The Influence Sauna review requests have been getting out of hand lately. It seems every natural health influencer or naturopath is mailing for this infrared sauna company product launch, and I’m getting sick of trying to do comparisons when they don’t publish any proof of claims for customers.
Apparently this Influence Sauna is made by some sauna company named Finnmark saunas out of the UK? I don’t really know, never heard of it, have zero contacts with Influence sauna company, sales reps, affiliates, etc… it looks like a Healthmate sauna to me, a bit modified.
I don’t know if Robyn Openshaw has really created something new here, or if it’s just a white labeled sauna brand like Golden Designs does for Costco, Amazon, etc… All I have to go on, is what you guys have been sending me via email from the Green Smoothie Girl email list, etc… Sorry I haven’t been able to respond to each person individually…
Here are my thoughts:
https://cleverleverage.com/influence-saunas/
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, are we live?
I guess I could take it.
It’s 49 degrees in here.
Got a fire going.
I’ve been trying to get the new office up and running so I can make videos again, but it’s taken a while.
The snow and the climate’s not cooperating.
But anyway, this one can’t wait.
I’ve been getting so many questions about influence saunas.
It’s actually driving me nuts.
It’s really annoying.
I’ve never had a sauna company do a new product launch like this before, where every single natural health blogger or influencer or whatever has been mailing their list for them.
Really smart.
Can’t blame them, but it’s a huge pain in the ass when a ton of people are asking me for a comparison and there’s nothing to really back up the claims.
This isn’t really a typical review.
Obviously, I don’t have the sauna here.
I’m not even set up to do it right now today.
But this is just going to be my thoughts on the influence sauna because so many people keep asking about it and I just can’t respond to all the questions.
Not you guys’ fault.
The way that the company is releasing the sauna, and I’m going to show you exactly what I mean.
I got the computer here, so I’m going to show you my screen or share my screen in just a second.
The way that they’re releasing the sauna and making claims without proof makes it really difficult for me to do a comparison with you.
So I’d either have to buy one, somebody would have to send me one, or I’d have to stop by a location that has one and be able to get some hands-on testing.
And I’ll show you why that is in just a second.
Otherwise, based on what I’ve seen so far, it’s not worth me purchasing one just to do a sauna comparison.
There’s a couple things that I really don’t like when it comes to the marketing claims.
That said, I really like the idea of the sauna.
There’s a lot of great points in there.
If I were going to launch an infrared sauna brand of my own, a couple of things that they have done is exactly what I would do.
And so my cliff notes for, is the EMF levels legit?
I don’t know.
I’m jumping around here a little bit, but this is just my overall thoughts on what I see.
I haven’t seen anybody in one, don’t have one, not going to buy one because there’s no proof to back up these claims.
I don’t know if I’m wasting five grand or not, three grand, whatever.
There’s some sale that everyone’s up in arms about.
That’s like the oldest trick in the book, by the way, for sauna companies.
There will always be some type of a sale.
So ORM is listed, no proof, no statement from him, no interview, no nothing.
This is just the cliff notes.
So maybe I’ll put these in the beginning so you don’t have to sift through all this and then if you want to watch it, hey, great.
NFA 1000 is claimed, why no pics or videos?
If you’re using that to test it, you’d think somebody would at least snap a couple shots to prove it.
So no proof.
You need to see the body voltage to know for sure that the electric fields are mitigated.
Magnetic field testing needs to be done on live video with proper tools.
So meaning not a customer using a $30 EMF meter like you see on Facebook or something like that.
We cannot base a $5,000 purchase decision with amateur Sunday data, amateur Sunday data, effectively.
So the more of the cliff notes on the wood, is cedar the best, only uses wood that are 300 years or older?
Come on.
You guys know what I think about that one.
Wood is not a selling point in dry sauna for me.
There’s no moisture, no mold, nothing like that.
Is 170 degrees necessary?
A lot of people have asked about this because Dr.
Rhonda Patrick puts out the video about the heat shock proteins.
If you’re going for the hottest, high impact, athletic endurance performance boost or something like that, just buy a steam sauna.
Most people who buy infrared saunas, the majority of them, are either sick, they have ailments, or they’re an athlete that wants to have the flexibility of using the sauna at lower temperatures so that you can increase the duration or do different types of detoxes like the niacin or different heavy metal chelation slash binder therapies.
Or some people use it for arthritis or back pain or neck pain.
There’s all kinds of reasons why people use infrared saunas over steam saunas.
If you just want the hottest sauna on the planet, just buy a steam sauna and be done with it.
Because if you’re going for 170, just get a steam and you’ll be at 200, no problem.
So if you want the hottest possible …
Or no, let me back up a second.
The point of an infrared sauna is not to deliver the highest possible heat ever.
Typically, people get better results with infrared saunas, I said this before, because it’s more gentle.
Thus, they use it more.
At the end of the day, I just need some proof of all these claims to make a half-decent comparison for you guys.
So the only real comparison will come from buying one and sitting in it and using it myself, using the right tools.
But I need to see something to even know if it’s worth buying or not.
At the end of the day, it screams health mate to me.
The heaters look the same, the marketing is much the same, the lady who promotes it used to promote health mate saunas.
But I don’t know who’s behind it, I have no idea.
No one has contacted me and said, “Hey, we’re releasing an influenced sauna, we’d like you to test one,” or, “Here’s the science behind it,” or, “Here’s how Aurum got involved,” or, “Here’s how we branched off from health mate,” or …
I don’t know why I keep thinking that.
I just look at the sauna and it looks, honestly, it looks like a sunlight impulse cabinet with health mate heaters in it, if you want my honest opinion.
And then they took some carbon panel heaters and put them on the sides.
It just screams that to me.
But to my knowledge, health mate never mitigated electric fields in the past.
So they would say it was low EMF, but only low magnetic, not low electric, not low body voltage.
Which means their sauna would produce body voltage spikes compared to a lot higher than you would see on the certified sauna list.
So I need to see some evidence that that’s not the case or that they’ve improved it or blah, blah, blah.
I feel like a broken record, like I’m just going on and on here.
Price seems to be good.
Heater layout seems great.
Could care less about the seater.
Lots of EMF claims, which appear to be bogus without proof.
Sounds great, but if they put that much work into it, there should be pictures, live video, and the well-respected Aurum Miller they’re referencing on their website talking about it.
So that’s my thoughts on it.
People have tons of questions, but this is the best I can do with the information that is released and not seeing a single healthcare professional that is constantly emailing us about how great it is using it.
And it’s driving me crazy.
I can’t handle any more questions about this damn thing.
So if you’re thinking about launching an infrared sauna company in the near future, when you do your initial marketing release, make sure that you add proof to the claims that you make for the initial marketing material, because what you’re doing is you’re causing the consumer market to be frustrated, not know where to turn, not know who you are because you have no relationship history.
They don’t know if they can trust you.
And then so everyone who is in the marketplace is getting inundated with, “Hey, what do you think about this?
Hey, what do you think about that?
Oh, Robin says this is so great.
Or, oh, look, it goes to 170 or oh, seater.
Oh, low EMF.
Oh, it seems great on the website.”
Yes, it seems great.
Prove it to us, please, so I don’t have to keep doing this over and over and get so frustrated that I would like to set an influence sauna on fire.
So anyway, let’s just get right into it.
Because this sauna sounds great in theory, here’s my thoughts on it in its current standing.
So the first red flag to me is I don’t see a single person with one of these saunas.
Let me show you what it looks like for me when I Google influence sauna.
Now there’s probably, let me turn off personalized results and blah, blah, blah.
The internet is really, really, really slow here.
So bear with me.
When I Google influence saunas, I don’t get anything.
I didn’t even see the company website for a while.
Now I get the company website and a Facebook page if it’ll actually load.
And a couple other things.
I don’t see a single person sitting in them.
All the natural health bloggers and influencers and supposed naturopathic or natural medicine doctors that are endorsing these or mailing their lists or that are basically creating all this commotion to do the product launch, I don’t see them with an influence sauna in their office.
So that creates a huge red flag for me.
There aren’t any reviews.
I checked YouTube.
There’s not a single video.
You know, let me check again today even though it’s just going to load really slow.
Let’s see if there’s anything new.
I’ll probably cut this right here because it’s taking so long for pages to load.
I don’t want you guys to have to sit through a bunch of malarkey.
So now that it’s up, we’ll just look for influence sauna.
It’s just a regular Google search on YouTube.
There is one now.
Oh, well that’s by our friend Brett Bauer.
We already know he’s not sitting in one because he doesn’t sit in any saunas that he researches.
I’ll just leave it at that.
He also has another one now, the shocking truth series or whatever these things are called.
Anyway, I don’t want to waste any time on that.
We don’t put any stock into those.
They’re not seat of the pants.
It’s not seat of the pants commentary.
It’s more of, “Oh, you know, I’ve researched this for so long, blah, blah, blah, and the group members and we know how that ends.”
So no one reputable is using it.
I see a lot of guru talk about it, how great it is, but no one is sitting in them.
Huge problem.
I talk about that a lot.
YouTube’s nothing.
You got the video from Brett.
Everyone knows that he doesn’t test any of the saunas that he badmouths.
He just researches them supposedly, whatever that means.
To me, that means if you haven’t stepped foot in a bunch of sauna brands, you should probably stay in your own lane.
If you’re going to rely on forum members or other consumers that have been in one or two saunas in their whole life and they’ve got an analog tri-field meter and then supposedly they’re using that to base a $5,000 purchase decision on a safe low EMF sauna, probably don’t send me any of that stupid shit from Facebook group members testing saunas.
It’s a complete waste of time.
So point being, not a single video from the actual influence company that I can look at or customers, why isn’t anyone using them?
Why aren’t they sitting in them?
Why didn’t they release the product with pictures and videos and stuff?
And then this is the biggest thing that everyone is asking about is if the EMF is legit.
I can’t remember where it is.
Let me pull it up.
It’s on the radiation page, I think.
So there is a ton of stuff on here that’s a red flag.
People are sending in questions and emails and calling and everything else and I just don’t have anything to offer and here’s why.
Here’s the page right here.
Let me switch over to my screen so you can see it.
Here’s the page right here, the radiation page.
And so first thing that is alarming to me is if you tested heaters with a Gigahertz Solutions NFA 1000, which is an excellent meter, that’s what I would do if I were going to release a sauna, right?
And I have its little sister laying around here somewhere.
It takes five minutes to turn the meter on, go in the sauna, take a cell phone video, or take a couple pictures to verify the claims that are being made.
So it’s a huge red flag if somebody is saying they’re using an NFA 1000 and then there’s no proof to show that they’re actually using it.
And there’s something about how they’ve, you know, I don’t know.
But anyway, this is the most alarming thing for me right here.
It says low EMF levels and it says our manufacturer believes any device or heating element is safe.
Under 8 milligauss is more than safe.
That’s a big red flag to me.
If you’re a manufacturer of saunas, you should be trying to get the average much lower than that because there’s inevitably going to be hot spots or spikes or, you know, things that are unaccounted for.
And so I don’t agree with that at all.
In fact, this sauna would probably not meet the certified sauna list requirements if the people that are building it really have that mentality.
It goes on to say the spectrum carbon heater is extremely low in EMF, registering under 1 milligauss at the surface and near zero at 3 inches.
The blah blah blah is under 3 milligauss at the surface.
I don’t know.
Whatever that means.
Some fancy, you know, blah blah blah sauna.
But all they have to do is take the NFA 1000 and take it in the sauna and show us that.
So I don’t know if I necessarily believe that because when you’re saying that a manufacturer that builds your sauna thinks anything under 8 milligauss is safe, but then you go on to say, you know, we use the most high end meter ever, but you don’t show the proof.
I can’t do a comparison like that.
You know, and that would stop me from buying it because I feel like I would be wasting my time.
Like, if it’s not going to be anywhere close to the saunas that are on the certified sauna list or it’s not even a test close to that, I mean, we’ve got to see some type of preliminary testing.
So the next thing that I really don’t like is, you know, it’s just a bunch of claims.
The manufacturer has teamed up with an NTS who is a higher authority and more respected in the electromagnetic industry.
We’ve discontinued our relationship with Vitatech Electromagnetics.
Well, that’s great.
I like that because Vitatech is just going to receive one of the heaters.
They’re going to hang it, you know, in a lab and they’re going to test it in some other state.
They’re not going to test the native environment of the sauna, which is what all the companies do that are pretty much sandbagging and making low EMF claims, but yet they have really high EMF saunas.
The next thing I don’t like is the low ELF.
The threshold of concern for low ELF is a thousand millivolts.
I don’t necessarily agree with that, but I like what they’re saying.
I like where they’re going with it.
If they can deliver a sauna that is under 200 millivolts of body voltage, I like that.
That’s the threshold for a sauna to be listed on the certified sauna list.
They’re a little bit wrong with the 20,000 millivolts.
A lot of saunas are up to 45,000 millivolts of body voltage that are unmitigated or don’t have electric fields mitigated or shielded in some manner.
Actually, no, I’m sorry.
I shouldn’t say that they’re wrong.
Their method of referencing is, I usually reference the peak if something is bad.
No RF, no Wi-Fi, that’s great.
I don’t know about this.
You’re not going to show radiation exposure with a FLIR.
What was the other thing?
There’s one other thing that I specifically wanted to show you while we’ve got the website up.
I like all this other stuff.
I really, really like that they’re putting effort into reducing RF transmissions, no Wi-Fi controller and stuff like that.
That’s right up my alley.
Like I said, I love the idea of this sauna.
I like the theory of it.
It’s very close to something that I would release, except for the high temp.
If you really want high temps, just buy a steam sauna.
The main reason that people get such good results with the infrared saunas is because it’s not shocking you so much that you won’t use the damn thing.
It’s like if you go to the gym, you haven’t worked out in five years, and you try to do one of those mud run things or 5K or something like that, and it’s too much for you, you ain’t going back tomorrow.
Infrared people can usually ease into it, which you would be able to do with this. 170 degrees is really not a huge selling point for an infrared sauna as far as I’m concerned.
That’s just my opinion, how I use them, the way that I recommend other people use them.
Here’s the other thing that I really …
This was probably the one thing where I was like, “All right, if they have this guy on the credentials, whom I like and respect, his name is Orm Miller.
He is a world-renowned building biologist.
He’s very, very good.
You can see him in tons of interviews.
He talks about all types of stuff.
Extremely talented and skilled at EMF reduction.
They’re referencing that he is a specialist, and I don’t understand why he’s listed here, but either he worked on the sauna or helped design it or maybe tested it or whatever.
That is awesome.
Here’s the problem.
I don’t see any reference to this.
I don’t see him doing an interview.
I don’t see him in there with EMF meters testing the sauna.
I don’t see any of that.
Generally, if a building biologist or someone that’s notable works on a product, when the company wants to do a product launch, they’ll do a pre-interview.
They’ll interview that person.
“Hey, we came to you to get your expertise on how to build a better product,” and blah, blah, blah, and they would release that with the marketing materials.
It’s a huge red flag to me that I’m not seeing that.
One of two things is happening.
They’re just using his name, and he didn’t actually work on the sauna.
They’re just using him as a reference for credibility, kind of like the NFA 1000, yet we have seen zero people test the sauna for electric, magnetic, and body voltage.
There should be at least three screenshots with an NFA 1000 on different settings with three different levels.
We should see it on live video so that we can see that they’re testing the whole sauna operational and there’s no tomfoolery going on.
If they’re referencing that Oren Miller worked on the thing, he should be the one doing it, or there should be commentary from him, or there should at least be a statement from him or something.
I don’t know if that is intentionally misleading or why that is, but it comes across to me as misleading.
Again, these are my thoughts.
The sauna might be amazing.
If they sent me one and I tested it, hey, maybe it tests great.
These are the things that stop me from buying one just to test it because I feel like I’m just buying into that same old hype.
There’s so many companies out there that say, “Oh yeah, we’ve got a low ELF, low EMF sauna, and then I’ve bought it and then it’s sky high.”
I really just don’t like wasting my time anymore.
If there’s no preliminary proof that would cause me to want to buy something, that’s a red flag.
Where is the other thing?
Now that we’re on the website, there’s a couple …
Our manufacturer has been manufacturing saunas for 45 years.
When I look at the Influence sauna, it screams Healthmate.
The girl, whoever her name is, I don’t even know who she is, the only thing that I know that she’s ever had to do with saunas before is promoting Healthmate saunas.
Healthmate saunas notoriously did not mitigate electric fields, only magnetic.
Even then, it wasn’t really below a threshold if you were at point of body contact.
Maybe an average in the center of the sauna, like way back far away from the heaters.
Those are notoriously high electric field emitters.
I don’t know if the wiring was shielded and all that stuff.
Now, they have all that in the website copy for these, but I don’t know.
We’ve got to see some sort of proof.
It’s one thing …
I could tell you that any sauna out there has all these features, but if there’s no proof, it doesn’t really mean anything.
That’s how I feel about this.
It really screams Healthmate sauna to me.
I don’t know who makes this thing.
I don’t know who’s behind the product launch.
It says that it’s made by some Finnmark company.
I don’t know who that is.
I don’t even know who these people are.
I don’t even know who’s selling it.
Right here, I love to see this.
We upgraded the wiring.
We’ve got EMF and ELF reduction in the shielding.
I love to see that, but let’s prove it by testing the entire sauna fully operational.
Show me the body voltage.
Show me the magnetic field readings.
Show me the electric field readings, and we’ll go from there.
The other thing that was very weird to me is the wood.
It says specifically somewhere, because somebody asked me about this, like, “Hey, is this cedar really good?”
Or blah, blah, blah.
It’s, you know, they’re using the …
Somebody was asking me if the wood is really a big selling point.
In my opinion, absolutely not, not in a dry sauna.
There’s no moisture introduced into the sauna except what you’re going to sweat out.
If you’re using your towels properly, that’s not a problem.
There’s never going to be any mold in a dry sauna, because even if you sweat all over the wood, the act of the sauna preheating the next time is going to dry it out and take care of it.
So to say that you need cedar to be more antimicrobial, antibacterial, and resist or not get any mold in a dry sauna, it’s kind of a fallacy.
It’s just pulling these strings to get people to buy into an idea that, “Oh, I need to spend more money to get cedar.”
The wood in the sauna, once you reach a certain quality threshold, is no longer a selling point in an infrared sauna.
If you had a steam sauna, then it might be a little bit more concerned about the wood, because you’d be reintroducing moisture, additional water, into the sauna that’s going to percolate and get up into the corners and seep into the wood and do all that kind of stuff, and it doesn’t dry out properly or you don’t use the sauna for a while, it’s not going to dry out on the next cycle.
And so then, yeah, you can get mold and mildew.
That doesn’t happen in an infrared sauna.
It doesn’t happen in a dry sauna.
So I don’t understand why they’re using that stuff as a selling point.
I hate it when sauna companies do that.
It’s extremely common.
“Oh, you should buy this because this wood is better and it’s better for people with blah, blah, blah.”
Come on, man.
So the other thing that I didn’t really like is this right here.
To protect the forests, the Western red cedar that is used for influence sauna, infrared saunas, Jesus, that’s a mouthful, that is used for influence sauna, infrared saunas, is over 300 years old.
Now I’m just, I won’t even say anything about that.
I’ll just leave that for you guys to think about.
The only trees that we’re going to use to build stuff are over 300 years old.
Okay.
I’ll leave that one.
I will leave that one for you guys to decipher.
Because personally, I was kind of like, I thought about that and I was like, “Why would you say something like that?
Is that sustainable?
Is it even possible?
Isn’t that worse than using young growth that were particularly, specifically used?”
Let me just stop.
I’ll let you guys think about that.
You can draw your own conclusions.
And so my cliff notes for, you know, is the EMF levels legit?
I don’t know.
I’m jumping around here a little bit, but this is just my overall thoughts on what I see.
Haven’t seen, you know, anybody in one, don’t have one, not going to buy one because there’s no proof to back up these claims.
I don’t know if I’m wasting five grand or not, three grand, whatever.
There’s some sale that everyone’s up in arms about.
That’s like the oldest trick in the book, by the way, for sauna companies.
There will always be some type of a sale.
So Orm is listed, no proof, no statement from him, no interview, no nothing.
This is just the cliff notes.
So maybe I’ll put these in the beginning so you don’t have to sift through all this.
And then if you want to watch it, hey, great.
NFA 1000 is claimed.
Why no pics or videos?
If you’re using that to test it, you’d think somebody would at least snap a couple shots to prove it.
So no proof.
Need to see the body voltage to know for sure that the electric fields are mitigated.
Electric field testing needs to be done on live video with proper tools.
So meaning not a customer using a $30 EMF meter like you see on Facebook or something like that.
We cannot base a $5,000 purchase decision with amateur Sunday data, amateur Sunday data, effectively.
So the more of the cliff notes on the wood.
Is cedar the best?
Only uses wood that are 300 years or older?
Come on.
You know, you guys know what I think about that one.
Wood is not a selling point in dry sauna for me.
There’s no moisture, no mold, nothing like that.
Is 170 degrees necessary?
A lot of people have asked about this because Dr.
Rhonda Patrick puts out the video about the heat shock proteins.
If you’re going for the hottest, high impact, athletic endurance performance boost or something like that, just buy a steam sauna.
Most people who buy infrared saunas, the majority of them are either sick, they have ailments, or they’re an athlete that wants to have the flexibility of using the sauna at lower temperatures so that you can increase the duration or do different types of detoxes like the niacin or different heavy metal chelation/binder therapies or some people use it for arthritis or back pain or neck pain.
There’s all kinds of reasons why people use infrared saunas over steam saunas.
If you just want the hottest sauna on the planet, just buy a steam sauna and be done with it.
Because if you’re going for 170, just get a steam and you’ll be at 200, no problem.
If you want the hottest possible…
Or no, let me back up a second.
The point of an infrared sauna is not to deliver the highest possible heat ever.
Typically, people get better results with infrared saunas, I said this before, because it’s more gentle, thus they use it more.
At the end of the day, I just need some proof of all these claims to make a half-decent comparison for you guys.
The only real comparison will come from buying one and sitting in it and using it myself, using the right tools, but I need to see something to even know if it’s worth buying or not.
At the end of the day, it screams health mate to me.
The heaters look the same, the marketing is much the same, the lady who promotes it used to promote health mate saunas, but I don’t know who’s behind it.
I have no idea.
No one has contacted me and said, “Hey, we’re releasing an influenced sauna, we’d like you to test one,” or, “Here’s the science behind it,” or, “Here’s how Aurum got involved,” or, “Here’s how we branched off from health mate,” or, I don’t know why I keep thinking that.
I just look at the sauna and it looks, honestly, it looks like a sunlight impulse cabinet with health mate heaters in it, if you want my honest opinion.
Then they took some carbon panel heaters and put them on the sides.
It just screams that to me.
To my knowledge, health mate never mitigated electric fields in the past.
They would say it was low EMF, but only low magnetic, not low electric, not low body voltage, which means their sauna would produce body voltage spikes compared to a lot higher than you would see on the certified sauna list.
I need to see some evidence that that’s not the case or that they’ve improved it or blah, blah, blah.
I feel like a broken record, like I’m just going on and on here.
Price seems to be good, heater layout seems great, could care less about the seater, lots of EMF claims, which appear to be bogus without proof, sounds great, but if they put that much work into it, there should be pictures, live video, and the well-respected Oren Miller they’re referencing on their website talking about it.
That’s my thoughts on it.
People have tons of questions, but this is the best I can do with the information that is released and not seeing a single healthcare professional that is constantly emailing us about how great it is using it.
It’s driving me crazy.
I can’t handle any more questions about this damn thing.
If you’re thinking about launching an infrared sauna company in the near future, when you do your initial marketing release, make sure that you add proof to the claims that you make for the initial marketing material because what you’re doing is you’re causing the consumer market to be frustrated, not know where to turn, not know who you are because you have no relationship history.
They don’t know if they can trust you.
Everyone who is in the marketplace is getting inundated with, “Hey, what do you think about this?
Hey, what do you think about that?
Oh, Robin says this is so great,” or, “Oh, look, it goes to 170,” or, “Oh, Cedar,” or, “Oh, low EMF.
Oh, it seems great on the website.”
Yes, it seems great.
Prove it to us, please, so I don’t have to keep doing this over and over and get so frustrated that I would like to set an influence sauna on fire.