A sauna is hot and dry; a steam room is cooler and wet. Most of the health claims you will read about both come from Finnish studies of dry saunas, and the reviews that report them leave steam out on purpose. Here is what each one is, what the studies found, the one experiment that compared them directly, how long to stay in, who should skip both, and what our herbal steam in Hội An is and costs.
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Steam room or sauna? A sauna is a dry room at around 80 to 100°C; a steam room is far cooler, often in the forties, but the air is saturated with water. Most articles on the benefits of either quote the same impressive numbers, fewer heart deaths and longer lives, and almost all of those numbers come from studies of Finnish men in dry saunas. The researchers who published them say plainly that steam was not part of the evidence. This page sorts out what belongs to which room. We are Nghê Prana, a riverside hotel and spa on the Thu Bồn at Cẩm Nam in Hội An; we have a herbal steam and no dry sauna, so we have an interest in steam sounding good, and we have written this page so that it does not depend on that.
| Dry sauna | Steam room | |
|---|---|---|
| Temperature | About 80 to 100°C at head height in a Finnish sauna; 65 to 90°C in a typical one | About 40 to 50°C; published ranges run from 37 to 70°C |
| Humidity | Low, about 10 to 20 percent | Close to 100 percent |
| How it feels | Hot, dry air; sweat evaporates | Cooler air that feels heavier; sweat stays on the skin |
| Long-term evidence | Large Finnish cohort: regular use associated with fewer cardiovascular deaths | No comparable study |
| Measured strain, one direct comparison | Smaller rise in core temperature and heart rate; larger rise in systolic blood pressure | Larger rise in core temperature and heart rate |
| How long per session | Up to 15 or 20 minutes; Finnish sessions usually run 5 to 20 | 15 to 20 minutes at most; one Vietnamese page says 15 |
| Skip it if | Recent heart attack or stroke, unstable heart disease, uncontrolled blood pressure, pregnancy without a doctor's advice, fever, alcohol | The same; one Vietnamese list adds asthma |
The temperatures are from a 2018 review in Mayo Clinic Proceedings and the Cleveland Clinic for the sauna, and from Vinmec, Long Châu and a Polish experiment for the steam room; each source is linked below. The two rooms are not as far apart in strain as they are in temperature, and that surprises most people.
A Finnish sauna heats the air with a stove and keeps it dry. The Mayo Clinic Proceedings review by Laukkanen, Laukkanen and Kunutsor gives the recommended temperature as 80 to 100°C at the bather's head and says "the relative humidity of sauna usually varies from 10% to 20%"; water thrown on the stones raises it briefly. The Cleveland Clinic puts most saunas between 65 and 90°C with humidity "less than 20%". A steam room works the other way round: the air is much cooler but saturated. Vinmec's Vietnamese page on steam rooms, translated from Healthline, gives "43-49 ° C và độ ẩm tương đối 100%", 43 to 49°C at 100 percent humidity; the pharmacy chain Long Châu gives 37 to 45°C and "độ ẩm cao khoảng gần 100%". In dry air your sweat evaporates and cools you; in saturated air it cannot, which is the usual explanation for why a steam room at 45°C can feel as hard going as a sauna at 85.
The numbers everyone quotes come from the Kuopio Ischemic Heart Disease study in eastern Finland. In JAMA Internal Medicine in 2015, Laukkanen and colleagues followed 2,315 men aged 42 to 60 for a median of 20.7 years. Against men who took a sauna once a week, the hazard ratio for sudden cardiac death was 0.78 for two or three sessions a week and 0.37 for four to seven. The study is observational: the abstract says sauna use was "associated" with fewer deaths, not that it caused them, and men healthy enough to take a sauna every day may differ in other ways from men who do not.
The same group's 2018 review is careful about what it covers. It "focuses only on the evidence from the traditional Finnish saunas", setting aside infrared saunas and the Turkish bath, and it says "It is not known whether saunas operating at lower temperatures or other passive heat therapies would yield similar cardiovascular effects". It also describes the evidence for saunas as "mainly uncontrolled small intervention studies" and observational designs. A second review, by Hussain and Cohen in 2018, excluded steam altogether and wrote that "It is currently unclear whether steam saunas invoke the same degree of physiological responses as dry saunas". So when a page about steam room benefits quotes the Finnish heart figures, it is quoting a study of a different room.
We searched the medical literature on 21 October 2026 for studies of steam baths and steam rooms and found very little: no long-term study of health outcomes, and no trial of steam rooms and skin. The one experiment we found that put the same people in both rooms is small. Pilch and colleagues in Poland sent ten young men into a dry sauna at about 91°C and a wet one at 59°C and 60.5 percent humidity, and recorded "larger increases in rectal temperature and heart rate" in the wet one, while systolic blood pressure rose more after the dry one. Their conclusion was that "the wet sauna is more stressful for the organism than the dry sauna". Ten men is not a basis for a rule, but it is a reason not to assume steam is the gentler room.
The other evidence is about breathing warm, moist air. A Cochrane review of six trials with 387 people found the evidence "does not show any benefits or harms" from heated, humidified air for the common cold, though that air came from a nasal device rather than a steam room. A trial in Thailand by Tungsukruthai and colleagues gave 64 people with allergic rhinitis 30-minute steam baths three times a week for four weeks, with herbs or without. Symptoms fell in both groups, and there was "no difference in the effectiveness of steam bath with herbs and steam bath without herbs"; the herbal group was "significantly more satisfied". There was no group without steam, so the trial cannot say whether the steam itself did the work.
| What you will read about steam rooms | What we found |
|---|---|
| Steam is good for your heart and helps you live longer | Those figures are for dry Finnish saunas; the reviews exclude steam |
| Steam is gentler than a sauna | In the one direct comparison, steam raised core temperature and heart rate more |
| Steam clears a cold | No benefit shown for heated, humid air in colds (Cochrane, 2017); it may feel easier to breathe |
| Herbs make the steam work better | No difference in the one trial; people liked the herbal version more |
| Steam lowers blood pressure | One Vietnamese page says it has been proven; we found no study that shows it |
| Sweating flushes out toxins | Vinmec's own page says there is no evidence for it |
What is left is modest and honest. A steam room is warm, quiet and wet, and for many people that is relaxing; some people find moist air easier on a blocked nose, though no trial has shown a benefit for colds. The disagreements are worth knowing because you will meet them. Vinmec's page on what steam does says steam "đã được chứng minh là làm giảm huyết áp", has been proven to lower blood pressure, and we could not find the study behind that. Its other page says "Không có bằng chứng nào cho thấy việc đổ mồ hôi ... sẽ giải phóng các chất độc", there is no evidence that sweating releases toxins, and it lists asthma among reasons to avoid steam, while Long Châu says steam helps asthma. Both Vinmec pages are translations from Healthline, not original hospital guidance. With asthma, ask your own doctor rather than either page.
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The guidance clusters around a quarter of an hour. Vinmec: "Không sử dụng phòng xông hơi quá 15 phút mỗi lần", no more than 15 minutes at a time, and its second page warns that more than 15 minutes in a steam room can dehydrate you. Harvard Health: "Stay in no more than 15–20 minutes." The Cleveland Clinic: "around 15 to 20 minutes". In VnExpress, Dr Huỳnh Tấn Vũ of the University Medical Center in Ho Chi Minh City suggests whole-body steam two or three times a week, 15 to 20 minutes at most each time. Finnish saunas, by the review's account, usually last 5 to 20 minutes. Our steam is sold in 20- and 30-minute bookings, and we would rather say this than sell you the longer one: 20 minutes is the one that sits inside the guidance. In a 30-minute booking the time is yours, not a target; step out, cool down and go back in if you want to.
Sauna deaths are rare, fewer than two per 100,000 people a year in Finland according to Kenttämies and Karkola, and the authors' advice is simple: "avoid leaving a drunken bather alone in the sauna". Drink water before and after. Stop if you feel dizzy, sick or short of breath, and sit down outside rather than standing straight up.
| Herbal steam (xông hơi) | 20 min | 30 min |
|---|---|---|
| One person, private | 300,000₫ | 350,000₫ |
| Two or more, shared, per person | 250,000₫ | 300,000₫ |
Prices from our live spa menu on 21 October 2026; at the 26,000₫ rate we use across the site, 250,000₫ is about US$10, 300,000₫ about US$12 and 350,000₫ about US$13. Our steam is a Vietnamese xông hơi: lemongrass and local herbs in hot steam, in a private room, alone or with the people you came with. Our menu lists it under the heading "Sauna", but it is a steam room; we have no dry sauna. The herbs are there because they smell good and because this is how steam is done in Vietnamese homes, and given the Thai trial we will not claim more for them than that. The xông hơi page explains the tradition and the plants, and our page on the order of an afternoon explains why the steam goes before a massage and never straight after it. If you would rather soak than steam, our page on hot tubs does the same job for the jacuzzi.
No study has followed people who use steam rooms for years, so nobody knows whether steam does anything for the heart. The Finnish sauna figures are from one region, mostly from men, and observational. The only direct comparison of the two rooms had ten participants. The temperatures we quote for steam rooms come from Vietnamese pages translated from Healthline, a pharmacy chain and one Polish experiment, and they do not agree with each other. We did not measure the temperature of our own steam room for this page. And we are a hotel spa, not a clinic: if you have a heart condition, your doctor's advice comes before any of this.
Nghê Prana Riverside Hotel & Spa, Hẻm 384 Nguyễn Tri Phương, Cẩm Nam, Hội An, on the Thu Bồn, 3.2 km from the Old Town. The spa is open from 9:00 to 21:00 every day and takes visitors as well as hotel guests. Book on the online form or by phone or WhatsApp on +84 896 687 961; the same day is usually fine for the steam. Tell us at booking about pregnancy, heart or blood-pressure medication, or a fever, and come with something light in your stomach and no alcohol. After the steam, our page on what to do after a massage covers water and the shower. Coming as two? The steam is cheaper per person when you share it, and the rest of the two-person menu is on the couple spa page.
Sources: Laukkanen T et al., JAMA Internal Medicine, 2015; Laukkanen JA, Laukkanen T and Kunutsor SK, Mayo Clinic Proceedings 93(8), 2018; Hussain J and Cohen M, Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2018; Pilch W et al., Biology of Sport, 2014; Singh M et al., Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2017; Tungsukruthai P et al., Journal of Integrative Medicine, 2018; Kenttämies A and Karkola K, Journal of Forensic Sciences, 2008; Cleveland Clinic, 12 August 2024; Harvard Health Publishing, 14 May 2020; Vinmec, two pages updated 22 July 2024; Long Châu, 27 September 2024; VnExpress, 21 August 2021. All read 21 October 2026; prices from the Nghê Prana spa menu the same day.
23 rooms on the quiet south bank of the Thu Bồn River, ten minutes by bicycle from the Ancient Town and a world from its noise.
Book your stayA Finnish sauna is hot and dry, about 80 to 100°C at head height with 10 to 20 percent humidity (Mayo Clinic Proceedings review, 2018). A steam room is much cooler, usually about 40 to 50°C, but close to 100 percent humidity, so sweat cannot evaporate and it can feel as hard going as a sauna.
Nobody has shown that either is better. The well-known heart and longevity figures come from Finnish studies of dry saunas, and the reviews that report them exclude steam. In the one direct comparison, ten young men had larger rises in core temperature and heart rate in a wet sauna than in a dry one (Pilch et al., 2014).
Modest ones: warmth and relaxation, and some people find moist air easier on a blocked nose. No long-term study of steam rooms and health exists, a Cochrane review found no benefit of heated humid air for colds, and the claims that steam lowers blood pressure or sweats out toxins are not supported by the studies we found.
About 15 minutes, 20 at most. Vinmec says no more than 15 minutes at a time; Harvard Health says no more than 15 to 20; the Cleveland Clinic says around 15 to 20. Drink water before and after, and get out if you feel dizzy or sick.
Anyone with a recent heart attack or stroke, unstable angina, heart failure or blood pressure that is not controlled; anyone pregnant, unless a doctor has agreed; anyone with a fever or infection; and anyone who has been drinking. In Finland half of all sauna deaths from 1990 to 2002 involved alcohol (Kenttämies and Karkola, 2008).
A steam room: a private Vietnamese herbal steam (xông hơi) with lemongrass and local herbs. There is no dry sauna, although the menu lists the steam under the heading Sauna. It is 300,000₫ for 20 minutes or 350,000₫ for 30 for one person, or 250,000₫ and 300,000₫ each for two or more (menu read 21 October 2026).
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