An infrared sauna makes use of electromagnetic rays emitted by infrared lamps to heat your body up. These saunas don’t warm the air around you as traditional saunas do.
Most of the infrared radiations enter your body tissues before they get the chance to heat the air up. This can be used to your advantage in many different ways.
1. Can an infrared sauna help with a cold?
While using an infrared sauna won’t cure your cold, it may help ease the symptoms and speed up recovery. The first and obvious reaction of your body to an infrared sauna is sweating. The sweating mechanism is naturally meant to cool your body down.
Moreover, using a sauna can relax you and may provide temporary alleviation from congestion as well.
2. Can a portable infrared sauna cause diarrhea?
While it’s often mild and not a cause for concern, sometimes diarrhea may be caused as one of the healing reactions induced by an infrared sauna.
This can dehydrate you even further, after the dehydration already caused by sweating from a sauna. To prevent any adverse effects, it is recommended to drink plenty of water on the day you use a sauna, before and after your session.
3. Can an infrared sauna help with shingles?
While currently there’s no scientific evidence to prove the benefits of infrared sauna therapy for shingles, some people claim it may be helpful in pain and inflammation management.
Shingles is caused as a flare-up later on in life after you get chickenpox. The same virus, Varicella zoster, causes the skin blisters of Shingles, as it does for chickenpox. These are very itchy, painful, and can be quite distressing.
While shingles blisters can surface anywhere on your body, the most common presentation is a band of blisters that runs from the center point of your spine around a single side of the chest to the center of your chest.
Overall, Shingles inflammation can vary from a mild rash to painful sores and small wounds. An infrared sauna, due to its effects of enhancing circulation, may reduce swelling and inflammation. It may also stimulate the formation of white blood cells to fight the infection.
4. Can an infrared sauna make you sick?
Infrared saunas, among their many benefits, have some (usually mild) adverse effects at times too. These include lightheadedness and nausea, making you feel sick. While infrared saunas aren’t as warm as conventional ones, the heat can still cause dizziness in some people.
Taking a few precautions can help you avoid sauna sickness. Avoid using a sauna immediately after exposure to a cold environment since it can over-stress your body, causing dizziness and making you feel unwell.
It’s always better to stop your session if you feel sick at any point. Drinking plenty of water on the day of your sauna session is highly recommended.
Pregnant women are at a higher risk of sickness from sauna use, although if they have healthy pregnancies, they likely won’t have any problem.
They should always get approval for using an infrared sauna from their doctor beforehand. Moreover, sauna use isn’t recommended in early pregnancy since it could harm the baby.
While saunas may make healthy people feel mildly sick, they should be avoided if you are already suffering from certain health conditions.
You should always be cautious or consult your doctor before using an infrared sauna in case of cardiovascular disease, recent joint injury, MS, fever, heat insensitivity, surgical implants, or pacemakers.
Using a sauna during menstruation may cause increased bleeding, and the elderly should use a sauna at temperatures lower than normal.
You should quit your session and cool off as soon as you start feeling unwell. Exercising caution will keep you safe from unwanted complications.
5. Can a portable infrared sauna help you lose weight?
Infrared saunas may cause a modest amount of weight loss due to the two different effects it has on your body. Firstly, the sweating that results from sauna use causes you to lose excess water weight.
This, however, is short-lived since instead of actually burning calories and losing fat, it just reduces water retention for some time.
There is also the fact that using an infrared sauna can speed up metabolism by increasing your heart rate by up to 30%.
That’s just your body’s natural reaction to temperature extremes, but it can work in your favor by burning more calories than you usually do at rest.
A safe and healthy combination for weight loss can be a regular fat-burning cardio routine alongside infrared sauna sessions every few days.
6. How long should you stay in an infrared sauna?
For starters, you can use an infrared sauna around twice a week in the beginning. Limit your sessions between 10 and 15 minutes initially. With time, you can work your way towards 20 to 45 minutes, max.
In your initial sessions, note your body’s ability to sweat and how tolerant you are to the heat. Long hours in a sauna aren’t recommended since dehydration and sickness are major concerns. Limit your daily sauna usage to 2 sessions maximum, each around half an hour or lesser.
7. Can an infrared sauna kill candida?
Candida is often found in people with compromised immunity. An infrared sauna may help treat candida since it strengthens immunity while increasing blood circulation.
The visible signs and symptoms of the yeast infection may gradually start decreasing with regular infrared sauna use. Moreover, pain and soreness may be somewhat relieved due to the warm sauna temperature.
8. Can infrared sauna help with bronchitis?
Although short-lived, there is evidence that sauna use does improve lung function. This can help asthma patients and provide some relief to those suffering from chronic bronchitis.
Along with its positive effects on the respiratory system and breathing, regular sauna use can even decrease the likelihood of contracting pneumonia.
9. Can portable infrared sauna kill scabies?
Scabies is a skin disease caused by parasitic mites that burrow underneath the surface of your skin, laying eggs and thriving under superficial skin layers.
This initiates your immune system to react to these organisms by making red bumps and acne-like rashes appear on your skin. Infrared therapy causes sweating and high temperatures, both of which are unfavorable for mites.
Sauna bathing twice or thrice a week followed by a shower can help eradicate scabies mites. Sweating causes many of the burrowed mites to come to the surface, and high temperatures may kill some as well.
Since these parasites burrow under your skin surface, a single session may not be enough to eradicate all. However, it does sound like a promising treatment plan alongside regular therapies and medication.
10. Can infrared sauna help with Lyme disease?
It is popularly believed that infrared saunas can help with Lyme disease. That’s what they’re often marketed for doing, and what some patients claim.
While it has yet to be proven by solid scientific evidence, the logic behind this idea makes sense that infrared sauna therapy may work for some patients.
Infrared saunas are theorized to help alleviate Lyme symptoms by detoxification through sweating. Their lukewarm temperature can enhance blood flow, promoting the efficient distribution of medicine. Moreover, it also provides relief from fatigue, muscle pain, and joint pain.
It could be the case that the toxins accumulated in your body as a result of Lyme disease can be flushed out through sweat as a process of detoxification.
However, there are still opposing views as sweat is believed to have a limited detox affect – your kidney and liver are mainly responsible for getting rid of toxins from the body.
Studies have also shown sauna bathing to stimulate the immune system. This suggests that sauna bathing could be helpful in Lyme disease, at least to a certain degree.
Here is our selection of top 6 portable infrared saunas one can find on the market.
