Installing a 1 or 2 person infrared sauna into your home can change your life and health for the good. If you haven’t heard about infrared saunas, you will soon as the trend is here to stay. They have attracted a lot of celebrity attention from Lady Gaga to Selena Gomez and Chelsea Handler, because of the amazing health claims of anti-aging, detoxification and weight loss.

What Are Infrared Saunas?

Before you purchase a 2 person infrared sauna, you have to know what the term ‘infrared’ means. The idea of sweating as a means of purification or well-being has been around for centuries. Many civilizations have used such heat boxes like the ancient Greeks and Romans to the temples known as “house of heat” in Mesoamerica. You can’t walk in Finland without tripping over a sauna and that is where the word ‘sauna’ originated.

Traditional saunas use wood or electricity to warm up the air in a small room to 160°F to 190°F. This intense heat makes your body want to sweat profusely and increases your heart rate, which is believed to provide many health benefits that are similar to moderate exercise. A study conducted on male Finnish participants showed that using a sauna 2 to 3 times a week can reduce heart disease risk by 23%.

So, you might be trying to work out how a sauna infrared is different from a conventional sauna. An infrared sauna uses a unique feature called infrared light to heat the body within instead of heating the external air inside the sauna. The allure is that infrared saunas can produce the same effects of traditional saunas, but at a lower and more comfortable temperature at around 110°F to 140°F. These saunas can penetrate the skin more deeply than a traditional sauna, so more sweat is produced and more toxins are released which results in many health benefits. Some studies have suggested health benefits from medical conditions such as heart arrhythmias, chronic pain and diabetes, which we will elaborate more about further.

Experience Better Well-Being

The big appeal that infrared saunas have, apart from relaxation, is the fact they provide a wide range of health benefits. There are so many health advantages to gain that it would be impossible to list them all down here, so we are going to talk about the three mentioned earlier: heart arrhythmias, chronic pain and diabetes.

Heart Arrhythmia

A heart arrhythmia is when the electrical signals to the heart that harmonize heartbeats aren’t working accurately. It is an irregular heartbeat that makes the sufferer experience the heart beating too fast, too slowly, too early, or even irregularly. For example, some people may experience irregular heartbeats, which mimic the sensation of a racing heart or fluttering. The majority of the time heart arrhythmias are nothing to worry about; although, if they are very abnormal, or come from a weak or damaged heart, arrhythmias can be life-threatening.

A 2009 study, published in the Journal of Cardiology, analyzed the effects of infrared sauna use on individuals with heart arrhythmia. There were over thirty participants in the study, and some of them used infrared saunas for fifteen-minute sessions every day for two weeks. After the two weeks, the participants who used infrared saunas showed a decrease in abnormal heart rate within a 24-hour window. Also, the number of premature ventricular contractions in these volunteers reduced to over 30%. This is about 900 abnormal beats less than those who did not use the sauna and experienced over 3,000 abnormal beats.

Chronic Pain

An infrared sauna is the best sauna to use if you are a gym rat as it helps your muscles recover faster after an intense workout. You can get on with your daily responsibilities without any discomfort and are more willing to hit the gym again the next day. This boosts your production levels and never miss a workout!

Toss away your pain pills and muscle rub creams and escape into an infrared sauna to relieve tension and relax muscles. The heat that is produced in an infrared sauna penetrates the joints, muscles and tissues, which increases circulation and speeds up the oxygen flow. The boost of blood flow to the muscles is a more concentrated quality of oxygen, which initiates more energy to heal. When you lower the soreness on nerve endings, you decrease muscle spasms and allow the body to heal itself naturally.

Diabetes

When a person is healthy, the food that they consume, particularly carbohydrates, are broken down within the body into a sugar called glucose. The body’s cells use glucose to produce the energy that is required to perform basic tasks like moving. Also, glucose is necessary for brain health.

Glucose can enter into the body’s cells, so it can be converted into energy with the help of a chemical in your body called insulin. Insulin is the gatekeeper with the key that opens the door for the cells to let glucose in.

Unfortunately, when the body is suffering from Type 2 diabetes, the ability to let sugar enter into the cells--so it can be used as energy--is hindered. This could happen because the pancreas, the organ that produces insulin, (1) is no longer creating enough insulin in the body, or (2) the pancreas is producing insulin, but it is futile at bringing glucose into the cells. The symptoms of Type 2 diabetes are:

●Unexplained weight loss

●Increased thirst and urination

●Increased hunger

●Fatigue

●Blurred vision

●Numbness or tingling in the feet or hands

●Sores that do not heal

A study conducted by the University of British Columbia found that patients who had 20-minute infrared sauna sessions three times a week for 3 months resulted in lower blood pressure, which is a typical link to Type 2 diabetes. The relaxation benefits from an infrared sauna can help with fatigue, increase blood circulation to combat the numbness and tingling in hands or feet, and the infrared rays can prevent bacterial growth to prevent and lower the chances of infection on sores.