More people have taken to a sauna to relax and lower their stress. Some have even decompressed in a sauna after a rigorous gym session to help relieve pain.
However, one little-known use of saunas is to improve your skin condition. This is true for a traditional sauna that uses heated stones and a far-infrared sauna that uses infrared light or radiation.
How Infrared Saunas Work
Infrared saunas work by using infrared light or infrared radiation to make heat. Unlike traditional saunas that heat the air in the room to raise the body temperature, an infrared sauna uses infrared waves to heat the body directly.
An infrared sauna can raise your core body temperature to about 150 F or 66 C. Moreover, heat from infrared saunas penetrates deeper into the body and is believed to impact overall health significantly.
Meanwhile, the air inside the infrared sauna room can remain at a lower temperature while still producing the same results as traditional saunas. People who cannot stand the heat of the sauna room for long can usually tolerate infrared heat better, allowing them to stay inside an infrared sauna for a more extended period.
This also means they have a greater likelihood of experiencing the same benefits that traditional saunas have to offer.
What Are the Benefits of Infrared Saunas?
Infrared saunas offer several potential health benefits. Having a regular infrared sauna session does not only potentially help our skin — its supposed benefits also extend to the following:
- Helps lower anxiety
- Induces relaxation
- Improves sleep
- Helps with weight loss
- Induces sweating
- Relieves muscle pain or soreness
- Reduces chronic pain, including joint pain or arthritis
- Reduces symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome
- Decreases all-cause mortality
- Lowers risk of fatal cardiovascular disease
- Lowers blood pressure
- Increases heart rate
- Improves blood circulation
Most of these benefits stem from how the sauna induces body responses and effects similar to low to moderate exercise. As such, regular infrared sauna therapy may also bring about other health benefits tied to exercise — including working wonders for our skin.
What Sauna Therapy Does to Our Skin
Although some may still doubt the merits of traditional saunas and infrared sauna treatments, studies on the subject have been largely positive. This is true not only for the potential benefits of regular sauna therapy as a whole but also specifically for its effects on our skin.
One comparative study published in the journal Dermatology found that regular sauna helps our skin in several ways, including:
- Improving the epidermal barrier function
- Increasing the outermost layer of the skin’s ability to hold in water or moisture
- Faster recovery from skin water loss
- Faster rebalancing of the skin’s pH level
These four potential skin benefits can help reduce the appearance of fine lines. This means regular infrared sauna therapy may be a possible anti-aging treatment.
According to the study, even just two 15-minute sauna sessions at a temperature of 176 F (80 C) can already help improve your skin physiology or normal functions.
Infrared sauna therapy can produce many of the same effects and benefits as exercise, even without strenuous activity. Just like working out, infrared saunas help increase your heart rate, blood flow, and sweating.
These three benefits then contribute to improving blood circulation throughout the body, which becomes the basis for many other potential benefits of infrared sauna therapy for the skin.
These include:
- Brightening and evening out skin tone: Better circulation or blood flow provides more oxygen and nutrients to the skin cells, which helps clear impurities from the skin. More oxygen can help the skin look brighter, giving you healthy, glowing skin. This may also help with anti-aging and evening out the skin tone.
- Accelerating wound healing: Oxygen is known to contribute to healing wounds faster. As such, better blood circulation and oxygen supply to the skin may help accelerate the wound-healing process, including marks from acne and other skin conditions.
- Unclogging pores and cleansing the skin: The increased sweat that saunas induce is great for cleansing the skin. The combination of heat and sweating opens up your pores. This makes it easier for sweat to flush out any dirt, oil, and other impurities clogging your pores.
- Reducing oil production: Findings also show that regular sauna sessions can help reduce skin sebum content or oil on the surface of your skin. One study observed these benefits among participants who regularly used saunas at 15-minute intervals.
Does it Work for All Skin Types?
In general, infrared saunas are safe for most skin types. Individuals with oily skin can benefit from reduced oil production. At the same time, infrared saunas can help improve the skin’s moisture barrier, which allows for better moisture retention.
As such, people with mixed or a combination of dry and oily skin can find relief for both skin problems with infrared sauna therapy.
What if You’ve Got a Skin Health Condition?
Although saunas are considered safe for most skin types, individuals with sensitive skin and some skin conditions are sometimes advised to be careful with using saunas. This is due to the belief that the dry heat of saunas may further dry out and irritate the skin.
However, more and more studies are coming out with findings that prove the opposite. Individuals may find greater relief for their skin conditions or disorders with the help of infrared sauna therapy.
Acne and Pimples
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved using infrared light as a treatment for pimples, including back acne. Experts have also noted that infrared saunas can be considered low-level light therapy, also known to help acne.
Psoriasis
Low-level light therapy is also sometimes used as a treatment for psoriasis. Additionally, findings show that some individuals with psoriasis report relief from itching after sauna sessions. The stress-relieving effects of infrared sauna therapy can also help with managing psoriasis.
Eczema
Some studies have cautioned that sweating may increase irritation for patients with eczema or atopic dermatitis. However, some have noted that infrared saunas may help remove dead skin cells, deliver necessary oxygen and nutrients to the skin, and boost the immune system, which may help with eczema.
Rosacea
Since rosacea is a skin disorder characterized by frequent flushing and redness, infrared saunas may seem counterintuitive. At the same time, studies indicate that sauna therapy can reduce inflammation, stress, and detoxification, which can relieve rosacea symptoms.
Ichthyosis
Infrared saunas may help improve skin moisture and offer itching relief for individuals with ichthyosis, a series of skin disorders marked by dry, itchy, scaly, and red skin.
Vitiligo
Studies indicate that light therapy may help manage vitiligo, an auto-immune skin disease characterized by patches of skin discoloration. The anti-inflammatory effects of red light and the penetrative, immune system-boosting effects of infrared sauna therapy may help manage vitiligo symptoms.
Seborrheic Dermatitis
Infrared sauna therapy may help with seborrheic dermatitis, also known as dandruff, in the same way, that it can help with dry skin — by improving the skin’s moisture barrier protection and overall hydration. Similar to how an infrared sauna may offer eczema patients relief from redness, itchiness, and flakiness, it can do the same for dandruff.
Hives
Although saunas may seem counterproductive for treating hives — which generally calls for soothing the skin with cold washcloths or cool baths — there have been findings indicating that regular sauna therapy may help with severe urticaria (hives) and pruritus (itching).
Purchase Your Infrared Sauna Today!
A one-time infrared sauna session is not enough to experience these potential skin benefits — you need regular infrared sauna therapy.
The Sauna Life has a collection of high-quality infrared saunas to help you add regular infrared sauna treatment to your skincare regimen. Visit our website today to check out the various designs and styles available.
We offer a limited lifetime warranty on all our products. Best of all, The Sauna Life delivers to nearly all U.S. states and provides a prompt replacement for any cases of product damage during shipment.
If you have any questions or inquiries, our experts can help you find the perfect sauna to complement your home and your health. Learn more about infrared light sauna therapy and purchase your own at-home or garden sauna today.
Call The Sauna Therapy at 513-309-2527 to request a free consultation.