
How Heat Kills Cells - Errorcod3
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-heat-kills-cells/
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kapuru
What about tanning (or tanning studios)? I know there's a big difference
between a sauna and a tanning studio, but since we're talking about heating up
the body, would it have the same effect? (...despite causing skin cancer)

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matt4077
A sauna does not heat up the body enough to trigger protein denaturation
(unless you get locked in and die, which happens to be among my worst
nightmares).

Core temperature is tightly regulated, as well. It should be 37degC. Plus or
minus just 2 degrees will severely impair function, plus or minus 5 degrees is
reason to call 911.

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ziikutv
To add to this...

Saunas and ice baths don't damage cells but actually have benefits. Don't
quote me as this is a rephrase that makes it sound like bro-science, it
actually activate some heat shock proteins and also leads to hormone release.

Better, sound science can be sourced from Dr. Rhonda Patrick a la Tim Ferriss
podcast or Google Scholar

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galfarragem
Noob question. Is it possible to explain the benefits of sauna with this
research?

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twobyfour
Our mammalian bodies go to great lengths to keep our cells at a stable
temperature to prevent protein denaturation from killing our cells. Our first
line of defense for thermostasis is our circulatory system (to carry extra
heat energy away from overheated organs towards the surface where it can
dissipate), combined with sweating (to allow evaporative phase change to cool
the blood near the skin).

One can argue whether sweating in this context does or does not also carry off
toxins. But in addition to its thermoregulatory role, increased circulation is
one of the body's natural healing mechanisms. (Out of control increased
circulation causing tissue damage is one of the reasons we ice injuries.) It
delivers oxygen and nutrients to our cells. Increased circulation in the sauna
may be giving the body the chance to deliver more of these things and to
repair cells and organs at a higher rate than it might otherwise.

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iplaw
I've heard similar things about athletic training while mildly overheated.
Training while overheated promotes adaptations to increase the cooling
efficiency of your body. These adaptations include increasing heart rate,
circulation, blood plasma volume, etc. This, in turn, promotes improvements to
endurance, ability to perform in both normal and overheated states, etc.

~~~
twobyfour
That's intriguing. Where might one be able to read more about that?

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iplaw
I can't remember what journal I was reading, but I was able to quickly find a
fluff article with some decent information [1] that happens to mention an on-
point cycling study [2].

For me, this involves training outside in the Texas summer heat (100F+) with
plain water. When I race, it is usually earlier in the day (80-90F) and I
sometimes use ice socks in my jersey and ice water in my bottles to keep my
core temperature down.

[1] [http://blog.airiarunning.com/heat-training-does-it-boost-
run...](http://blog.airiarunning.com/heat-training-does-it-boost-running-
performance/)

[2]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2963322/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2963322/)

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galfarragem
That would corroborate long distance runners from Kenya and Ethiopia.

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Errorcod3
Cell-wide analysis of protein thermal unfolding reveals determinants of
thermostability:
[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6327/eaai7825.long](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6327/eaai7825.long)

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Shivetya
so how this tie in if at all with the article stating cells can reach 50C in
burst while providing energy?
[https://www.newscientist.com/article/2129849-the-energy-
gene...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2129849-the-energy-generators-
inside-our-cells-reach-a-sizzling-50c/)

does this give us the upper limit of the sources we can convert?

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JPLeRouzic
I am not a scientist but I think there is a problem in the article that you
are correctly (IMO) pointing out. It is that the notion of temperature has not
the same meaning at molecular level and at macro level.

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retox
Kudos for putting the summary at the very top of the page.

>The proteins that unravel as the temperature starts to rise turn out to be
among the most vital.

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iplaw
I also appreciated the dynamic progression indicator at the top of the page.
Some of these journal articles are organized and written such that there is no
end in sight - it's hard to intuitively know where you are in the article, if
you are nearly the buried results/conclusion, etc. The simply indicator tracks
progress through the article without having to glance at the oft-invisible
right-side scrollbar.

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retox
I haven't had that problem as far as I can remember, I rely on the (very thin)
scroll bar that's shown on firefox for android.

I'm diverging into off-topic territory now, but I stopped reading the featured
article because of the large static header div. Am I in the minority of mobile
users who spends all the time in horizontal mode? It seems that probably 50%
of mainstream blog or news sites I come across have some sort of obnoxious
static header or footer (or worst, both!) that takes up a huge portion of the
view when horizontal. Usually useless shit like a link to the main page, or
their social media mention count. I take a screenshot of the worst offenders
but I haven't posted them anywhere. The absolute criminal in this respect is
tech crunch. You MUST orient to portrait and click the expand article button
to read anything. Really unprofessional and disappointing, I avoid their links
if I catch it in time.

Sorry, rant over.

