It’s 96 degrees outside, and I’m sitting in the sauna. I’ll admit—I didn’t push the temperature as high as I normally would. In the summer, I tend to keep it around 160 degrees. Still, for most people, the idea of stepping into that kind of heat when it’s already scorching outside feels excessive, if not absurd. But sauna has never just been about comfort. The Practice of Voluntary Discomfort Part of sauna is learning how to sit with intensity. Heat becomes a kind of teacher.

There are certain foods that carry more weight than we give them credit for. Beets are one of those foods. I could go on about their full nutritional profile, but instead, I want to focus on just one component—something simple, often overlooked, and surprisingly powerful: nitrates. Beets are naturally high in inorganic nitrates. When you consume them, your body converts these nitrates into nitrites, and then into nitric oxide. That last step is where the magic happens. Nitric