A brief history & the benefits of Infrared Saunas
Infrared technology; by surprise is not a new concept, it was first discovered in the early 1800s by Sir William Herschel. At this point, it wasn’t known for its immense health benefits until Dr John Harvey Kellogg began working with light and created the first infrared ‘light bath’ in 1891.
Hot saunas themselves have been used for millennia across multiple ancient civilisations; the Mayans, Chinese and Native Americans all had their own versions of sauna therapy and some were even portable for the nomadic type.
Today infrared saunas are found at your local and major sports clubs, private residences, hotels, wellness centres, gyms and even floatation centres like ours. They are being used for a wide array of benefits they have on your overall health and well-being.
Whilst in the sauna your body is going through a kind of stress, a heat stress. This stress is incredibly beneficial for your body to build resilience and fortify itself. Your body will create an abundance of whats called Heat Shock Proteins (HSPs). These aid in folding proteins to create cells in the body. If proteins are misfolded or unfolded, protein aggregation can occur where the cell will become damaged. A damaged cell can lead to many ill health effects ie; cancers, heart disease, autoimmune disorders.
A major reason why people are using saunas more is for pain relief. Whether it be chronic pain, joint pain, headaches, arthritis, fibromyalgia or sports injuries the sauna helps release large amounts of endorphins, enkephalins, serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. These are all neurotransmitters which help regulate pain, mood, sleep, appetite, anxiety, sexuality and concentration and have many jobs relaying messages from body to brain.
If just sitting in the warmth isn’t relaxing enough, it is biologically making you calmer. Whilst in the sauna (under stress) your cortisol levels and heart rate are elevated, like they would be during exercise. This is where a lot of endorphins and serotonin (the happy drug) are released into the blood and pumped rapidly around the body giving you feelings of euphoria and immense calmness, like a fresh easterly breeze off the Pacific Ocean. Your body will build resilience to external stress’ the more it faces it in the environment, think- short term pain, long term gain.
Using a sauna 3 times a week can increase your lifespan by up to 15%
Benefits of Infrared Sauna therapy are becoming more and more prevalent with the more research that is being done across the globe. Longevity is one that I am personally more interested in. With research showing, using a sauna 3 times a week can increase your lifespan by up to 15%. In Fact, a study was done on males using a sauna 5 times a week for a long period of time, all displaying a decrease in all-cause mortality by 40% (that is death from any cause).
The sauna can be used to help regulate sleep patterns, drop off those extra few kilos on your scale, increase muscle hypertrophy by increasing human growth hormones (HGH) throughout the body, increased collagen production to give your brain and skin the elasticity they need to both grow and give you that deepened relaxed feeling throughout the body.
So, if you are after radiant glowing skin, an easy detox and a new healthy outlook on life, our infrared sauna might just be for you.
