What could be simpler than steam? Yet the global spa industry has found seemingly endless variations on hot-water vapor. There’s a Turkish hammam in Zurich and a Korean jjimjilbang in Sydney. Russian banyas can be found in New York, Paris, London, and Berlin. There’s even a banya in Buenos Aires that exiled Russians opened earlier this year. The extravagantly priced Aman hotel in New York has a banya “experience,” complete with a steam room and and birch-twig beatings, which costs $6,200 for three hours. (The upsides: you can bring one friend for no extra charge, and the hotel throws in a “personalized healthy lunch.”)
Steam rooms are no longer populated only by old men on The Sopranos. Younger generations are turning away from alcohol and bar culture and seeking out new places to socialize. There’s growing evidence, too, that heat therapies, especially sauna, can soothe joint pain among the elderly and even support cardiovascular health. A 2015 study by the University of Eastern Finland followed 2,000 male sauna users over 20 years and found that they had significantly lowered the risk of Alzheimer’s, strokes, and cardiac events.
