These are the Top 5 Mistakes When Buying an Infrared Sauna:
1) Thinking You Need Anything Other Than Far Infrared in your Infrared Sauna
2) Overspending Because XYZ Sauna Company Says “The Wood Will Make Or Break Your Sauna Experience”
3) Believing EMF Reports From Sauna Companies
4) Not Understanding That EMF Is Plural
5) Buying In To Concepts, Reviews, And Opinions From Slick Sales People… Who Have Never Used Both Sauna Brands You’re Comparing
Video Transcript (AI Generated)
Welcome to another edition of Infrared Sauna Expert, your source for saunas, detox, and health improvement devices.
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As always, resources and show notes can be found on infraredsaunaexpert.com, or if you’re looking for the approved list of sauna brands, certifiedsaunas.com has all the updated info.
Let’s jump into today’s episode with your go-to infrared sauna expert, Matt Justice.
All right.
You guys ready for this?
The most asked about questions all in one video.
The top five mistakes consumers make when buying an infrared sauna.
I’ve got variations of each of these five points in their own video.
Some of them are older.
Here’s one that’s going to be put all together.
Mistake number one, consumers make when buying an infrared sauna in 2020, thinking they need anything other than far infrared.
There’s all this talk about the near infrared.
There’s $3,000 tent saunas that you can buy, which I think are a complete joke.
Each of those light bulbs you can buy from Home Depot for $10 each.
You can order them on Amazon if you want the premium ones.
They’re $25 each.
That’s $100.
You get some cloth and some stick frames to make a tent for another $100.
That’s $200.
You can get a stool from Walmart for about $20.
You’ve got about $220.
You’re going to spend $3,000 to buy a near infrared sauna.
First off, the confusion amongst sauna companies that they are causing by using various marketing hooks, we’ll call them.
We’ll keep it classy instead of just say they’re flat out lying to you.
Near infrared doesn’t heat you up.
The lamp saunas like the Dr.
Wilson inspired lamp saunas that people are talking about and they’re $2,000 to $3,000, which I’m just harped on.
Guys, it’s the heat from the bulb and the far infrared portion of the wavelength that’s heating you up.
If it was just near infrared and there was no heat from the heat lamp bulb itself, you wouldn’t get a sauna experience.
This is why a lot of the near infrared light bulb saunas, they don’t work unless you put them in an insulated enclosure.
You’ll do all right.
You’ll get an okay sweat, but your whole body is not going to sweat.
You’re not going to get sweat dripping from the backs of your elbows.
This is what people fail to tell everyone.
You have to rotate on that stool like a rotisserie because the bulbs are so flipping hot, you can only keep them on one side of you for maybe four minutes, maybe five if you’re brave.
The biggest mistake is that seeing all this controversial marketing hooks or all these controversial marketing hooks in 2020, other sauna companies will use fear as a way to get you to buy into a full spectrum sauna.
There’s one company out there that says they have a proprietary patented way to deliver far, mid and near infrared in this panel.
They also put near infrared LED light arrays behind a grill and say that you’re going to get near infrared therapy that way in their saunas.
The real disheartening part of that is that they use fear to market them and to get you to overspend when you don’t need to.
They’ll say if you don’t have all three wavelengths, you’re not going to get a complete detox or you’re not going to get the healing health benefits that you need.
If you look at any other sauna besides ours, and it’s kind of like that’s never the case.
There’s Lowe’s across the street from Home Depot.
There’s Albertsons and Publix grocery stores.
There’s always examples of 7-Eleven across the street from a Shell or a Sitco or whatever.
There’s never any one way to do something normally and there’s hardly ever only one product that can ever do anyone any good.
So I would say that the number one mistake is buying into charlatans that are trying to convince you that there’s only one brand of sauna that could ever help anybody.
You see this in the Facebook groups.
You see this in some of the forums.
You see this in the dogmatic like sheeple type of groups and membership forums.
And people just buy into this idea and they think that everyone’s trying to be so helpful and it’s really not.
So far infrared is 85%, at least 80% and I’m being very conservative.
It’s the majority of your experience in an infrared sauna.
So really just focus on far infrared.
Number two, second mistake consumers make when buying an infrared sauna, overspending because XYZ sauna company says the wood will make or break their sauna experience.
Now if you’re talking about a cheap sauna like a J&H Lifestyles or something that’s really poorly made on Amazon or even some of the ones that they stock at Costco every now and then, even the dynamic cabinetry isn’t that bad.
Build quality is okay.
I don’t know where they source the wood from.
But as long as you’re talking about top tier saunas, like if you go to the certified sauna list and you’re looking for a low VOC, low EMF, a higher end sauna, once you get into that, those upper echelons or those upper tiers, the type of wood isn’t really going to make your experience any better.
It’s not going to help you detox better.
It’s not going to help you sweat better.
It’s literally going to smell different.
And so sauna companies use this to sabotage the customer buying process like crazy.
Some of them will even say, “Oh, if you don’t have poplar, you know, the other woods are toxic and all this stuff.”
But here’s the kicker.
I have one of those.
And if you put a VOC meter in it, you’ll see that that sauna with the poplar reads higher on the VOC meter than one in Hemlock.
So it’s, you know, most of this stuff is a fallacy.
The people that are telling you this, they didn’t create the company.
They’re not out there in the forest cutting down the trees.
Hell, they’ve never even seen the warehouse.
They’ve never even traveled to the manufacturing facility and seen the wood before it goes through a planer.
They’re just telling you this stuff based on their company culture and the ideas that they had and, you know, all these types of things.
Hemlock is fine.
Basswood is fine.
Cedar is fine.
You know, poplar is fine.
To me, they’re all fine.
I’ve used every single type and the type of wood has never made a difference in my sauna experience.
Now, in a steam sauna, the cedar thing being a little bit more mold resistant and stuff like that, I wouldn’t say that that’s a stretch.
That must be true or that part is true.
But people that are chemically sensitive usually stay away from cedar or any other lumber that emits an oil because it can be agitating to the skin.
And there’s other companies that have really strong basswoods that I could really not like or don’t care for.
Personally, I think hemlock is easy because the smell is pleasant, usually has a low odor if any, and the wood is quality.
It’s very strong, doesn’t splinter.
And you know, you’ll hear the opposite.
Another company will come along and say, “Oh, you’ve got to have cedar or you’re going to get mold in your sauna.”
Since when does an infrared sauna produce moisture other than what comes out of your skin?
It’s not like you’re throwing water on rocks in this thing.
There is no mold.
And if there was any moisture left over from your sweat, as soon as you preheat the sauna, it dries it out the next cycle.
So it’s just there’s so many fallacies about the wood.
Sauna companies try to use the wood as a selling point.
And out of all the saunas that I’ve been in, the wood has never been a selling point.
It will not make a difference.
Maybe back in the day it was, but after you try them all and you realize that that is not going to make or break your sauna experience, it shouldn’t necessarily be high on the criteria unless you just have a smell preference or you’re looking for something specific to match whatever.
I don’t know.
So those are my thoughts on the wood.
Point number three, top mistake or third mistake that consumers make when buying an infrared sauna, believing EMF reports from companies.
If you read the Fide and Print on a lot of these, you will see that they take a heat — I sound like a broken record.
I say this so many times.
These people, these companies, these marketing sectors of these sauna brands or sauna companies are literally taking the sauna apart.
They’re taking a single heater held up by a rope, shipping it to a lab somewhere else in another state, having it tested so they can take fancy pictures and have documented measurements by a third party.
This whole third party EMF testing thing is a complete joke.
It’s absolutely ridiculous.
Let me explain this to you in a really simple to understand way.
As soon as you alter the native environment of the sauna, right, and when I say alter, I mean are you going to take the sauna apart when you use it?
When you get it in your house and you set it up, are you going to take a heater out?
Are you going to test that heater and then say, “Oh, it’s good for EMFs”?
Or are you going to use it fully assembled?
So why would you want third party EMF testing done on your sauna with it disassembled in some fashion or why would you only want part of it tested instead of the whole thing?
So there’s two problems with this.
I’ll just make it short and sweet.
First problem is if you take a heater out, you send it to a lab, you’re only getting measurements on that one heater.
There’s most likely seven to eight heaters in your sauna.
So whatever measurements are on that heater, multiply that times seven or eight.
Then you’re still going to start to come up with some real numbers, most likely.
When you talk about electric fields and body voltage, that is.
Second thing is there’s other EMF sources in your sauna other than the single heater that they took out and shipped to a lab.
You’ve got the wiring in the walls.
You’ve got the control panel.
You’ve got the electronics and the accessories on the roof.
You’ve got the power supply underneath your butt that has the unshielded or shielded.
It depends if you’re dealing with a good company or not.
Cable, the supply line cable coming in underneath you.
And so all of these things inside the cabin are really going to make or break the EMF testing.
So if you’re relying on third party EMF testing from sauna companies with these fancy little reports, you’re not going to get that.
So point number four, fourth most popular mistake consumers make when buying an infrared sauna, not understanding that the word or term EMF is plural.
What does EMF stand for?
EMF stands for electromagnetic fields.
Does that sound like one thing to you?
If it does, it’s two.
It’s two things.
Electromagnetic fields and magnetic fields give you electromagnetic fields.
So you measure electric fields in volts per meter.
Typically, you measure magnetic fields usually in milligauss.
And so sauna companies will say, you know, one of the ways that you can tell is if they have on their website, cell phones give off, you know, an EMF level of six.
Our sauna is less than two.
Cell phones give off RF radiation, which isn’t even included in electromagnetic fields.
So you’re testing two completely different things in an infrared sauna.
You’re looking for electric fields in volts per meter, and you’re looking for magnetic fields in milligauss.
And so most of the time people will just show you on a gauss meter what the milligauss is, but the electric fields go completely, they’re left unchecked.
And the way that you can double check this is to take body voltage measurements like I do for all the saunas on the certified sauna list.
An example of this would be if you go to certifiedsaunas.com and just look down the list at any brand and look for the live testing link, it’ll take you to YouTube.
You’ll see all the equipment that’s being used.
That’s how an EMF test should be done.
And the reason why there’s different meters for different things is because EMF means more than one thing.
So the biggest mistake that consumers make when buying an infrared sauna is buying into this idea that, oh, the sauna company has a gauss meter.
It must be low EMF because they just showed it to me.
Not the case.
You should be checking for more than one thing.
You should have a clear understanding that EMF means more than one thing.
So point number five, the fifth mistake that consumers make when buying an infrared sauna, buying into concepts, reviews, and opinions from slick salespeople who have never used the products you’re comparing.
This is probably the biggest one because this is what causes me to have to answer so many questions and do so many comparisons.
And it’s the same stuff over and over and over.
And a lot of the times now I refuse to do it because here’s why.
A sauna company will hire a sales staff or somebody to do phone sales for them.
That person may not even own one of the saunas of the brand of the company that they work for.
Think about that.
You have someone here that’s advising you on a $5,000, they’re less than that and more than that.
It depends on what you buy.
But let’s just say middle of the road, $5,000 purchase decision, but they don’t personally own the model that you’re interested in or the brand that you’re interested in or the brand of the company that they work for.
Think about how ridiculous that is.
Can you imagine talking to them and saying, “Oh, what about this feature and what about that feature?”
And they’re going to sit there and they’re going to tell you and you can’t see them on the other end of the phone.
They’re flipping through the brochure because they don’t know what it looks like because they don’t have one in their house or they’ve never used one.
Or to make matters worse, here’s what I really don’t like.
Here’s what really irks me.
A sauna company will get an email from a customer.
They’re saying, “Hey, I saw Matt’s videos.
He recommends this sauna, but I’m still interested in yours.”
Totally fine.
You should do your due diligence always.
They’ll come back with some big long response, “Oh, well, Matt this or Matt that or this sauna brand that you’re comparing this or da-da-da-da-da.”
I don’t really care what they say about me.
The key part is they will tell you all the reasons that the brand that you’re comparing is terrible and why you should buy theirs.
Yet, if you sat down with them and you said, “So when was the last time you were in that brand that you say not to buy, that you say is so bad?”
They would say something like, “Whoa, what do you mean?
I’ve never used that one.
But wait a minute, you just told me that you advised me on this $5,000 purchase decision that I should buy yours and that that brand was terrible, but you’ve never been in it?
Well, how do you have this data?
How do you have this opinion?
How do you have these experiences?”
“Oh, well, you can just tell from the sales material and research.
Look at reviews and customers and da-da-da-da-da.”
Seriously?
This is what the sauna people are doing.
This is what the sales people at sauna companies are doing.
How it trickles back to me is the sauna company will type all this up in an email and then the customer will send it to me and say, “Hey, Matt, what do you think of this?
This sounds funny,” or “How much of this is really true?”
or whatever.
Then it’s really easy for me because I’ve been in both of them.
I’ve been in the brands, most all the brands except for like two or three.
It’s super simple for me because as soon as I read a bullet point, I’m like, “Well, when I was in this one, it felt like this and da-da-da-da-da.
That’s wrong.
This is wrong.
What are you really looking for?
Let’s go back to what’s important to you.
What’s your criteria?
Okay, that makes sense.
This model is the best choice for you.”
Forget about the propaganda from the brands.
What I’m getting at is it’s the same mistake that people make when they send in a comparison to me.
They’re asking me to compare a couple, two or three different brands of saunas based on some guy’s video on YouTube.
He’s testing this sauna and promoting it, showing you how good it is.
He even has a little EMF meter that he waves around even though that it’s $30 or $40 from Amazon.
You don’t base $5,000 purchase decisions utilizing a $40 meter.
It’s just not accurate.
It’s not professional.
It’s not whatever.
The dead giveaway with all this stuff is that these people are in close.
Yeah, let me say that again.
The people in the videos that customers are sending me asking me to compare, it’s like a complete waste of my time.
If you saw the trees or the forest through the trees, however they say it, you would know right away that we’re wasting time doing comparisons with people that are creating opinions when they don’t even own the product.
You guys, consumers, you are wasting your time buying into influencers’ opinions, buying into a blogger’s review or I don’t know.
I don’t know how these people do this.
I guess they travel around or fly around to factories and stuff and set up camera equipment and take pictures and videos inside the showroom of the sauna company that makes the saunas because they damn sure don’t have them in their home.
They’re never sweating.
They’re never using them.
They don’t have a room full of saunas.
If you look at real sauna comparison videos or if you look at some of the Q&A videos that I do every single week, when we do those in the sauna room, I mean there is shit everywhere.
There’s saunas half taken apart because there’s too many saunas to fit in the room, yet we’ve got to do a Q&A video to show you guys what the difference is in the parts that are inside the guts of the sauna when you take it apart.
There’s multiple brands in the room.
If you guys have a question, I don’t have to tell you my opinion.
If you want an EMF measurement or you want to see, like if you think third-party EMF reports are bogus and you want to see or know what the milligauss measurement or what the true EMF levels are, I don’t have to tell you what they are.
We just walk into the other room, turn on the camera, turn the sauna on, whichever brand you want, take the measurement and show it to you.
There’s no reason for all this two and three hour and people wasting two and three months or five or six months even trying to figure out which sauna to buy because so and so on a Facebook group has an opinion and says that XYZ brand is the only brand that could ever do any good for you.
That is so ridiculous because that person who’s putting out all this material that’s causing all this confusion, that’s stopping you from getting a piece of health equipment now because you’ll never get this time back that you’re wasting.
That person has never even used the products or the brands that they’re telling you that are bad, nine times out of ten.
There’s very, very rare times where somebody’s bought one brand and it was bad and they bought something else and they could tell how much better it was.
Now that would be a valid review but for these sauna sales people that work at the sauna companies, for the sauna puppeteers, I don’t know what else to call them, but the sauna dealers I guess you could say that sell other people’s products, they’re coming up with this stuff, they themselves, they don’t have a test facility.
They’ve never used Joe Schmoe’s sauna brand yet you want to spend five grand and they’re going to tell you not to buy it.
Maybe that was the best choice for you, maybe it wasn’t, I don’t know.
They’re not using the right criteria and it’s a huge mistake just to buy into those concepts from people who don’t even own or use the products that you want to purchase or compare.
Hope that makes sense.
These are the top five mistakes that I see consumers making when trying to buy an infrared sauna.
Hopefully these videos are helpful.
If I missed something or you’d like to see something in tomorrow’s video, let me know in the comments.
Have a great day guys.
We’ll see you in tomorrow’s review.