Sauna Baths Can Benefit Your Health
You may consider a home sauna to be a luxury, an item that
offers pleasure and comfort but is ultimately inessential to
your well-being. The results of years of research, however, may
just convince you of what sauna enthusiasts have believed for
centuries - that sauna use offers tremendous health benefits
that simply cannot be denied.
A main objective of any sauna bath is to make you sweat, and
sweating is a natural, necessary function of the human body.
It's one way the body can rid itself of extra heat and water and
eliminate harmful toxins that have built up inside it over time.
As Dr. Sherry A. Rogers writes in her book, Detoxify or
Die, "The bottom line is that sweat is the only proven
method for getting the most dangerous toxins out of the body."
In their studies of far infrared saunas, Japanese researchers
have concluded that perspiration induced by infrared sauna use
contains as much as 300% more toxins than sweat expelled during
exercise. Included among these toxins are aluminum, cadmium,
lead and mercury.
The health benefits of sauna bathing go beyond assisting
detoxification, however. As your body increases sweat production
to cool itself during a hot sauna bath, your heart increases
blood circulation. Heart rate, cardiac output and metabolic rate
increase, while diastolic blood pressure drops, helping to
improve overall cardiovascular fitness.
Sauna use may also contribute to healthy weight loss. A letter
published in a 1981 issue of the Journal of the American
Medical Association claimed that "a moderately conditioned
person can easily 'sweat off' 500 grams in a sauna, consuming
nearly 300 calories - the equivalent of running two to three
miles. A heat-conditioned person can easily sweat off 600 to 800
calories with no adverse effects. While the weight of the water
lost can be regained by rehydration with water, the calories
consumed will not be."
Most indisputable are the claims that regular sauna use helps
relieves stress and promotes relaxation. It has been repeatedly
demonstrated that spending just a few minutes in a hot sauna
bath reduces anxiety levels, soothes nerves and warms tight
muscles. Not only has sauna use been shown to encourage deeper,
most restful sleep, infrared sauna therapy has been effective
for relieving pain associated with arthritis, backache,
bursitis, fibromyalgia, headache, sprains, strains and other
muscular-skeletal ailments.
"I am convinced that the far infrared sauna is something that
everyone should do to restore health," writes Dr. Rogers. In a
society struggling with toxic build-up, heart disease, stress
and anxiety disorders, and weight problems, it seems the home
sauna has indeed become much less of a luxury and much more of a
necessity for healthy living.
About the author:
Pertti Olavi Jalasjaa is the author of "The Art of Sauna
Building," an acclaimed reference book on sauna
construction. He is also the general manager of Great Saunas,
which has been manufacturing and selling high-quality saunas to
sauna enthusiasts around the world since 1974. Visit Great
Saunas online at www.greatsaunas.com.
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