Anti-Aging Expert: Look & Feel YOUNG With Infrared Light! This Beats Exercise!

Infrared sauna really does drive metal detox way more than hot, dry saunas.

Infrared removed more mercury, cadmium, lead compared to traditional. And exercise it 54% decrease hospitalization and death.

So it's like having a recipe for how to get the right sweat out of the body. When I get in my infrared sauna, I feel more energy. One of the things that infrared saunas do is they have the same cardiovascular effect as exercise. You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Our guest today is Connie Zach, who for 25 years has been a leading voice in the infrared sauna movement. And she's got a lot of new research for us to talk about aging and five hallmarks of aging. In the world of biohacking, one of the primary things that we look at is temperature. There's cold and there's hot and the extremes. And you could say, well, let's, you know, get in liquid nitrogen or into a volcano. So. Or maybe it's not the extremes. It turns out it's the dose, the frequency and the timing that gets you the most results. And we always knew there was something going on. And for that, just go to Scandinavia, like a few hundred years ago. We know getting hot is good for you, getting cold is good for you. But now that we have the ability to, with a lot of science, to manipulate exactly what's going into our body, we can now, with AI and data, we can figure out, okay, what exactly is the right dose and how should I get it into the body to get this result versus that result? So we're going to go through that with Connie and talk about the very specific details of infrared saunas. Connie, founder of Sunlighten, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Dave. Happy to be here. I always love coming to Austin.

Are you going to go get some barbecue before or after the show, or did you get some.

We have some recommendation that we're going to do. I'm not exactly sure the name of the restaurant, but we love our barbecue in Kansas City. So we're kind of playing those snobs a little bit with barbecue.

Those are fighting words in.

I know, I'm sorry.

Gosh.

People are passionate in Kansas City about the barbecue. People actually are passionate about everything in Kansas City.

So one of the things I've noticed, and I do have a smoker in the backyard, is that if I eat smoked meat very often anyway, I tend to get inflammation. And it's because of heterocyclic amines and advanced glycation end products from getting those basically food Toxins into the food. Delicious, flavorful food toxins. What does infrared do to get rid of toxins from eating barbecue?

Infrared is going to get those toxins out of your body. So we know for sure with lots of research that it's going to heat up your core temperature. You're going to sweat at the cellular level and you're going to pull out the those horrible toxins that are stored in there. And like for example, there was a bus study that was done in Canada showing that infrared removed mercury, cadmium, lead and in fact, infrared compared to traditional and exercise removed more than exercise and traditional saunas in their sweat because they measured sweat, urine and blood. The really powerful thing while we're on the detoxification piece is really impressive is that there was 15% of the people who had no detectable levels of mercury in their urine. 100% of that 15% have high levels of mercury in their sweat. So it just shows you, A, the power of measuring sweat and B, the necessity to take time to sweat at the cellular level. With infrared.

There's really robust science out there that shows infrared sauna really does drive metal detox way more than the hot dry saunas. And I've also seen a lot of people saying, well, we have the most data on dry sauna at 167 degrees and I actually like it. And I dry sauna, I have no issue with that. Are you getting the same heat shock protein benefits from an infrared sauna that you're getting from a dry sauna?

You are, yeah, we know there's actually Dr. Cole just talked about this recently as far as the heat acclimation study, that there's plenty of data, including like a hot bath, which you're not getting that cellular level, you're not getting all the things you're getting with infrared, but you are getting the heat and it's activating heat shock proteins and you're still getting the same results as you would in really heated environment.

So a hot bath and a dry sauna kind of do the same thing for heat shock. But infrared sauna does detox and heat shock.

Correct.

So on a permanent basis you get a lot of extra benefits for doing infrared.

Correct. It's kind of like your book, you know, just taking that concept of being smarter versus having to be extreme and having to do something for long periods of time. You don't need to do that with infrared.

So my 14 hour, 167 degree heat sauna wasn't a good idea?

Well, it's a personal preference by the.

Way that's called sous vide. I don't think anyone should do that. That would be bad.

I like soupy.

It's one of the benefits of an infrared sauna is the auto turn on and shut off. Right. Because if you did pass out in a sauna, you want one that turns itself off automatically. Which is. Good idea.

Yes, that is a good idea. It's something I don't think about that much as an advantage, but it absolutely is. Because when the, when the program's done or when the time is done, it. Yeah.

It turns off when it comes to something like blood pressure regulation.

Yeah.

Which is a big thing that happens when you're in an infrared sauna. What's the difference between doing infrared sauna and a super hot sauna? Does one work better for blood pressure than the other?

Yes. And there was a study done by umkc. It's been a while ago, but it was such a robust study. It was a placebo controlled, double blind, randomized trial comparing two different types of heat. And they had the arson lighten solo. And it was without the pad, which is extra impressive because after that we launched the solo pad, which also has four heaters in it.

Okay.

So it just, it just had the five heaters in the dome and then the other sauna and it was double blind, placebo controlled. Means that it looked like. Exactly. They looked exactly the same.

One person got in a solo that worked, another one got in a solo.

That was different heat source.

Okay, got it.

And the results were that the solo was the one that had stat sig. And the stat sig, the statistically significant results were extremely impressive on lowering blood pressure and the other one did not. And I'm also seeing a lot of retro analysis data on cardiovascular, on blood pressure, on chf, on cad. And there is a difference between infrared and hot, like high heat.

So you see, okay, more detox and improvements in high blood pressure. More in infrared saunas than in just high temperature saunas.

Correct. Yeah. In Asia they use infrared as the first line gold standard for chf, which.

Is congestive heart failure.

Congestive heart failure. Correct. Yeah. And there is also, while we're on the cardiovascular piece, there was a study done in, in Asia called the Weyan study, which stands for soothing warmth. And that was with 129 patients for five years, only 15 minutes a day. It's one of my favorite things about that because I think it just supports the fact that we don't need to do things forever in order to get Results. And the results of that summary study was that 54% decreased hospitalization and death. So the people that didn't use infrared had more.

Wow.

They died more frequently and they were in the hospital than the people who used infrared.

Now, I really don't like to waste time. The sunlight and that I have downstairs has the LED emitters in it, which means, like, if, if I go back 25 years, we're going to go back in a little while and talk about the history of infrared. But the old ones used to have ceramic emitters, I think, and they took a very long time to get going. And this one, I sometimes just turn it on and go right in. And you feel warm within a minute because the light sources turn on instantly. In order to get those 15 minutes of benefits, do I have to wait until the inner temperature is 140 degrees, or is it mostly just the radiant heat? So I can get in there right away?

You can get in right away. It's one of my favorite.

And you still get the benefits.

You still get the benefits you actually get. I'll go sciencey for a second. So the way specifically far infrared works well and metaphor. But let's just stay with far infer for a second. So that wavelength is the. It is the longest wavelength, and it absorbs into your water molecules and your mitochondria. And in order for it to impact the body at the most effective level, it needs to be the coolest surface temperature. Not air temperature, but surface temperature of the heater. And when the heater is at its coolest temperature is when you just turn it on. So as soon as you activate it, you are having this really long. I always picture kind of this just beautiful ocean wave, but it's like, really, it's just like, just barely. Like, if you're out in the ocean and you have just a really, really smooth wave, you know, it doesn't knock you. You know, you just feel that you're, you're, you're interacting with the wave versus fighting and having friction with the wave. That makes sense. And as it heats up, the wave gets shorter and choppier. So picture the ocean as like, with really, like, robust waves. And so when you're trying to jump them, it's hard for that wavelength to interact with the body.

That's for older ceramic emitters, though, with the new LEDs, isn't always the same waveform all the time, which is an advantage.

No, I weren't talking far infrared, so we're talking two different things. So. Sorry. So the LEDs yes. And so we have near infrared LEDs, and we have red lighted, which we can talk about separately. What I was referring to specifically was the far infrared, which is delivered by heat. And that wavelength does change as the surface temperature increases.

Okay, got it. So if you're listening to that going, that was a lot of science. It's not like heat is all the same. You can cook with a microwave or a steam oven or an air fryer, and they're totally different. And the bottom line is, how do you want to cook humans the best in order to get the most health benefits in the least amount of time? And I think you've been spending 25 years on that problem. What's changed since you started sunlight? And 25 years ago, just how's the industry shifted? How's the technology shifted?

Oh, my goodness, so much has changed. And I would love you to share because I love your story about, you know, your first infrared. And, like, I mean, when I think about that visual, I have such a visual of your story. I mean, that just takes me back to, you know, when we first started, and the. The very first sauna actually had steel rods. Ceramic was an advancement a couple years later. So as far as your question, there's been so many. So I'll just highlight maybe a couple. Um, it's gonna. That's hard to do that. But probably the first one. The first one back in the basement when we were struggling to pay the bills and to pay for the saunas to ship, the first one we discovered was that quantity of infrared specifically, far back at that, back then, the basement matters. And the more that you can get into the body, the better benefit you're gonna have. And not all infrared is the same, and not all heat is the same. So the breakthrough specifically was that we developed a heater that at that time, 95% of the heat was absorbed into the body. And that was unique and breakthrough, and we patented it. And that was our foundation for many years, until the next breakthrough, which was in 2008, is when we started on the journey to understand the other parts of the infrared wavelength. And we work with Dr. Harry Whelan, and he introduced us to the concept of near infrared and mid infrared and how if you convert near infrared to LEDs, which he learned from NASA and he studied, then you can get some really transformational light benefits. So we started on doing a deep dive, and then eventually, several years later, brought the first product on the market that had three separate independent wavelengths. We isolated each of them separately, and then we found science to connect each one to deliver optimal health benefits. So there were six different programs that we developed with the control panel that still exists today. We have added red light therapy as well to the two that now. So now you have everything in one in one tool. And then another breakthrough was the six programs. Because a lot of times people want the easy button, right? They just, they want to be able to go in. They don't want to think, they just want to be able to go in, you know, and press a button and know that they're getting all of the benefits. So we brought six different programs, cardio detox, relaxation, pain relief, to market. And that was a massive breakthrough. So that's. Those are. Some of it's. We've. We've done a lot of, you know, we're trying to really understand the science and understand what people want and making sure to marry the two. Because it's not just about the science. If people don't care about it and then it doesn't really matter.

It's really a what's in it for me kind of thing.

Exactly, exactly. And there's still a lot of people that use our very first. Not our very first sauna because that was a ceramic. Well steel first and then ceramic. And then we were. A company in Taiwan reached out. I haven't shared this story in a long time, but this was in the basement and this was really transformational. They should. They reached out to us and said, you know, we've seen you guys online and we would like to send you a. We call it now the sunlight and Solo, which is a dome, two domes. That was the study that was done by umkc and when they shipped it to us and we all used it, I had never experienced anything like it. I mean, it was completely, completely different experience than the wooden cabins. The sweat was different, the how I felt was different. The texture of my sweat, the change in circulation, everything was so different. And that was really trajectory changing in the industry because then we learned all about why was it different and what are we going to do about it and how are we going. Not everybody wants to lie down in two domes. So how do we take that understanding? How do we apply it to wooden cabins and you know, okay, so it's been a lot of happenings over the.

Past 25 years, Dave, because Connie's awesome, she's giving you $1,000 off. If you want to get us enlightened, you can use code dave@sunlightened.com Arva Colostrum is a must have. This isn't just another supplement. It is Colostrum, which is upgraded to boost your immune system and your gut health. Armor is great because it comes from first milking colostrum, which means it has more than 200 functional nutrients that includes immunoglobulins, growth factors, and peptides that specifically protect your gut lining. You can expect cellular defense and energy on a new level. Since I've added armor to my stack, I have definitely seen faster recovery, especially during travel, better immune resilience, and more mental clarity. Clinical studies show that colostrum reduces gut inflammation and supports muscle mass, and it turns out I have both of those. But my gut inflammation is far better than it used to be. This is nature's original superfood. It's potent, it's clean, and I think you want to try it. Head to tryarmra.com and use code Dave. They'll give you 15% off. All sweat isn't the same. You'll see fitness influencers. Oh, just got to sweat it out, because sweating's good for you. And that's sort of like saying all proteins the same. But it turns out that spider venom and a lot of plant toxins probably aren't the proteins you want. So specific wavelengths of light matter. If you're looking at red light, you say, well, I just got a red tint that I put over my thing. It doesn't work. So there's very narrow wavelengths. And what you've done is go through for a heat and identified the little narrow wavelengths of heat and how to use them to get different results. So it's like having a recipe for how to get the right sweat out of the body. And this is something that kind of drives me nuts in biohacking. If something's good, more must be better. A sweat is good, but if your sweat has 5% of the heavy metals in it that it could have had, that's why it wasn't as good of a sweat. So the idea is, how do I sweat in a way that actually works versus just sweat? Because I heard sweating was good and I like sunlightin a lot because you've really gone into the science behind the different programs and you keep innovating, which is cool. I had to get a new one when I moved here to Austin because my old one was the model before. I'm like, no, I need the new stuff. What has LED done for the infrared saunas that you make at sunlighten?

LED was such a powerful tool because it takes the heat and converts it to light energy. And light energy, I mean, I could talk about this all day long because it's so powerful. And I know you have a deep understanding as well. But having the light energy, the ability to deliver it to our body, like you said earlier, it right away, as soon as you get in, then the LEDs, the near infrared and the red light, when they're on, they immediately start working with your body, and so there is no waiting time. And the other thing I love about LEDs that has done for infrared is a shorter time frame, so you don't have to be in there as long because it penetrates the skin. And so it works with your mitochondria in a different way than heat does. So that's another thing that's just really on a side note, it's great about infrared in general. What sunlight has done over the past 15 years, specifically because that's when we launched impulse in is we've combined the power of heat and a lower temperature and light. And it's really the only place where you can get both in one place. So LEDA has made a significant impact on infrared in general, as well as providing people with the opportunity to have something that they didn't have before.

I am really impressed with LEDs. Now. Listeners know I hate LED lighting. And it's because when lighting designers use LED bulbs, and now in the US you're not allowed to sell incandescent bulbs. They made it. So there's about a $400 fine per bulb a company sells, except in a few special reptile cases or something. And this is ridiculous because LED lighting designers don't pay any attention to the therapeutic effects or the negative health effects of light. So the stuff that's in your home, in your workplace is bad for you. But I'm also a huge fan of LEDs, because light emitting diodes allow you to specifically say, I only want this tiny little slice of light. And there was no way to do this before, so now all of a sudden, we have scientific precision. Say, I only want this nanometer bandwidth, and you get it. And when you apply this to invisible light, like infrared, it means you can take slices of it. Now, that's useful. I just don't like it when someone's giving me a really misshapen light from an LED light bulb. Well, you can still see like, yeah, but you're missing half the slices my body needed. So when you go into an LED sauna, you're getting LED technology, but you're not getting the downside of LED lighting. Same thing if you're using light therapy like the red lights you have in it. Those red LEDs are good for you, but the LEDs that you're staring at all day long are bad for you. So some people will just say all LEDs are bad and they get confused and just want to say if you're using LEDs to make heat or therapeutic lights, it's different than trying to use them to see.

It is. And we have really dialed in as you said, we know precisely the nanometers that we're delivering and near infrared. So while we're on this topic of LEDs, it can be really confusing to people because it's invisible. And so when they see the LEDs, they don't see anything. Right. And it's not heat, it's light. So it's really counterintuitive because while it's light, you're not seeing light because it's, it's invisible, but it's at the exact right frequency that is needed to go as deep as possible into the skin.