Description
After testing over 40 sauna brands, I can tell you that most infrared saunas on the market are relabeled junk. In this video, I’m pulling back the curtain to show you the biggest red flags to watch for before you buy—like misleading EMF claims, off-gassing materials, and poor heater layouts that fail to deliver results. If you’re serious about getting a sauna that actually works, watch this before you make a purchase.
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Insiders: https://certifiedwellness.com/insiders/
Transcript
If you’re shopping for an infrared sauna right now, you’re probably overwhelmed. Amazon has hundreds, Costco’s got some, ads for dropshippers are everywhere. But here’s the truth. Most infrared saunas on the market are junk.
Most are just relabeled. This store that you found online because you searched for something is the same exact thing that’s sold in a big box store, just repackaged or relabeled as something else. I’ve personally tested 42 sauna brands over the last six years and I’ve seen some scary stuff, toxic glues, high EMF, saunas that literally fell apart during assembly, or I could hold an entire sidewall with my pinky.
Today, I’m pulling back the curtain. And if you don’t know, I’m Matt Justice, founder of CertifiedSaunas.com and the Certified Sauna Community on Facebook. We’ve got over 30,000 group members, people just like you, just like me, looking for the safest, cleanest, most effective saunas for their health. This channel is where I publish real reviews, no fluff, no sponsorship bias.
I actually buy the units myself and test them. Sometimes we occasionally get products for free, but most everything that you see over the 700 videos over the last several years, I had to buy with my own money. And if a sauna sucks, I say it. Here’s what I’ve learned from testing over 40 of them.
Let’s start with the biggest red flags to watch out for when buying a sauna. High EMF in key body zones. Some saunas claim low EMF, but spike around your head, your chest, your back, right where your spine is, right where it matters most. A lot of sauna companies will dupe customers and say, you know, oh, we have a low EMF sauna, but they have sky high electric fields.
Guys, EMF is a plural term. It’s not just one thing. So if you have somebody that has a, it’s off screen, but if you looked at my meters and they said, oh, look, you know, our meter or our sauna tests this on the meter. Well, yeah, but what about the other levels that the sauna is emitting?
They just don’t want you to know about those. And then they say, oh, well, EMF is everywhere and this, that, and the other. Yes, but companies aren’t using low EMF to sell you a cell phone or a blender or a washing machine, right? But sauna companies are, so it should really live up to.
advertise claims and not be delivered not as advertised or have false marketing associated with it. Don’t you agree? Because if not, why wouldn’t we just go get the cheapest thing and not even care about that? But no sauna company says, hey, we don’t believe in EMF.
We actually don’t build our saunas to be low EMF. You, like me, might even appreciate a sauna company saying that because then we could just be like, okay, well, if that’s not a concern to us, we could go with something like this. And then we eliminate that criteria from our mind and also from our pocketbook.
But that is what they don’t want you to do. They want you to overpay and under deliver. The second red flag is toxic materials. A lot of cheap saunas are made with plywood, glues, and mystery finishes.
You can see it sprayed on the cheap Wayfair and Amazon saunas. It’s not a paint. It’s not exactly a varnish. It’s something mixed with sawdust that they can kind of give cheap wood a veneer-like feel.
That new sauna smell? Yeah, that’s VOC off-gassing. Not good. You know, these heater shrouds on all the ceramic sauna heaters that have felt glued to the back of the heater guard?
The surface temperature of those emitters is really high. What do you think happens when they heat up? That’s what you’re smelling. That’s what the sauna companies are also leaving out of their VOC third-party test report.
And third, and probably my biggest gripe with any infrared sauna, it’s not the brand. It’s not the feature set. It’s not the technology. It’s not the smart this and the smart that.
It’s not the type of wood. It’s not anything except poor heater layout. If there’s one thing that dictates you getting health benefit from the sauna that you choose, it’s none of those things that I just mentioned, and it’s only heater layout. You see, an infrared sauna delivers radiant heat, and you need to have good coverage on the body in order to really stimulate getting things out of the adipose tissue.
Do you understand? You may not, and that’s okay, but that’s what I’m here for. Check out my whiteboard videos. They’re off-screen right now, but I have a whiteboard over here that’s four by eight feet, and we go through and teach you why this works, how it works, so that you can get the health benefits.
and get your life back on track. But it’s easy to see when you look at it. If the infrared heaters don’t surround your body properly, you’re not going to sweat or detox like you should. It doesn’t matter what supercalifragilisticexpialidocious wavelength or heater type or full spectrum or near infrared, mid infrared, far infrared, none of that means diddly squat if the heaters don’t actually contact a good portion of the body at the seated body position.
And this is also the trouble with full spectrum saunas. You might have some red light therapy panel or LED lights in there, but are they positioned in a way where your body is actually going to experience photobiomodulation and the improvements associated with those? I show all this in my review videos.
There’s over 700 videos on YouTube. If there’s something that you need, it’s probably there. If not, throw it in the comments and I’ll make a fresh video for you. But you can also see my FLIR footage videos.
Some of them are on the screen right now. The reason that these are there is because the second one down on the right hand column, you see all the blue. Those are cold spots in that sauna. You see the picture right above it.
Do you see much blue? Not at all. That is exactly what your body is experiencing. And that is exactly what determines how much benefit you are going to get from the sauna.
I show all this and more in all my videos on YouTube with thermal imaging, meter readings, and a lot more. So you’re probably wondering, well, what do I actually recommend? I like brands like Radiant Health, Heavenly Heat, and even select clear light models, especially if you want some type of smartphone app or a bigger size.
Not every single brand is the right fit for every single person. It doesn’t matter what I say, what I like, what some sauna salesperson tells you. None of that matters. What matters is your unique needs for your unique situation.
Because I might love a brand and recommend it to you. But if I don’t ask you what you’re actually looking for and what your needs actually are, what your family or who’s going to use this thing, and what benefits you’re truly looking to achieve in your own life, I could just tell you a brand and they might not even make a model that’s the right size or the right.
need for your install application. Maybe it requires electrical power that you couldn’t possibly have unless you moved houses, right? Well, that’s ridiculous. No one’s going to move a house just to get a sauna.
That’s crazy. The only people that do that would be me. I did do that in 2017. But back to it, I’ve installed Radiant Health saunas in both of my homes, both in Florida and in Maine, and they’re hands down the most reliable, cleanest, and lowest EMF that I’ve ever tested.
Right behind them, but didn’t exist back when I started using Radiant Health saunas. So the track record is hard to beat, but Heavenly Heat is fast on their heels. They’ve come out with new models this year. They have a brand new mini sauna.
If you’re an apartment, it is the sauna for you. Fast preheat time. A little bit tight for me, but there’s an amazing choice of products that you have at your disposal now that I didn’t have six, seven, eight years ago when I was first getting into this. You see, I never wanted to be the sauna guy.
I found myself in the chair of a functional medicine doctor’s office, and she said, based on your labs and your heavy metal report and your blood labs, you need to be in a sauna like yesterday. Your body needs to detox. It’s not excreting these toxins on its own, and you need to do something to help it.
And an infrared sauna is exactly what you need. I actually didn’t believe her, and I postponed this, and I wish I never would have. That’s why today I make these videos for you. But don’t just take my word for it.
Go inside the Facebook group. There’s 30,000 people in there. All of them are getting great results with all types of saunas from all over the world. There are literally thousands of posts from real users who absolutely love what they bought, share pictures, tips, and even detox stories.
And some of them are even cutting holes in their walls, recessing the sauna, and then reframing and re-drywalling around it. It’s really, really cool to see. I think you’ll get a lot of great inspiration from it. Now, if you’re wondering, the flip side, what’s the worst sauna I’ve ever tested?
Brand number 27 out of 42 looked great online. Beautiful photos, good reviews. But what happened when I opened the box? Cheap wood, no shielding, off gas like crazy, even after two weeks.
every single time we turned it on. That video is on the channel and you’ve got to see it if you want to stay away from things like that. Now, if you’ve watched this far, it means you’re getting serious about getting a sauna for yourself that actually works. So here’s what I want you to do.
Number one, subscribe to this channel. I post sauna reviews regularly, sauna tips, and I do a weekly live stream where I take your questions and answer them in a fresh video. Join the Certified Sauna Community on Facebook. It’s totally free.
There’s 30,000 people in there. You don’t have to just take it from me. They’re amazing. And if you’re ready to buy, check the links in the description or go to certifiedsaunas.com and see some of my reviews or most recommended products.
You’ll find my top recommended brands in the discount codes to save you money. And as always, if you don’t have a lot of money to spend, there’s two things that I would recommend. Number one, even if you do have money to spend, go rent an infrared sauna session at your local spa.
If you have one around you, you can pay $50. You can use it for an hour. You can see what it’s like so that you can try before you buy. Number two, if you don’t have a lot of money to spend, there’s no need to pressure yourself into thinking about going into debt just to get a sauna.
We have a DIY sauna course where you can build a sauna tent in the courtesy of your own home for $350 to $400, and it’ll blow the socks off any couple hundred dollar portable tent sauna that you can get from Amazon. So let’s get you sweating the right way. See you in tomorrow’s video.