Infrared Sauna: Reaping the Benefits Of Sweating
While we wait for the world to get back to normal and for gyms to become safe places to congregate, getting your daily 30-minute exercise at home will be an important part of your detox routine.
Many of us might find it difficult to drum up the motivation to workout, but there is hope still.
A prominent leader in the Integrative & Functional Medicine medical field and Medical Director of two amazing clinics "The Cancer Center For Healing" & "Center For New Medicine", Leigh Erin Connealy, MD, says that an infrared sauna is one of the best resources to detox your body of toxins.
“It cleanses you and increases your nitric oxide levels which increases your oxygenation. Our body has heat shock proteins, which is our body's protective mechanisms to kill bugs and kill cancer!” Dr. Connealy said.
You can relax and enjoy a deep detox right at home. As almost everything around us is cancerous, it is only necessary to take preventative measures and detoxify our bodies to protect ourselves from America’s leading chronic disease.
Even with an infrared sauna there are still thousands of good reasons to exercise, but it’s nice to have an alternative. According to the National Cancer Institute, 1.8 million people will be diagnosed with cancer in the United States.
This is an alarming statistic that is only growing so investing in an infrared sauna is one method of prevention - by way of getting rid of the body’s toxic load - and stay healthy.
Other sauna benefits listed from Riordan Clinic:
Skin rejuvenation
Sauna use slowly restores elimination through the skin. The skin is the largest organ of the body and a major eliminative channel. In most people, it is inactive, congested and toxic. Continuous use of synthetic clothing, bathing in chlorinated water, and exposure to hundreds of chemicals, damage the skin. Excessive sympathetic nervous system activity and negative emotions cause blood to be withdrawn from the skin, contributing to inactivity of the skin.
Enhanced sweating
Sweating in a sauna is a by-product of applying heat to the body. The sweating process gently and safely helps eliminate all heavy metals and toxic chemicals. Medical studies demonstrate that most toxins can be eliminated through the skin, relieving the burden on the kidneys and liver. Sweating during sauna therapy is a great way to reduce the fluid levels in the blood, causing the toxin rich intercellular fluid to be available for detoxification. Sweating increases dramatically in most people after several months of sauna use.
Exercise benefits
Saunas provide many of the benefits of exercise with much less expenditure of energy. These include enhanced circulation and oxidation of the tissues. Repeated sauna use can lower elevated blood pressure and improve the elasticity of the arteries. Saunas are helpful for cardiovascular rehabilitation, arthritis, allergies, skin conditions and chemical sensitivity. Cholesterol level mean reduction was found after sauna therapy. The sauna therapy resulted in improvements in psychological test scores.
Decongesting the internal organs
Heating the body powerfully shunts blood toward the skin to dissipate heat. This decongests the internal organs and greatly stimulates circulation. The sauna has an effect on oxygenating and hydrating the cells and organs, and improving circulation. Sinuses, joints and many other tissues benefit greatly.
Fever therapy (hyperthermia) for infections
Our bodies naturally develop a fever when we are ill in order to enhance our metabolism and to help destroy viruses. Raising body temperature powerfully assists the body to kill parasites such as bacteria, fungi, and viruses. It helps people with low body temperature to fight chronic infections such as infections in the sinuses, ears, eyes, bladder, throat and intestines.
Tumor cells and mutated cell elimination
Hyperthermia also helps to kill abnormal cells. Toxin-burdened cells and tumors are weaker than normal cells and tolerate heat poorly. Raising body temperature hastens their death. Though not a conventional method, hyperthermia is a researched therapy for cancer. Heat also disables or kills cells that have been mutated by radiation or damaged by other toxins.
Inhibiting the sympathetic nervous system
This is a tremendous benefit not offered by many therapies. It enables the body to relax, heal and regenerate itself much faster, causing recovery from many types of ailments.
Elimination of fat cell store toxins
Most environmental contaminants are fat soluble. Thus they have an affinity for body lipids or fatty tissue. Sauna therapy increases metabolism, which burns fat for energy, releasing some toxins for removal. The body uses metabolic systems, particularly the liver, to convert fat-soluble substances into water-soluble chemicals to facilitate excretion. The physical heat from the sauna helps liquefy fat, further breaking down the chemical lock on the toxic molecules. It is this “fat sweat” that makes saunas so efficient at eliminating toxins.
Elimination of toxic metals from the body
Concentrations of zinc, copper, iron, nickel, cadmium, lead, manganese, sodium, and chloride were determined after collections utilizing a total body wash down technique (sweating in sauna). The results demonstrated that the concentrations of nickel and cadmium in sweat were higher than those reported for urine, with similar results for lead. The loss of toxic trace metals in sweat could have therapeutic importance.
To learn more from Dr. Connealy about other effective and less costly ways to detox, watch this video!
Thinking about investing in an infrared sauna? We got you covered. You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars to squeeze one in your home. Here’s a portable, at-home infrared sauna one Amazon-click away to effectively detox, improve skin and boost weight loss.