be definitely helpful to keeping your metabolism pumping away. Skin benefits, heat can open up your pores, improve circulation, and that can definitely help reduce impurities. So, you know, you you know, your skin gets warm, you start sweating, you know what happens? You're you're not just losing water, but you're losing minerals, you're losing impurities. You know, sometimes you might find that you get a little ingrown hair or a little breakout after a good sweat, but what's happening is you're getting those impurities out of you. And so, you know, you might find a little bottleneck here and there, but generally it helps out a lot. And uh you want to be mindful, of course, just like anything, you can overdo it. And just like any kind of therapy, you know, I talk about the double-edged sword all the time, whether it's chemotherapy, herbal therapy, exercise, sleep, fasting, whatever it is, you can overdo it. So, you know, it's be thoughtful and mindful, and we're uh that's that's my wife calling in. It's always nice to when I forget to put my phone off the hook for a podcast episode, but that's all right. We love my wife. So you gotta you gotta think about when you're doing talking about, you know, these therapies, we talk about supplements, we talk about food, all the different things. We gotta, I'm not in any way telling anybody to go ahead and go crazy, you know. Work with it, listen to it, listen to your body, pay attention, journal, write down what you feel. You know, your your body temperature is really important, you know. Your body maintains a a core temperature of about ninety-eight point six, ninety-eight point seven and I know that when you get to see it when it happens. You get a temperature. You'll end up getting feeling very uncomfortable. Your immune system wakes up. That temperature rise causes your immune system to function better. Your blood flow gets moving better, your body gets into attack mode, and although you feel lousy, your body gets in there and starts taking care of business, and you overcome problems. I know I had a situation when I was about 18 years old and I was in a coma. I got in a bad accident, and I lost all my senses. And as I recovered, figured out who I was and got my sight and hearing and the basics back, my taste and smell really didn't come back. And for about 10 years I dealt with that. But one year, one day, I got sick. I very seldom in my life have been sick. I could I can count the sick days I've had in my life. Um 60 this year, and I can look back on my life and tell you about every time I was sick in my life. And usually I didn't get sick often, but when I did, it was pretty bad. And I got strep throat, and I got this fever that took me out. And I can remember laying in my bed. I didn't know how long I was there for, but I was in this terrible fever, and I got to a point where I must have got really hot because I started hallucinating, and I had this really terrible sort of nightmare hallucination, and I came out of it, and my sense of taste was restored after 10 years. And I can't help but think that fever had something to do with it. I don't know what, I don't know, you know, all I know is after 10 years now I can taste again, and it was real. So there's something about heat and your body's immune system and your body is remarkably plastic. It can, it can, your brain especially, and you know, this was a brain injury. So it figures out how to rewire itself, put itself back together, and heat was a big, big difference. So when you get warm, you know, you get vasodilation, your blood vessels expand, it increases blood flow to the skin, allowing for heat loss. So that's that's kind of what happens is you know, you get hot, your body's trying to cool itself. It doesn't want to be too hot. You know, when you get a fever, it's not like your body's going, yeah, let's stay this way forever. It's it's raising up to solve a problem. And so when you artificially raise the temperature, like in a sauna or sweat lodge or something like that, your body's going, well, we can't do this for too long or it's gonna be toxic. So it starts bringing blood closer to the skin, allows for the heat loss, heat transfer, your sweat glands start producing sweat and evaporating, and that's how you know your body cools itself. It it the sweat will take the heat out to the edge of your skin, and then generally the air will pass by and evaporate it off. Now, in a sauna, you drip it off, but it doesn't evaporate, so it's it's a little bit different in a in a steam sauna as opposed to a dry sauna. And so, you know, we got into the metabolic process of all of that. You gotta watch out when you get into heat is one of the things is replenishment. You start sweating a lot, you can lose too many electrolytes. So electrolytes are the minerals that really help out passing the electricity along, the signals that tell your heart to beat and your lungs to breathe, and all your neurons that fire off. There's all little bits of electricity that goes on. And if it wasn't for the little minerals that the salts that are in your blood, that electricity wouldn't be able to pass along down the road. And so it's important that when you do start subjecting yourself to heat, that you want to make sure and supplement with, you know, one of the things I've always done is take a little bit of sea salt and put it in a coconut water, or just even a teeny little pinch of sea salt, put it in your water. Things like sports drinks and all that, they've got electrolytes, but they're so full of sugar and crap. It's just I I wouldn't advise against drinking them. It's just so much sugar. It's definitely not a good thing. If you want to get into A real acute element of heat therapy. And again, I've been through cancer. And so I wanted to touch on that. This is an area that's just beginning to evolve, but heat can most definitely affect cancer cells and surrounding tissues. And they call it thermal therapy, hyperthermia. You know, hypothermia is when you get too cold. Hyperthermia is about heating body tissue to enhance the effects of other cancer treatments. And so, in some ways, heat can disrupt cancer cells directly. It can disrupt cellular processes that induce apaptosis, which is just when your cells start dying off, can hinder tumor growth, it can interfere with the cells' ability to repair DNA damage caused by things like radiation, chemotherapy, some of the other therapies, and it can help make things more effective. So when I was going through my treatment and otherwise, I would, you know, I had a giant tumor sticking out of my neck, and I would take a heat lamp that was like an incubation lamp or whatever, just or a food warming lamp. It was, you know, an infrared lamp. And I would just put that thing up near my neck as close as I could handle, and I would just radiate the shit out of it. I would sit in in my steam sauna. I had an infrared sauna I would go into. So hyperthermia is generally when temperatures get from 104 to 113 degrees Fahrenheit, 40 to 45 Celsius. This is the point where cancer cells are more susceptible to damage without hurting the healthy tissues. Obviously, if you get a little too much, you're going to burn yourself. You're going to harm your harm your healthy cells, and you don't want to do that. So, you know, there's local hypothermia, hyperthermia, sorry, and that's like what I was talking about putting a lamp right on an area, targeting a specific area with heat. Then there's regional hyperthermia. That's like, you know, they've got those infrared blankets, or even just a hot water bottle. I had a hot water bottle I used a lot. That was another way that we did it, or soaking your feet in hot water. There's just a lot of ways of regional hyper hyperthermia. And then there's whole body. A lot of times, you know, if you got metastatic cancer or you got an internal cancer that you can't get to from the outside very well, then you're going to want to, you know, just hit your whole body with it. And that's sitting in that sauna or going into an infrared sauna, or they got blankets. They got a lot of different ways to do it. And again, it can stimulate not only have a direct effect on the tumor and the cancer cells, it can enhance the value of their treatments. So, you know, radiation and chemo, although many people say they're horrible, and I, you know, I'm not a big fan, although they can be effective, and especially if you know, working with adjunct modalities, you're adding stacking things to it to cause them to work better and to cause your body to protect itself more from the harmful effect on the healthy cells. And especially things like solid tumors, you know, as opposed to like blood cancer or bone cancer. It can improve the immune response as well. So, you know, part of cancer treatment is going after the tumor cells, and the other part is to stimulate your own immune system to go and attack it. So there's a lot of new clinical trials going on when it comes to the hyperthermia. But once again, we just want to be mindful that double-edged sword, you can hurt your healthy tissue if you don't do it well. You know, if I kept that light on for too long, I'd end up getting burns. Burns are difficult wounds to heal from. So, you know, it's a it's a thing that you just gotta be careful, you gotta balance yourself, you gotta pay attention to what you're doing. Healthy you start damaging the healthy tissue and you can exacerbate the problem. Also, sometimes cancer cells can protect themselves. They can turn out heat shock proteins that can protect against the heat and it can make them resistant. The thing about cancer is it's most definitely resilient. And one of the things that, you know, you gotta be careful with cancers doing the same thing for too long, watching what you're doing, making sure that the cancer is responding to it in the way you want, because if it starts to resist it, you need to pull back quickly or it's gonna learn quickly. There's also a fever therapy that has been used. And as I was talking about the fever, you know, it helps your immune system respond better. So overall, I'm gonna say I believe that heat is a very valuable resource for the healthy body, and I would encourage people to explore it. But just be mindful, just like radiation, fasting, chemotherapy, every other treatment that we'd start working with, you can easily overdo it. This is a show about health, not about extremes. And sometimes we push ourselves to certain levels to try to accomplish things, but just be mindful. Listen to your body. Don't be afraid to back off when your body's telling you I think it's a little too much. And, you know, I think that's my thoughts on heat for now. I will get deeper into the science and practices and the traditions of Sweat Lodge and Tim S. Gall on another episode. Well, I want to thank everybody for listening. This has been another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and thank you to all of our listeners for making the show possible. And we will see you next time.