<\/p>\n
The sauna at Lolu<\/p>\n
Photo: Eric England<\/a><\/p>\n Green grapes and orange citrus spill across a folding table outside Lolu, the East Nashville bathhouse that opened in the winter underneath a hot-yoga studio on Main Street. Beautiful half-naked people mill around chatting with old friends and sauna acquaintances. Some sip coffee from Subliminal, a one-man espresso operation set up in Lolu\u2019s minimalist lobby. A few relaxed deltoids \u2014 including that of Lolu co-founder Chirag Challa \u2014 sport colored Band-Aids where they were just pricked with a shot of vitamin B12 from a parking-lot pop-up booth. It\u2019s 80 degrees in this urban Eden, though each body\u2019s temperature might be coming up (from the custom 20-person Lolu cold bath kept around 45 degrees) or down (from a session sitting on the dry sauna\u2019s wood bleachers, where temperatures hover between 175 and 195 degrees).<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve seen her get over 200,\u201d Challa says proudly.<\/p>\n Thermoregulation is among the most basic functions of the human body. People across the world have packed into saunas and plunged into ice water for millennia<\/a>, particularly in Nordic countries. (Nashville\u2019s Lolu derives its name from the Finnish word l\u00f6yly, describing the steam evaporating off a sauna\u2019s hot rocks.) Slavic peoples have long relied on bathhouses. Hot springs anchor famed Japanese onsens. Mineral-rich thermal waters dot the African continent. Though Americans may encounter saunas or steam rooms at country clubs and YMCAs, the country as a whole has been slower to adopt such therapies, stereotypically the territory of retirees with insufficient towel coverage.<\/p>\n That has changed.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aWe\u2019re not reinventing anything,\u201d says Evan Galante, another co-founder of Lolu. \u201cOur North Star at Lolu is building a healthier community and helping our community live longer.<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s look at the core principles and tenets of blue zones throughout the world,\u201d he continues, referring to regions where people are believed to live longer, healthier lives. \u201cA healthy lifestyle. Eating mostly plants. And social connection is a huge part of that.\u201d<\/p>\n Mindfulness practices, a steady fitness regimen, meditation and guided breathwork led Galante to a personal sauna and cold plunge practice as he gradually shifted focus away from a demanding music industry schedule. Backyard \u201cice camps\u201d organized by Galante and friends grew to dozens of regular attendees over 18 months in 2022 and 2023. Together, strangers and friends submerged their bodies in freezing water maintained by 2,000 pounds of ice Galante picked up from a wholesaler downtown for each session. They became natural meeting places, spinning off values about living well, limiting alcohol, exercising and mental health.<\/p>\n Before we speak, Galante bookmarks his page in Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life behind Lolu\u2019s front desk.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never done a B12 shot, I\u2019ve never done an IV drip \u2014 I just don\u2019t naturally gravitate towards the biohacking practices,\u201d Galante says when asked about the day\u2019s syringe offering. \u201cI lean towards natural practices and the simplest forms of wellness.\u201d<\/p>\n Just as Lolu has brought glamour and social life to long-established wellness practices, new businesses embracing alternative medical therapies have established a lucrative grip on Nashville \u2014 particularly among those who are wealthy, healthy and young. Hot and cold regulation, used for relaxation and muscle recovery or combined in quick succession as \u201ccontrast therapy,\u201d is among the most accessible and common examples. Subjecting the body to extreme temperature changes forces increased blood circulation and aids muscle repair, complementing fitness practices like CrossFit or Pilates that have been widely adopted here in the past decade.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cold plunge pool at Lolu<\/p>\n Photo: Eric England<\/a><\/p>\n Saunas and cold therapy have little to prove. They stretch the body mentally and physically, feel good and have been adopted by entire cultures across oceans and centuries. Nashville is no different. Wedgewood-Houston\u2019s Framework health spa and Urban Sweat \u2014 the latter a four-location sauna and cold plunge studio \u2014 have celebrated grand openings in the past six months. In August, the Green Hills Family YMCA expanded its own steam room complex to keep up with exploding demand.\u00a0<\/p>\n Other businesses have gone deeper into physical health. Often labeled as clinics or medical spas, many new storefronts have staked out the city\u2019s wealthy enclaves, like the Gulch, the Nations and Green Hills, offering vitamins administered intravenously, hormone therapies, plasma injections and extensive biological testing. Wellness boundaries bleed into cosmetic services like botox injections and chemical peels \u2014 the latter a type of facial treatment that uses acid to remove exterior layers of skin \u2014 offered under \u201caesthetics,\u201d a catchall term for procedures focused on altering physical appearance. Providers explicitly market outside the realm of traditional medicine while presenting care as cutting-edge.<\/p>\n From expensively decorated waiting rooms to charismatic staff and out-of-pocket experimental services, private clinics contrast sharply with the traditional medical establishment. Many unproven, expensive or habit-inducing \u2014 or all three \u2014 businesses share the \u201cwellness\u201d label and blur the boundaries between health, body image and beauty. Gradually, users venture deeper into the \u201cbiohacking\u201d space mentioned by Galante, a broad term for more tightly managing one\u2019s body via organ function, hormone levels, proteins, vitamin intake or diet, often with aid from regular testing or wearable health tech devices.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aYou need to have a clear idea of what you want before you get into something like this,\u201d says Dr. Judson Rogers, a solo practitioner now in his fifth decade practicing internal medicine. \u201cAnd the practitioner you encounter should be able to tell you what they think they will be able to do with their therapy. That\u2019s just basic science. Otherwise you just sort of strike up a rapport with whoever\u2019s providing the service, get used to going back over and over, and forget what you are after in the first place. Living an extra 20 years is not a result you can confirm in the short term.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Rogers, who variously refers to experimental retail medicine as \u201cquackery\u201d and \u201cflapdoodle,\u201d names specific examples of supplements and weight-loss drugs. He explains that traditional medicine relies on hard science and statistically significant findings from double-blind controlled trials.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aGenerally, this sort of fringe stuff does not get a lot of attention in traditional medical journals, but maybe that\u2019s because it shouldn\u2019t,\u201d he says. \u201cMy job is: A, \u200atrying to keep people from having strokes and heart attacks; and B, seeing them in the hospital when they do have strokes and heart attacks, despite my efforts. I don\u2019t have enough time to investigate these therapies or to decide whether or not we should even think about them, because we\u2019ve got our hands full with doing traditional medicine. Other people \u200a\u2014 many who are basically well or are disgusted with establishment-type medicine \u2014 are often the ones coming to these folks to get different advice.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Nashville\u2019s alternative medical industry has a gift in a widely held distrust and dissatisfaction with traditional health care. Americans famously spend twice as much per capita<\/a> on health care as other nations, and experience poorer health outcomes. The highly profitable pharmaceutical and insurance industries leave corporations to squeeze money from individual consumers at their most desperate, creating a perverse reality shared by millions of Americans. Highly processed foods have generated a national obesity crisis. Invisible microplastics and daily chemical exposures impede the human body\u2019s natural functions from birth.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n