Red Light Therapy in Saunas: What Works and What Doesn’t

Red light therapy inside saunas has become one of the most confusing topics in the wellness space, and with thirty to forty thousand people in the Facebook group, I see the same questions nonstop. A lot of folks think a full spectrum sauna means real red light therapy, or that using LEDs in the middle of a sweaty session gives them the same benefits shown in PubMed studies. It doesn’t work like that.

In this video I break down what red light therapy actually is, what the research really shows, and how heat, sweat, distance, and body position change everything. I also explain why most built-in “near infrared” features don’t deliver the wavelengths people expect, and why separating your red light sessions from your sauna time is usually the most effective approach. This is the foundation before we go deeper in the series.

Read the transcript >

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Transcript

Red light therapy in saunas. You know we’ve got 30 or 40,000 people in the Facebook group. A lot of people have questions about these things. Some people have some confusion around understanding when the body is superheated and what that does to photobiomodulation. So if you haven’t researched articles on PubMed before, there are thousands. I know everyone gets frustrated because there’s sauna research but it’s usually only from European culture on traditional wood-burning saunas.

Red light therapy is quite different. Yes, there’s a lot of research studies on lasers and different types of LED devices that are super high powered that take distance measuring devices into account like an esthetician or some type of skin doctor would use. But there’s also a ton of overlap on particular red light therapy on certain health conditions like TBI, traumatic brain injury, and applying it to the head or different parts of the body for systemic healing.

What’s interesting about this is that most people don’t think to look at temperature and how heat and dissipation of such, which Andrew covers a ton. I think he has the best articles anywhere on the internet. I always refer people to his stuff. He also helped me several years ago get some equipment to help measure this stuff and make sense of it. Huge component and to me learning more about this, which was invaluable when I was trying to heal my feet after having drug-induced neuropathy and was having trouble walking.

So red light therapy was one of the things that I implemented but I did not implement it in the sauna. And I want to talk to you guys today about all of this as an overarching topic. We’re going to have to do a series because it’s too dense for one particular video. But the idea in mind is that people are busy. They want to get a full spectrum sauna because they think they’re going to get near-infrared, mid-infrared, and far-infrared. A lot of times they’re reading a brochure that are touting benefits from actual red light therapy in the 600 nanometer to 800 nanometer wavelength and think that they’re going to get a full spectrum sauna that has near-infrared in it and then it contains those wavelengths.

Most of the time it doesn’t. Those quartz halogen emitters are a small LED array behind a grill or something like that. On the off chance that you do get any red light therapy, in the middle of your sauna session what’s happening to your body? It’s superheated, you’re covered in a thick layer of sebaceous sweat, and you’re also not sitting in an optimal position to get target range treatments in my opinion. So you can talk about irradiance, you can talk about wavelength, you can talk about all these things, but if the fundamental pieces to the puzzle aren’t in place foundationally for you to actually get like your body receive red light therapy, you’re never going to get the results that are in the PubMed studies.

I would encourage you to go look at the research yourself. If that’s too much for you, find some summaries like the ones that I, you know, point you to. But at the end of the day, if you must use red light therapy in a sauna, I would suggest that you focus on something that gives you exposure to the torso. That’s number one. And number two, don’t get it in the middle of your sauna session ideally if you can help it. I know some people say that’s all they can do, and I understand.

If you can use it while the sauna is preheating, that would be ideal. If you can do it separate from the sauna, that’s personally what I do. Why? Because I want to control, one, the distance from myself to the panel. The reason that I’m holding this thing, rather than getting in a sauna where we have one mounted on the wall, to make it demonstrable that when you can control the distance and the placement to the body, you can also control some of the results to a degree, right? There is low wattage systemic, you know, healing that has been shown in some research, and you don’t need a 200 milliwatt a centimeter square panel to get it.

Like you could literally get it from almost across the room in something like that. When people see me when I post these funny trolling, you know, videos or pictures, and it’s me on a mattress because I don’t have a stand with me and I’m doing red light therapy from distance, and they’re like, Matt, you know, you’re more than six inches away. How are you getting red light therapy? And it’s like, fundamentally, you’re missing the core concepts of systemic improvement. I’m not trying to do skin contact target, you know, healing therapy.

I didn’t break a bone and I’m trying to shove the LED, you know, into my skin and do this, that, and the other. But I’m also not going to sit there and stand behind a closet door with one of these hanging on the back of it for 10 minutes a side, just on a regular day. I don’t find it comfortable. And so I see both sides, and I also understand why people want it in the sauna. I think it’s less than ideal. Personally, we’re going to do an entire series that shows you why and how, and different mounting positions, and things like that.

Yes, you can find saunas that have accessories where these are in them. Some of them mount to a glass door, or they’re on a sidewall, or they’re, you know, behind you, or some are in the ceiling. There’s limitations that come with that. So are you getting some red light therapy in there? Well, sure. But you can’t, like, treat the head. You couldn’t do particular parts of the torso, or a leg, or the knees, or something like that, unless you’re planning on, you know, spinning upside down and standing on your head while you’re doing the sauna session and getting your, you know, your feet closer to the device, if it’s mounted in the ceiling or something.

Obviously, I’m being funny and facetious, but this is the reality when you choose different equipment like that. And I think maybe my sarcastic or trolling, you know, personality is not helping people understand the mechanics of receiving the light on clean dry skin when the core temperature is low, when you’re in a relaxed state, at a reasonable treatment distance with reasonable intensity. More is not always better. In fact, the research almost displaying the contrary, right?

So you want to be careful with some of the advice that you get out there. Some of the panel makers, they’re just trying to be the 300 milliwatt a centimeter squared. We have the most powerful thing. It’s like, are we trying to use that from 20 feet away? I mean, I look over there wondering the depth of this room that we’re in. I’m like, well, how far away could I get it from me? When everyone is like, oh, you’d want to stand right next to it. It’s like, ah, maybe not. Anyway, so this is just to get us started for me personally, just to cut right to the chase.

I do red light therapy separate from sauna for those reasons. I also want to control that. And I also don’t necessarily do red light therapy at the same time of day that I do sauna. I like sauna at night, several hours before bed so that I’m no longer trying to like cool myself or be sweaty or anything like that. I don’t sleep well if I have clammy skin, or I’m not freshly showered, or just finished a workout, my core temperature is still elevated.

In my opinion, red light therapy, unless you’re already hot, doesn’t really make you sweat. But there is a warmth to it. But it’s not something where I’m going to be sweating buckets. So I could do a workout, a sauna session, have dinner. Obviously, I’m showered already. Relax for an hour. And then maybe an hour before bed or something, I might do some red light therapy that doesn’t have low range light output, something where you would need blue blockers to block blue-green light or something like that. Other times, I would do it during a nap in the middle of the day or in the morning.

So I don’t necessarily like sauna-ing when I do that. Sauna-ing, is that a thing? It’s going to be a thing now. Sauna-ing, apostrophe-ing, I-N-G. But that’s my take on it. Like I said, we’ll do a bunch of follow-ups. I think you guys will have questions. So we’ll put this out first. We’ll let you have a chance to comment, digest. I know everyone’s going to post their individual question on this particular topic and ask. And we’ll bring those into the second video so that we can actually have distinct answers for you. I may even show you a research paper or two and give you my take on it. We’ll see you in the next one.