By Miriam Fauzia, The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS — The saying goes that you should stay out of the kitchen if you can’t take the heat, but new research suggests otherwise — for the sake of your blood pressure.

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In a study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, researchers at UNT Health Fort Worth found at-home heat therapy may hold the key to lowering blood pressure. A group of older adults wore heated pants for an hour a day, four days a week. After eight weeks, their blood flow improved and their systolic blood pressure, which measures blood flow when the heart beats, dropped by around 5 points.

The study comes at a time when nearly 120 million American adults have high blood pressure, but only one in four of those adults has it under control. In Texas, about 32% of adults report being told by a health care professional they have high blood pressure. And in 2023, high blood pressure was a primary or contributing cause in over 664,000 deaths in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Exploring ways to reduce the risks of high blood pressure — like stroke and heart attack — is crucial, and “this is an important proof-of-concept study,” said Dr. Amit Khera, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center, who was not involved in the research.

Khera doesn’t see heat therapy “as a replacement for blood pressure medicine,” he said, but he does find it intriguing. “It could be a potential adjunctive treatment for other heart diseases and problems.”

Crank up the heat

Anyone who’s stepped out of a sauna or settled into a hot tub knows heat can feel good. Research backs that up: A 2025 study found soaking in hot water can lower blood pressure, stimulate the immune system and, over time, improve how the body handles heat stress.

Other studies similarly found heat therapy can improve cardiovascular function in middle-aged and older adults — whether or not they have chronic diseases — and that its benefits can be comparable to aerobic exercise, said Scott Romero, an associate professor of physiology and anatomy at UNT Health, who led the study.

“The crazy thing is, the cardiovascular responses to heat exposure are almost identical to exercise,” Romero said. “Heart rate changes, blood flow changes, muscle changes. It’s almost identical, which is one of the reasons why we think that heat therapy is efficacious, especially in a clinical population, because it almost mimics exercise.”

Raising your core temperature with heat therapy usually means regular time in a sauna or hot tub — tough if you don’t have either. To make heat therapy more accessible, Romero and Ysabella Ruiz, the study’s first author and a graduate student in Romero’s lab, tested whether pants lined with tubes that circulate hot water could deliver similar cardiovascular benefits. (The pants, Romero said, were adapted from suits developed by NASA to study cardiovascular function during heat stress.)

The researchers recruited 19 adults, aged 55 to 80, without a diagnosed condition of high blood pressure and split them into two similarly aged groups. One wore heated pants circulating water at nearly 124 degrees Fahrenheit, which raised skin temperature to about 104 degrees. (Romero and Ruiz chose that setting based on earlier work showing it nudged up core body temperature by about one to two degrees Fahrenheit over an hour in older adults.) The other group wore pants that were mildly warm, with the water heated near 88 degrees Fahrenheit and skin temperatures just over 90 degrees. Romero said these pants would feel pleasant but wouldn’t make people sweat like in the heat therapy group.

Participants had their blood pressure checked three ways: at the start of the study, during the day while active and after eight weeks. The researchers also used ultrasound before and after the treatment to see how well it helps widen the endothelium, or inner lining, of a blood vessel to let blood flow. Problems with this lining are among the earliest signs of aging in the circulatory system and can appear even without the usual risk factors for heart disease. When the lining stops functioning normally, the risk of clogged arteries, cardiovascular disease and complications such as stroke or death goes up.

The participants kept their normal routines, setting aside an hour a day, four days a week, to wear the pants. After eight weeks, when they returned to the lab for final tests, the results stood out: systolic blood pressure was about 5 points lower for the heat therapy group, and on ultrasound, the inner lining of the blood vessels among those group members seemed much improved, dilating better than before.

Further studies needed

Romero and Ruiz aren’t sure why the heated pants led to these results. One possibility, Romero said, is that the brain adjusts how tense or springy blood vessels are in response to heat. Another is that the vessels change and improve with repeated heat exposure.

“We think that some of those things are actually changing long term,” Romero said. “We didn’t actually measure the mechanisms,” since the study focused on whether the therapy would be effective in this population.

Khera is curious how the results would translate to people with diagnosed hypertension. There’s also a question of the clinical significance of a modest drop in blood pressure when treating patients one on one.

“On a population level, if you treated 100,000 people, 5 points help,” Khera said. “But on an individual level, [blood pressure] pills are much stronger than that. … If your blood pressure is modestly high and you want to start with this as a feasible first step, as they continue to do more studies, this could be a potential treatment.”

Khera added it’s unclear how long the benefits of heat therapy last. Romero and Ruiz acknowledged that’s something they hope to determine as they investigate the underlying biology behind the results.

The researchers’ longer-term goal with at-home heat therapy is to create an accessible way for older adults to acclimate to heat.

“We know that older folks are most at risk for heat-related illnesses, especially in Texas, where we have really hot summers,” Romero said. “Those older folks are the ones who are getting sick and the ones that are dying during heat waves. Our idea is to be proactive about these heat waves and have individuals heat acclimate themselves at home.”

Romero said preliminary data from his lab suggests that at-home heat therapy can help older adults build better resilience to heat stress. That matters because heat-related deaths disproportionately affect older adults, and research from 2024 projects that as many as 246 million more people in this demographic will face dangerous levels of heat by 2050.

Miriam Fauzia is a science reporting fellow at The Dallas Morning News. Her fellowship is supported by the University of Texas at Dallas. The News makes all editorial decisions.

©2025 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The Gophers football program flipped receiver Quayd Hendryx from his commitment to Connecticut on Saturday.

The 5-foot-11, 175-pound product of Atco, N.J., pledged to UConn in July, before offers from the Gophers, Nebraska and West Virginia came in during November. He also had offers from Syracuse, Temple and others.

“After a long and meaningful conversation with my family and coaches, I’ve decided to change my commitment to the University of Minnesota!!!” Hendryx wrote on X.

Hendryx visited Minnesota in November and was planning to go to Lincoln, Neb., for their regular-season finale against Iowa this week.

At Winslow Township High School, Hendryx displayed speed as a New Jersey champion in the 100-meter, 200-meter and 100-meter relay. He also plays basketball.

Hendryx — a three-star recruit, per 247Sports — is the fifth receiver commitment in the U’s 2026 class. The group has a whopping 31 total members with the early signing window opening Dec. 3.

On this coming Thursday evening, after the Thanksgiving feast and the football games, take a walk under the stars, weather permitting. It’s a great way to fight off the drowsing effects of tryptophan and to get away from relatives, even the ones you like. Seriously, it’s a magical activity on any night this time of the year because of the early sunset and the fact that it’s generally not too outrageously cold yet.

The first thing you’ll notice later this week or this weekend is the lovely crescent moon perched in the southwestern sky.

While there aren’t any turkey constellations on the celestial stage, there are a lot of other birds up there. In fact, out of the 88 human-made constellations seen from Earth, nine of them are birds, more than any other animal. Through the course of a year over Minnesota and western Wisconsin, we can see four of the bird constellations, and the two biggest ones are available now in the evening skies.

Cygnus the Swan and Aquila the Eagle are flying in the low western sky. They’re easy to spot by using the Summer Triangle, not a constellation but a very handy tool. Just look for the three brightest stars you can see in the western sky and that’s it. I know it’s strange to be talking about a summer triangle in November but believe it or not there are still a few summer stars and constellations hanging in there in the western sky. The highest star is Deneb. The star on the lower left is Altair. The brightest star Vega, occupies the lower right corner. All three of these stars are the brightest in their respective constellations.

(Mike Lynch)

Two of the summer triangle constellations are birds. Deneb is the brightest star of Cygnus the Swan, which is making its annual swan dive toward the western horizon. It’s easier at first to see Cygnus by its nickname, “The Northern Cross.” Deneb is at the top of the nearly upright cross and just below it are three moderately bright stars arranged horizontally that depict the crosspiece of the cross. Pan down from the crosspiece, and the next brightest star you’ll see is Albireo, which marks the foot of the cross.

Turning the Northern Cross into a swan is easy with a meager amount of imagination. Deneb’s the tail of the Swan, Albireo’s the head, and the crosspiece becomes the major section of its wingspan. Look for a dim star to the upper left of the crosspiece and two dim stars to the upper right. Join them all together and you’ll end up with the nice curved wingspan.

(Mike Lynch)

Altair, on the lower left corner of the Summer Triangle, is the brightest star in Aquila the Eagle and marks the eagle’s heart. Look for a large sideways diamond that outlines the wingspan of the mighty eagle. Altair is on the top corner of the diamond.  Off the lower corner of the diamond see if you can spot a faint line of stars that makes up Aquila’s tail feathers.

The brightest star, Vega, at the lower right corner of the Summer Triangle, is also the brightest star in the very small constellation Lyra the Lyre, which is a very old-fashioned harp. That wasn’t always the case, though. In India, over 2,000 years ago, Lyra was seen as a heavenly vulture, as contrary as that sounds. Arabs saw Lyra as a goose, and in fact, in early American history, Lyra was seen as a small eagle with a harp clutched in its beak.

All three of these birds, or if you prefer, the two birds and an old-fashioned harp, are about history for the season. As 2025 eases into 2026, all three constellations will start each evening lower and lower in the western sky and will eventually slip below the western horizon before sunset. The birds will be back again next spring, flying into the eastern skies after a well-deserved winter slumber.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and retired broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is the author of “Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations,” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and adventurepublications.net. Mike is available for private star parties. You can contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.

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(Courtesy of Penguin Random House)
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde delivers a sermon during the funeral service for conservationist Dr. Jane Goodall at the Washington National Cathedral on Nov. 12, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

On Jan. 27, 2025, Mariann Edgar Budde, first female bishop and spiritual leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C., and the Washington National Cathedral, gave a homily during a prayer service following the second inauguration of President Donald Trump. Directly addressing the president, who was present, Budde asked him to “have mercy” on the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, and all who were scared. What seemed to be a Christian message to Budde sparked a firestorm of controversy. Critics said she had politicized prayer. Her allies thought she was brave to confront the president publicly.

Budde stood up for herself in later media interviews that made her name known to millions of Americans. It wasn’t the first time she had faced criticism during a career that includes 18 years as a parish priest at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Minneapolis..

How did this woman of deep faith take on the challenge of spiritual leadership in 2011 when she was elected bishop? She answered in her 2023 bestseller “How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith” (Penguin Random House). Now she and Bryan Bliss have partnered for “We Can Be Brave,” a Young Reader’s edition of the original book. Bliss is a writer, priest and theologian who chairs the religion department at Breck School in Minneapolis.

Bryan Bliss (Courtesy of the author)

“In these pages,” Budde writes, “Reverend Bryan Bliss and I have sought to place the events of June 1, 2020, and January 21, 2025, within a larger context, exploring how we learn to be brave over the course of a lifetime, and in all aspects of life, especially when the courageous decisions we make are known only to God.” (June 1, 2020, refers to the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis; Jan. 21, 2025, is the day after Trump was inaugurated for his second term as president.)

“We Can Be Brave,” in which Budde divulges a lot of her personal story, divides the journey to bravery into stages: Deciding to Go, Deciding to Stay, Deciding to Start, Stepping Up To the Plate, and the Inevitable Letdown.

Budde weaves pop culture into her narrative, including a conversation between Gandalf and Frodo in “Lord of the Rings” and references to Harry Potter. She also writes of civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. Especially helpful are little sidebars titled Learn About It and Think About It that give brief explanations of names or events on that page. What, for instance, is King’s concept of redemptive suffering?  Why can Biblical stories be described as archetypes or “myths”?

Although “We Can Be Brave” is marketed to young readers, it’s equally compelling for adults as we grapple with questions of church and state.

Budde, Bliss and Andrew Karre, St. Paul-based executive editor at Dutton Books for Young Readers, will talk about the new book at 6 p.m. Monday at Red Balloon Bookshop, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul. If the free event needs to be moved to a bigger venue, it will be at St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church, 60 N. Kent St., St. Paul. Advance registration necessary. Go to redballoonbookshop.com.

Also this week:

PEG GUILFOYLE: Discusses her new book “An Eye for Joy: Noticing the Good World Everywhere.” 4 p.m. Nov. 23, SubText Books, 6 W. Fifth St., St. Paul. 10 a.m. Saturday, Lake Country Booksellers, 4766 Washington Ave., White Bear Lake.

STEPHANIE HANSEN: Discusses “True North Cabin Cookbook Vol. 2.” 1 p.m. Saturday, Next Chapter Booksellers, 38 S. Snelling Ave., St. Paul.

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