Don’t use an infrared sauna unless it goes hotter than 170 degrees Fahrenheit.
Video Transcript (AI Generated)
Guys, let’s talk about something really quick.
I get these questions a lot.
People say you’ve got to have high heat in your infrared sauna in order to get a good sweat, in order to get a good detox, in order to release things from your lymphatic system, blah, blah, blah.
One of the more important things than the sauna temperature, because people aren’t going back to the basics, how does an infrared sauna work?
A steam sauna, which is really, really hot, is heating up the air inside the sauna or there’s a concentrated heat source on top of the rocks or the electrical unit if it’s a dry sauna or whatever, heating up the air and that in turn heats up the body.
How’s an infrared sauna working?
Well, it’s heating you up.
It’s heating up inside of your body and that takes time.
The body is able to withstand heat.
Some doctor has explained this before, if you can find it somewhere, if you do some digging.
There’s different stages of just how the body handles cold and this is the same way that it adapts to heat.
There’s different stages of handling heat.
If you go into, it’s like, that’s why you can handle cryotherapy for just a few minutes, but even though it’s negative 200 degrees, right?
Because you’re not freezing to death in those two minutes.
Just like if you come in a sauna and it’s really, really hot, you’re not instantly sweating and in hyperthermia, in a hyperthermic state instantly.
So here’s what I would like to leave you with.
Here’s what I would like to say today about this because people keep asking and asking and asking.
They’re like, oh, this sauna company came out and their sauna goes to 170.
Wouldn’t that be better than an infrared sauna that goes to 150?
No, you’re missing the point.
Just because I’m in a sauna right now, it’s at 145 degrees.
I’ve been in here for 10 minutes.
I’m sweating pretty good, but I’m not going to sweat like a, how do I explain that?
My body is still not at its peak state for this sauna session and it doesn’t matter if it’s at 145, 165, 125, there’s something happening inside the body where it’s being preheated, where it’s being heated and that has to go on long enough to get to the next stage, to get to profuse sweating.
And it’s not necessarily about the sweating.
It’s about how high is your core temperature?
How long does that take?
So the infrared sauna is not heating up the air to a point that it’s overwhelming your system and that’s heating up your core temperature.
The infrared is actually heating you up.
It’s penetrating your skin.
It’s heating up the molecules inside your body.
If you’re preheating your body, which is like my new thing that I’ve really had great results with, which for different people, it’s going to be different things.
For some people that have access to a rebounder or a vibration plate or something like that, there’s a protocol for that.
Some people can’t exercise.
Maybe it’s a walk, maybe it’s pushups, maybe it’s weight training.
If you have a gym in your house, we’re locked down right now.
So things are limited.
You gotta, you gotta make do.
Here’s the deal.
If you’re preheating your body, right, specifically before you go into an infrared sauna, you’re going to speed up those stages.
You’re going to speed up how long it takes because your core temperature, your circulation has already increased.
Now here’s the key.
This is key.
Stop worrying about the temperature, like how high the, everyone’s trying to be He-Man like I was when I first started out.
It’s not going to help you, right?
A sauna session, it’s different for everybody because there’s different heat tolerance.
It matters if you’re preheating your body or if you’re stone cold, right?
And you just woke up in the morning and you hop in a sauna.
That’s one thing.
If you go out for a brisk walk for 20 minutes, that’s another thing.
If you’re doing weight training for 20 minutes, that’s another thing, right?
Your body is in a different state when you get in.
And so there’s things that you can do to assist and it’s not always increase the temperature.
The temperature itself is not necessarily indicative of you sweating faster, better, you know, a more complete detox, all this stupid shit that some of the sauna companies are saying.
It’s not the case.
You can get just as good of a sauna session at 125, 128, 133 degrees as you can at your 165, 167, 171, whatever, you know, whatever these numbers are that people are coming up with, but there’s different ways to do it, right?
And specifically in an infrared sauna, increasing the temperature does not have the same effect as increasing the temperature in a steam sauna or a dry electric sauna, because the only thing that a steam sauna or a dry electric sauna can do to make you sweat more is increase the temperature in the cabin.
That’s not what’s happening with the infrared.
Well, I shouldn’t say that.
There is an element of it that’s increasing the core temp or increasing the cabin air temperature.
That’s part of it.
But explain to me then at 123 degrees, if you stayed in here for 25 minutes and you’re in close proximity to the heaters and it’s easy to breathe, the cabin air is not superheated.
You’re not overwhelmed.
How then can you get a profuse sweat just like you would at 160 in a steam sauna or a dry electric sauna?
If you understand that difference, it’ll all start to make sense.
It’s not necessarily the temperature.
The temperature should be right for your body, for your preheat sequence.
I just got off the treadmill.
I was on it for like 20 something minutes between 20 and 25.
I didn’t sprint.
I didn’t do anything like that.
I just went for a brisk walk.
The weather wasn’t cooperating today, so that’s all I could do.
And you know, I’m sweating just fine.
It doesn’t have to be this hot.
I just forgot that I preheated it.
I can lower the temperature.
I can open the door like this.
I can cool down.
I’m still going to sweat as long as I remain in proximity to the heaters.
The cabin air temperature is not the only thing that matters.
So stop buying into this, you know, the need for high heat.
It’s not necessary.
You know, for some people that are, that are trying to do muscle recovery and train for triathlons and things like that.
Sure.
Go for all that.
But for somebody who is ill or health challenged or whatever, stop worrying about the heat temperature and pay more attention to what’s happening to your body.
Look at this.
I’m under 140 now and we’re dropping the temperature yet I’m sweating more.
Why is that?
Because I’ve had a longer duration in close proximity to the heaters.
My body is wrapped in far infrared and it slowly as the minutes go by, I’ve been in here for 13 minutes now.
It’s I got 47 minutes left on the clock and it’s slowly increasing those zones.
It’s slowly going through the motions of increasing core temperature and my body can no longer deal with that amount of heat saturation because there’s heat all around me, right?
And it’s penetrating the skin.
It’s heating up the molecules inside the body rather than heat up the molecules in the air, have me breathe it in or just have a severe temperature that the body has to overcome.
They both work.
This is not, this video is not for like, Oh, you should never use a steam sauna and you should only buy infrared or, Oh, you should never use infrared and you should only buy a steam guys just be sweating, but just know the difference.
Understand how an infrared sauna works and be aware of these crazy marketing claims.
Like the, even though a sauna goes up to one 70 or one 80 or whatever they claim these days, I don’t know.
It’s getting out of hand just because it says that on the control panel doesn’t mean if you were to take an IR thermometer in the sauna cabin, the air temperature is not going to be one 70.
Stop buying into the hype.
It’s about the foreign for its saturation and infrared saunas.
How much heat are you saturating the body with?
Yes, the high temperature contributes some, but explain then or think like use your brains.
How then can people be profusely sweating like this in the one thirties instead of the one sixties, right?
And it’s, it’s just the way that the sauna works.
And so I’ve got, I feel like I’m rambling at this point, but I’ve got so much to say about this because these emails and the questions and all this stuff, I mean, I’ve got the door open and I’m not, I’m not, I’m still sweating.
I mean, come on, this is ridiculous.
The temperature is going down in the sauna yet my sweat is increasing.
Why is that?
Because I’m still in close proximity to the foreign for red, which is penetrating the skin, which is exciting the molecules heating me up from the inside and the body can no longer deal with the heat.
I’m past that threshold zone for me, for my body.
For some people, this will be three minutes for other people.
It will be, you know, 17 minutes.
It all depends on how in shape you are, how heat adapted you are, what’s your heat tolerances and this will change over time.
Hell, it changes if you screw up your diet, it changes if you drink too much beer and you don’t have enough hydration, you haven’t drank enough water.
It changes if you have mineral imbalances, you know, all these little things I could put my family in here and I know everything to do for them, but yet their body responds differently than mine.
Why is that?
It’s because we’re all at a different little place.
But if you take the fundamentals, which is, Hey, get in front of the infrared, if infrared saunas are for you again, I don’t care if you buy infrared, I don’t care if you buy steam, I don’t care if you buy dry electric, whatever you want, I don’t care.
Even those stupid near infrared saunas that people are calling, it’s not near infrared that’s heating you up.
Have you ever seen a PBMT light make somebody sweat?
You can sit in front of it for hours, hours.
I did it just yesterday.
I’ve got one right over there.
I can’t show you because this is on a camera mount, but I wish I could.
One of my PBMT lights is right over there, right?
That near infrared isolation is not heating you up.
There’s no such thing as an in near infrared sauna.
What a near infrared sauna tent does is it has a little enclosure.
It tries to insulate it.
That’s why people don’t river sweat from their face.
Usually it’s just a core sweat.
Like you’re never going to sweat from your feet because it’s a narrow beam of heat lamps that are projecting heat and some infrared spectrum, but it’s not isolated at near infrared.
It’s a broad spectrum.
If you look at it on the graph, there’s bleed through into far mid near whatever.
It’s just, they’re an infrared bulb.
Stop calling them near infrared saunas.
It’s stupid.
Anyway, you can see that I’m all fired up about this because I spend hours and hours and hours answering questions about these things because the sauna companies keep, you know, they keep raising these, the, um, they’re pushing the boundaries.
They’re pushing the limits on what can be said.
They’re losing an edge on differentiating themselves against other sauna companies.
And they’re trying to come up with ways that the public will buy into yet.
The public is not understanding that they’re being, uh, they’re being, um, I can’t think what I’m in here.
It’s like, uh, they’re being diverted.
They’re being distracted from the fundamentals that make this technology that make these things work in the first place.
And so I don’t want this video to be about salesmanship.
I don’t want to try to push you on any one particular type of sauna at the end of the day, whatever’s right for you be sweating, but understand the difference in the mechanism that they work.
A steam sauna must be over 200 degrees to give you the same type of heat shock or heat stress on your system that an infrared is going to give you, um, at say 135 degrees.
It’s not that one is better than the other.
It’s the mechanism of delivery.
It’s the mechanism that it’s causing hyperthermia.
It’s the mechanism that it’s raising your core temperature that is different.
So there’s a different need there.
There’s a different application.
You know, the, the air temperature in an infrared sauna is not directly indicative of your core temperature.
If you were to stick a rectal thermometer in and measure throughout the duration of your sauna session.
But that is a very good, I hope these studies come out that I can’t tell you guys about, but there’s some really interesting research studies being done that are kind of a closed loop.
They’re not public right now and they might not be for a little while, but that would be a better way for me to explain the beginning part of this video.
If you were to measure your temperature on a thermometer and you had it on the, on the, on the window and you could see it when you first get in the sauna, it doesn’t really matter how much you’re sweating.
Some people can sweat with just a slight temperature increase, but if you were to monitor your core temp increase, your core temp increase, if you were in a sauna for five to 10 minutes at 125 versus 150, there might be like an initial increase, but it’s not going to be the substantial thing that you’re thinking of just because the sauna is hotter, right?
The steam saunas that shock you with over 200 degrees, 300, 200 degrees Fahrenheit of air temperature, which provide a different type of shock because you’re also breathing this air in.
Usually people cannot stand that long enough to use that consistently, consistently, which is why people such as myself, when I was not feeling well, got better results in an infrared because I could stay in here, increase my core temperature incrementally for a longer duration, more frequently throughout the week.
I could get more sessions in.
So instead of looking at the micro and the macro, just think about it in terms of how much time can I actually induce hyperthermia in a six month period?
And what do you just think about this?
What do you think is going to be better?
Gentle, lower, more frequent temperatures or massive shocks to the body.
You know, you can’t take it very often.
You can only sauna every other day or two or three times a week because it’s depleting you of your fluids too much.
It’s depleting your minerals, it’s depleting your vitamins.
You’re not able to keep up with the electrolyte intake.
Something else that’s going on in your life or with your body is hindering you from being able to withstand that optimally.
And it’s an unnecessary stress.
You can still get the benefits at lower temperatures.
I’ve been saying this and saying this and saying this, and I do it myself.
I’m constantly…
Dang phone overheated.
All I was trying to say guys is what turned into a long winded rant is if you were to open the door on an electric sauna, a steam sauna, any kind of dry sauna, it’s not going to heat you up anymore.
If you were to open the door like I was doing this whole time for this entire video, an infrared sauna, you’re still going to continue to sweat.
Your body is still going to increase its core temperature and things like that.
The mechanism of delivery is different.
So stop believing the hype on temperature is everything.
There’s more things that matter than temperature.