How Infrared Sauna Changed My Body

A lot of people think saunas are just about sweating, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. For me, infrared sauna use has completely changed my body and my life. It’s not just heat—it’s circulation, recovery, detox, better sleep, and even research-backed benefits you’d never expect.

In this video I share what I’ve learned through my own health journey after leukemia treatment, plus the experiences of thousands of people in our Certified Saunas Facebook group. I’ll also walk you through clinical research from Japan on something called Waon Therapy, where infrared sauna is used as a medical treatment for heart patients. When you follow the right protocols, the sauna becomes much more than a sweat session—it’s a way to build resilience and long-term health.

Read the transcript >

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Transcript

And when you use the right protocols, you’re not just heating up anymore. You’re actively training your body for resilience and long-term health. Most people don’t really understand how infrared sauna impacts the body. So because of my post leukemia treatment perspective and the other health health challenges that I’ve been through, my take on benefits from infrared sauna is a little bit different than everyone else’s.

In addition to that, my Facebook group with over 30,000 people in it has tons and tons of anecdotal evidence of people getting, you know, various things, improvement in cognition, you know, better sleep, um, better mood, right? So let’s go over the top eight things or nine things that I think are really important for you to understand about how infrared saunas benefit the body.

I’m going to do this both for YouTube and for Facebook. Uh, I’ve got my notes here and I’m just going to record this for you guys and then tell you some of my own anecdotal experiences. So let’s get started. Most people think sauna is just about sitting in a hot box and sweating.

But what if I told you that infrared saunas do a lot more than that? They trigger things like protective proteins. They boost your circulation. They help your body release toxins from fat tissues or adipose tissue where they store them and even mimic the benefits of exercise without moving.

And that’s why a lot of people who are health challenged, get a lot of benefit from incorporating sauna, even if they can’t go to the gym yet. So today I’m going to walk you through exactly how infrared saunas benefit the body step-by-step with some fascinating research, and you’ve probably never heard of half of it.

So point number one is always addressing the elephant in the room. Infrared versus traditional saunas. I’m all for all types of saunas. I don’t care if you want to go, you know, traditional hot rock or start out with an Indian sweat lodge, like I did at a men’s retreat before I ever even used an infrared sauna.

Let’s start with a key.

extinction though. Traditional hot rock saunas mostly heat you by convection, that’s hot air swirling around your skin with added humidity when you add some lolly or aka moisture water on the rocks. Yes it works, but convection by itself is a pretty poor translator of heat deep into your body, unless you’re using tons and tons and tons of humidity.

Infrared saunas are a little bit different, which you’ve probably heard before. They still have some convection in the cabin, but the main mechanism is the far infrared wavelengths that are penetrating directly into your tissues, as well as heating the air of the cabin convection. That means your body is both heated from the inside out and the outside in, not just the surface of your skin.

This is important because it allows infrared therapy to mobilize compounds like you guys want to do, stored in the fat tissues and activate systems inside the body that traditional hot air alone can’t reach in the same amount of time. Or if you’re health challenged it may stress you out because you’re overextending your heat tolerance in order to get that session in.

So point number two, you have some immediate effects from any kind of sauna use. It doesn’t matter what it is. Number one is going to be circulation boost. From the very first few minutes in an infrared sauna, traditional sauna, it doesn’t matter.

Circulation is going to increase. Your blood vessels dilate, your blood flow improves, and oxygen and nutrients are delivered a lot more efficiently. Think of it as giving your cardiovascular system a gentle workout without lifting a single weight or stepping on the treadmill. Number three is as your core temperature rises, so do your heat shock proteins.

I know a lot of the sauna salespeople don’t want you to believe that you can make heat shock proteins from a hot bath or a jacuzzi or something, but you actually can’t. So the premise, just focus on the premise though, because otherwise you get lost in the weeds with all the yada yada talk.

As your core body temperature rises by one or two degrees Fahrenheit,

Your cells release what are called heat shock proteins. These are like cellular repair crews. OK, they fix damaged proteins. They reduce inflammation and they shield your cells against stress.

Research ties heat shock proteins to longevity, cardiovascular resilience and reduce risk of neurogenic neuro generative disease. That’s a mouthful. The other part, which would be number four to this is hormesis. The good stress response in Fred’s sauna also triggers hormesis, the same kind of beneficial stress that you get from cold plunges, fasting, exercise.

It’s a small dose of controlled stress that forces your body to adapt to its environment. In response, your mitochondria, your energy factories, right? Become more efficient. Your antioxidant defenses increase and your overall resilience improves.

Number five, sweating, lymph flow and detoxification. Now let’s talk more detox water, soluble toxins like alcohol, urea, some heavy metals can be flushed out directly through the skin and urine or sweat and urine. But fat soluble toxins, things like pesticides, BPAs, dioxins, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals. These can get stored in fat shells, fat cells for later processing.

These are stubborn because they don’t dissolve in water. This is where infrared really shines and where I think some people who are hell bent on only using traditional or kind of missing the boat by deeply heating adipose tissue, infrared energy helps mobilize fat soluble compounds into circulation. Once they’re in motion, your lymphatic system ramps up, carrying those toxins towards sweat, urine, or bile or elimination.

And the next point, number six, why detox protocols and binders even matter. Here’s the catch. If fat soluble toxins are released, but not bound or excreted, they can recirculate. That’s especially true.

If you’ve got leaky gut or sluggish bioflora.

That’s why detox binders are so important. Things like activated charcoal, bentonite clay, zeolite, you see them on my Amazon page, you see me talk about them in the Facebook group, I mention them constantly. When taken before your sauna session, they act like a mop in the digestive tract.

So while bile carries toxins into your gut, the binders lock onto them and escort them safely out of the body. Without binders, toxins can just recycle if you’re not increasing your ability to heal your gut. You end up feeling worse, not better, because your body’s not able to complete the cycle.

So along with that would be number seven, which is a nervous system reset. Once the heat stress is over, your body flips into a parasympathetic mode. That’s the rest and digest state. Cortisol drops, your nervous system calms down, and your body is primed for recovery.

This is one of the reasons people sleep better after consistent sauna use. Number eight, long-term benefits. Pulling it all together, you’ve got improved cardiovascular health, better metabolic function and insulin sensitivity, reduced chronic inflammation and pain, protection for the brain and nervous system, and an enhanced resilience against the toxins we’re exposed to every single day.

Number nine, which is a spotlight, Weyon therapy from the Japanese. Now here’s where it gets really interesting. In Japan, they’ve developed a formal medical application of infrared sauna called Weyon therapy, which literally means soothing warmth. The protocol is very specific.

Fifteen minutes in a far infrared dry sauna, about 140 degrees Fahrenheit, followed by 30 minutes resting wrapped in blankets to hold the heat. And the research is incredible. The documented benefits of Weyon therapy are here for you to look up. You’ve got improvement in cardiovascular, I’m sorry, cardiac and vascular function in patients with chronic heart failure.

Weyon therapy improved ejection fraction, lower BMP, increased walking distance, and even improved mental quality of life scores. You can look this up. This PubMed study is titled Weyon therapy improves cardiac function and clinical symptoms in patients with chronic heart failure. Links are in the description.

survival. In a study, patients used weigh-on therapy had about half the rate of cardiac event deaths compared to those who didn’t. You can find the study as it’s titled, Weigh-on Therapy Reduces the Incidence of Fatal Cardiac Events in Patients with Chronic Heart Failure. Another one, Blood Pressure Reduction.

Another study showed that just over one week of daily sessions, blood pressure dropped significantly in non-smoking hypertensive patients. That study is called Blood Pressure Lowering Effect of Repeated Weigh-on Therapy in Patients with Hypertension. Another improvement, Vascular and Autonomic Function. It improved endothelial function, caused vasodilation, and even mobilized CD34 positive cells, which are markers of vascular repair.

You can find this under PubMed Entry, Weigh-on Therapy Mobilizes Endothelial Progenitor Cells, I can’t say that one. It improves vascular function in patients with heart disease. All the same theme, basically. 10.

Why Protocols Matter What weigh-on therapy teaches us is that structure matters. It’s not just about sitting in a hot box randomly. The temperature, the duration, the rest period, and the supporting protocol, like using detox binders, all influence whether your sauna experience is just a sweat session or a therapeutic intervention.

So the next time someone says, a sauna is just about sweating, you know the truth. Infrared sauna use increases circulation, releases protective proteins, and trains your body through hormesis, mobilizes toxins, resets your nervous system, and has been clinically proven in Japan to improve heart health and survival in cardiovascular patients.

That’s powerful. And when you use the right protocols, you’re not just heating up anymore. You’re actively training your body for resilience and long-term health.