The most obvious effect that an infrared sauna causes is an excess sweating while taking it. The sources what I found on the internet claim that person in an infrared sauna sweats 2-3 times more that in a steam sauna, but these sources are promotional by their nature (most from selling sites) and don't contain convincing references to scientific studies. From this I conclude that amount of sweating that infrared sauna actually produces is still in question. But the statement that infrared sauna produces intensive sweating sounds reasonable, as infrared rays heat up a human body in an infrared sauna from every direction, so for a body to cool it has to produce sweat.
The amount of sweat produced in a traditional sauna varies around 500 grams per session, and tends to increase as your body becomes more used to sauna sessions. These claim is from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), August 7, 1981 article Effect of sweating by W. Dean. I wasn't able to find the full text of the article in electronic form, but it is widely citied on many infrared-sauna oriented sites.
Anyway, there is no disagreement in the fact that sweating is good for our health. Sweating is one of the ways our body uses to detoxify itself. When we sweat, our pores open and clean themselves, resulting in more soft and healthy skin. A healthy person should regularly experience intensive sweating. There are many ways to make your body sweat – mostly with physical exercises, like running, aerobics, biking, weight lifting, and more, but if you cannot do them regularly, an infrared sauna can be good additional method to give your body a good sweat. Using an infrared sauna is by no means a replacement for physical activities, just because physical activities have many other good health effects, but it can be a useful supplementary activity.
Sweating in a sauna at home is just simpler – you don't have to go out, you can multitask while taking a sauna (reading, watching TV of listening to music) and you can do it any time you want. There is no need for effort to take a sauna. This is the real, and the main benefit of an infrared sauna – it's simplicity and comfort.
This entry was posted on Sunday, December 25th, 2005 at 1:14 am	and is filed under Infrared sauna. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.