They Say Infrared Isn’t Real Sauna—But I’ve Tested the Results Myself

People love to say infrared saunas aren’t real saunas because they don’t hit 180 degrees or use steam. But I’ve tested this stuff personally—during chemo, no less—and I’ve seen what actually works. In this video, I’m breaking down the difference between radiant and convection heat, why air temp isn’t the full story, and how consistency matters more than perfection. If all you can manage is a 135° infrared sauna in your apartment… it still works. Here’s why.

Read the transcript >

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Transcript

Everyone’s arguing about whether infrared is as good as a traditional steam sauna from Finland or wherever. All the studies are on Finnish saunas, and they say you get a 40 % reduction in all-cause mortality. I was like, hmm, let me think about this: even if it’s only half of that, like you guys argue, I’ll take the 20 %. You want me to leave 20 % on the table and do nothing? I didn’t think so.

“Oh, Matt, you’re misleading people because you keep telling everyone to use infrared saunas instead of a Finnish sauna.” I finally got tired of it—enough is enough.

Here’s the problem. All these setups are great ideas; I like them too. I love the idea of having a little shed out back with a smokestack, seeing the smoke rise, and sitting in a nice hot box that hits 500 °F—well, I’m being facetious, 200-something degrees—and doing all that. But if you watch the videos of these people:

1. They’re splitting firewood.
2. They have to go out and preheat the thing, starting a fire hours in advance—or at least an hour.
3. It’s outside. Depending on the weather, am I really going to trek out there?

I argue with these folks because they say you won’t get the full sauna benefits unless you use a traditional Finnish sauna, which includes increased humidity—pouring water on the rocks, using a steam generator, or a dry electric heater with air circulation and added water. They insist you don’t get all the benefits otherwise.

We were just talking about getting some of the benefits, and they’re like, “You shouldn’t use it at all if it isn’t traditional.” They’re so dogmatic. I’ve had it. Now I’m going to produce—now I’m coming after them. I’m done. I’m done. Because here’s the problem.

Maybe for a small sliver of the percentage of benefit, let’s just say that they’re right. I don’t think that you need a particular air temperature in a sauna enclosure in order to make heat shock proteins. Because you’re talking about a convection sauna versus a radiant heat sauna. So a convection sauna works off of heating the air temperature around the body.

And that in turn, translating heat to increased core temperature and initiate the hyperthermic response so that you have those reactions. Well, the same thing is happening in an infrared sauna. It’s just radiant heat penetrating the tissues and heating the tissue up directly instead of heating the air. Is there some convection in an infrared sauna?

Well, sure, because the heat accumulates and it raises the air temperature. However, that’s not the primary method of heat delivery. And so you can still make heat shock proteins in a rate in an infrared sauna from radiant heat, even though the air temperature is not… So it’s not the same metric.

You can’t measure the heat of an infrared sauna solely based on air temperature. You have to understand and measure the infrared saturation, because that’s what’s absorbed by the body. It’s not just the air. Whereas in the Finnish sauna, that’s not the same.

You’re basically measuring the air temperature. And that’s where they get all this information from, from the studies. They’re saying, oh, if it’s not 170 or 180 or 200 degrees, you don’t get the same hyperthermic response. Well, maybe that’s true in air temperature.

Now let’s understand that as a baseline. And then now let’s say, okay, for a percentage of the benefits, let’s just say that they’re right. Let’s just let them think that they’re right for a moment. All right.

Well, what percentage of those benefits still remain? Even though that temperature isn’t within the threshold that you guys think you have to have, but you’re 80% there in an infrared. So you’re saying that someone should have no heat therapy benefits in their life whatsoever. If they can’t do your crazy method, that is dogmatic and is the best thing that you could possibly do.

It’s kind of like saying that if you can’t get the best truck on the market, you shouldn’t get a truck to start your landscaping company. You should walk to work. Yeah. You should pull this trailer yourself.

You would put a bike trailer on the thing with your little weed eater and a lawnmower? I would do that. No. You get what is practical for your life, for your circumstance, for what you can do.

Because if it’s something, I have family that have a very expensive $15,000, $20,000 custom sauna in their basement. And you know what they tell me? They’re like, oh yeah, when we built the house, the sauna was great. You know what we use it for the last 10 years?

I was like, what? Stack wine in it. I was like, why don’t you use it? Like, this is amazing.

It’s custom. I went in there. I checked it out. They’re like, eh, takes a while to heat up.

It’s this whole process. It’s da-da-da-da. We used it for a while. We liked it.

I don’t know. Just kind of got, I don’t know, got tired of having to deal with it. I was like, oh my God. So usability as a metric really comes to mind in working with so many people.

I mean, thousands of people have feedback now on this stuff. And so I’m of the belief that if you can get some benefit of heat therapy in your house, whether you’re in an apartment, whether you live in a cold climate, it would just be awful to try to do sauna outside three times a week.

Because that’s all you have to do for 30 minutes, for three times a week, and you get the majority of the benefits. Even if it’s not 180 degrees. It could be 140 degrees, 135. When I met you, I was going to the hospital every day.

They will not do anything to you until you go through the vitals thing. So every week we’re doing labs. We got EKG. We got blood pressure, heart rate, everything.

Like they’re checking your baselines to make sure they’re not poisoning you to death. So any change in these metrics, and they’re like, whoa, whoa, we either have to adjust the dose, or we’re going to do this, or we got to watch them. I was running my own little experiment during that time, because everything else was the same.

My food was the same. The time I went there was the same. The drugs were the same.

Stuff was the same; all I had to do was walk once or twice a day, leisurely walk, very slow, 15–20 minutes, and sauna. My blood pressure, even with the drugs, was lower. My resting heart rate was lower, everything improved, I had less anxiety. The difference is: if you try to replicate that at home, you wouldn’t have $20,000 worth of medical equipment every single day that was hooked up to you. The stupid little blood-pressure cuff they use at home lies—usually, anyway—and the one that you use at the store is always off a little bit, but these people have the real shit.

Well, because one of the side effects from some of that stuff is you usually have to go on blood-pressure medication because your blood pressure goes up, but yours was decreasing with sauna usage. I didn’t have to go on the—yes, yes, it was kept in check with those things even while on the drugs. I go out on a limb and say it would be for everybody, even though I’m not a doctor—it’s not medical advice, please see a licensed medical physician for medical help.

I think walking and sauna is like the best thing that you could ever do for yourself—everyone. There’s a lot of things that happen walking: there’s some brain benefits to walking, there’s a synchronization left and right for that. I do other stuff, but as something that is free and that you could do all the time, low impact, if you’re fit or you’re not fit, you could still do it—like all these things. I think you combine that with sauna, you’re in business for a marginal health-increase benefit. It takes a little while; it’s subtle. You don’t just walk one week and sauna one week and all of a sudden everything is phenomenal, but give it a few months, do it three times a week—big difference.