Ethiopia's traditional 'sauna' therapy gains big-city popularity

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - With her face caked in honey and hair smothered in butter, Saba Yilma wafts clouds of fragrant smoke out from under a heavy leather cloak to help moderate the temperature of her "weyba tis", a traditional Ethiopian sauna therapy.

Sat on a chair above a small fire of smouldering twigs and herbs, Saba is one of a growing crowd of young urbanites who regularly enjoy the beauty treatment, which users claim also heals anything from aches to birth-related trauma.

"I had a slight pain in my thighs and my lower back. Now I am relieved," said Saba, who is in her late 20s, after a session at the Fana Weyba spa and salon in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa.

The business is owned by Fana Gebremedhin, who brought the practice from her hometown Raya in the northern region of Tigray more than two decades ago. She's about to open her third spa in the city.

"When I started this business it was only older women who were using this service," Fana said. "Now the vast majority of our clients are modern young women."

There is some early evidence that the weyba tree, main fuel in the fire, has medicinal power on mice and rats.

A study published last year in a journal of Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine found that weyba extract could be used to develop treatments for "managing immune-related disorders," though the study did not explore the potential benefits of its smoke to humans.

"We do understand that further studies are needed on this, but we have proved on ourselves ... that it is a cure for hip and joint pain, headaches and also for skin problems," said Workinesh Birru, Ethiopia's state minister of culture.

Mistir Desalegn doesn't need laboratory proof. She takes the treatment at least once a week when she's in the capital.

"The feeling I have after using the Weyba Tis is very good," she said. "My face shines."

(Reporting by Dawit Endeshaw; Editing by Hereward Holland and David Holmes)