Category: Sauna Health Benefits

Infrared Saunas and Pain Relief

Relieve Pain With Infrared Sauna Therapy

The soothing and relaxing heat from a Clearlight Infrared Sauna offers a variety of healing benefits including a significant reduction in chronic pain often even after the first use! According to Dr. Jeffrey Spencer, a sports medicine expert from the University of Southern California and consultant to Lance Armstrong, “infrared wavelengths penetrate the body to create heat, which creates profound therapeutic benefits. They increase blood flow to the muscles, delivering more concentrated oxygen, which creates more energy to heal.” 1

A study reported in Clinical Rheumatology showed that infrared saunas gave significant relief for patients with chronic pain (such as rheumatoid arthritis). Four weeks of 30-minute, twice-weekly sessions in an infrared sauna resulted in a 40 percent improvement in pain and stiffness. 2
A recent study published in Internal Medicine, showed that patients with chronic pain saw their pain levels drop by nearly 70% after their first session of infrared sauna therapy. Pain scores remained low throughout the observation period. 3

How Do Infrared Saunas Work To Ease Pain?

Our bodies are held together by a web like structure that weaves itself all through the body called fascia. A good metaphor for understanding how fascia plays a role in relaxation is to think of a knitted sweater: if you pull on one string of yarn the entire sweater can unravel. Similarly, as one part of the fascia web begins to relax and unwind, your whole body follows in kind.

With infrared therapy, the infrared wave penetrates 1.5” to 2” into the body stimulating a relaxation response allowing the muscles and tendons to unwind and release tension. The penetrating heat also raises the core body temperature which creates a “false fever” in the body forcing the immune system to spring into action and start making more white blood cells. The result is a reduction in swelling and inflammation, two major factors in easing chronic pain.
In addition, as the infrared heat elevates your core body temperature, capillaries and arteries dilate to increase blood flow allowing more oxygen rich blood to travel to areas of tension and pain. Your muscles, joints, and soft tissue experience relief and healing.

You emerge from a 20-30 minute session in your infrared sauna feeling relaxed and renewed!

  1. http://www.cancerdefeated.com/newsletters/Infrared-Saunas-A-Fun-Relaxing-Way-to-Detox.html
  2. Clinical Rheumatology, January 2009
  3. Internal Medicine (Tokyo) Aug 15, 2008 by Matsushita K, Masuda A, Tei C. The First Department of Internal Medicine, Kagoshima University Hospital, Kagoshima, Japan.

Benefits of Sweating – Infrared Saunas

The health benefits of infrared saunas are numerous.  In a Clearlight Infrared Sauna you will sweat profusely.  In addition to the detox benefits, there are actual benefits just from sweating.  Ward Dean, MD, a US Army flight surgeon who has researched the physiological effects of sweating in a sauna, finds that it can be as effective as regular exercise in conditioning the cardiovascular system and burning calories. Sweating in a sauna, he says, is a good workout for people unable to exercise, such as disabled people in wheelchairs or immobilized athletes recovering from injuries.

You can see the article published in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) by CLICKING HERE.

How Does Your Clearlight Infrared Sauna Reduce Stress?

Today, our fast paced lives can be exciting and rewarding, but doctors tell us that the chronic stress that comes with it is literally killing us with increased levels of heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, digestive disorders, premature aging and even death that can arrive years before our time.

Regular use in an infrared sauna has been shown to reduce stress, but just how does this actually work?

Our autonomic nervous system is set up with two opposing positions, fight or flight (sympathetic) and rest and digest (parasympathetic). We need both to survive but our ANS system evolved when we lived under real survival threats (think tiger). When faced with such a threat the sympathetic part of our ANS informs the hypothalamus to immediately release sugar from our liver and cortisol from our adrenal glands so we can run like lightning and live to see another day. Today, our higher thinking brain can perceive threats like being stuck in traffic or being behind at work or a news program about trouble far away as actually being a real threat, just like a tiger. We can get caught in what is called a cortisol cascade until we are burned while our immune function becomes depressed making us susceptable to colds and flu. We can literally get stuck in this harmful loop. It is only when we get back more into the parasympathetic mode that our health has a chance to return. This is where the infrared sauna comes in.

When we get into the infrared sauna, the first thing that happens is vasodilation. This is the blood vessels opening up as the warming infrared wavelengths penetrate into the soft tissue. Your muscles relax and pain starts to disappear both in muscles and joints. When the body senses these changes it naturally starts to relax and calm down. Breathing becomes slower, blood pressure drops and you may even feel a little smile appear feeling this good. This is the parasympathetic part where healing occurs and it happens naturally in the sauna. This is the simple secret.

Using the infrared sauna for twenty minutes, three times a week is a good way to affect this  sympathetic/parasympathetic set point. Regular sauna usage will actually diminish stress over time. The harmful cortisol cascade will lessen or leave entirely as the body/mind learns how to live without the harmful effects of paper tigers. It works, it really does.

Top Alternative Medicine Therapies

In the past several years, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies, including Reiki, meditation, and infrared sauna sessions, have gained tremendous acceptance not only with patients but also with healthcare professionals in virtually all fields. This rising popularity can be attributed to factors such as affordability and safety when compared to traditional drugs and procedures, as well as overall effectiveness.

Although CAM therapies take a number of different forms, here is a brief list of some of the most common treatments used today:

  • Specialized diet: From weight loss to detoxification and disease management, larger numbers of patients are following specialized diets—Atkins, raw food, macrobiotic, gluten-free, vegan—to achieve their health goals.
  • Body manipulation: Based on the belief that mind and body should be in perfect harmony, body manipulation therapies like chiropractic, yoga, and tai chi bring spiritual tranquility in addition to physical relaxation.
  • Sauna: The health benefits of saunas have been thoroughly discussed here on our site. Pain relief, weight loss, detoxification, and stress reduction are just a few of the positive effects of heat therapy.
  • Herbal remedies: More and more people are turning away from prescription drugs in favor of natural herbs to treat their ailments. St. John’s wort, ginger, chamomile, caraway, ginseng, and Echinacea are all widely used.
  • Reiki: Performed by a trained Reiki master, this CAM therapy focuses on restoring energy balance throughout the body by means of light touch on or above specific areas in the head, neck, and elsewhere.

While complementary and alternative medicine therapies are not for everyone, their safety, affordability, and effectiveness make them worth looking into. If you’re currently experiencing health problems or would like to prevent them before they arise, getting an infrared sauna for your home, taking up yoga or tai chi, or changing your diet might be just what you need.

The Benefits of Infrared Saunas for Olympic Athletes

One of the most interesting aspects of the Olympics, aside from the intense competition, is learning how some of the participating athletes reached world-class status. In the coming weeks, we’ll see countless athlete profiles and interviews describing punishing training regimens and practice schedules that would make mere mortals collapse. We might even hear about the role far infrared saunas have played in the athlete’s injury prevention and treatment program.

 

Sports medicine practitioners are well aware of the healing properties generated by a sauna equipped with infrared heaters, and many of them insist that athletes under their supervision sit through both pre- and post-workout sauna sessions to prevent injuries and speed recovery. By doing this, athletes can:

  • Loosen their muscles and joints before a workout to increase flexibility
  • Increase their tolerance for anaerobic activity
  • Eliminate harmful toxins that might hinder performance
  • Reduce lactic acid buildup in muscles, allowing them to loosen and relax
  • Boost their blood circulation to promote muscle repair
  • Ease muscle and joint pain stemming from overuse, strain, or repetitive motion
  • Feel refreshed and reinvigorated even after the toughest workouts
  • Burn extra calories and retain cardiovascular fitness while recovering from injuries that inhibit full workouts

Of course, you don’t have to be an elite Olympic athlete to enjoy the benefits listed here. A sauna with infrared heaters is also a wonderful workout supplement for weekend warriors in all sports, as well as dedicated runners, martial artists, yogis, and more.

To minimize time lost to sports injuries and accelerate recovery so you can get back to the action faster, check out our line of far infrared saunas today.