EPISODE #993: Sauna for Body Detox & Depression Relief – Connie Zack

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Today, as always, I am going to tell you what you get at the start of the episode. So you can say, this episode is worth your time. In fact, it's way more than worth your time. Otherwise, you shouldn't do it. We're going to go deep in the world of biohacking on infrared light and infrared heat. We're going to talk about how infrared light affects your body, how it triggers a bunch of different biochemical cascades. We're just figuring some of this out. Some of this we've known about at some levels. But now, because there's so many of us biohacking in the world, there's real university research happening. It's becoming its own industry. And this means that we can now, instead of saying something's good for you, we can say this amount of this type is good for you. And if you want an analogy, imagine if I said fat was good for you. Well, if you're like a keto, bro, you'd say, yeah, bro, except I didn't say what kind of fat. So some fats are good and some are bad. So now if we say infrared's good for you, well, which kind of infrared does what? And that's what we're going to learn in this episode. And as you know, I bring experts in a field. People have done a lot of work on the show, and that's the minimum, minimum bar. I like Connie because she always knows all the weird details about infrared and because she's built it from the ground up herself over 22 years, along with her husband. So these. This is a leader in the industry of infrared therapy. So welcome to the show again.

Thank you so much, Dave. It's so good to see you.

We've already talked about infrared on the show, so people may have heard you. They may have heard about sunlighten. So this episode has to include stuff that we don't know about. So I want to go into the area of depression, because so many people are anxious, they're depressed. It's almost like we might have made a societal mistake over the past couple years that resulted in increased depression levels. At least that's what the data says. So what do we know about infrared and depression?

Yeah, so there's some cutting edge studies that are being done right now. But first we'll take a backup to, to how a lot of this came to play, which is back in 2016, Dr. Raison did a study trying to figure out what is causing people to be depressed. And had some theories and found that he used a very expensive piece of equipment to do whole body hyperthermia, which is heating the body up over extended periods of time and elevating the core temperature. And what he found, which is just still every time I say it, it blows my mind, because in the amount of time, one session, one session delivered significant reduction in the signs of depression. And keep in mind, when he did this study, the people that he chose were the. To qualify, they were severely depressed. So high, high levels of depression. And with one session, he found that by increasing their core temperature, heating the body up, they. That elevated the temperature 3 degrees, that they were able to have significant relief in only one week. And then that lasted. That one session lasted three first six weeks. So that was the study in 2016. And then one of his proteges, Dr. Mason, saw that study and the findings and decided to take the concept of that information and like, reapply that. And now she's doing her own studies in California. And she is what the great thing about what she's doing is she's doing it with a model that's very similar to our sunlight and solar, which is a portable chamber, you know, where your head is out. Because they found that when people are immersed into heat, if they're too hot, then it's not good, right? So. And they can't stay in very long. And the whole benefit of, of infrared helping with depression is being able to slowly increase the core temperature and being able to be in there for a while. And so Dr. Mason is doing a study that is already. Protocols have already been approved with an accessible piece of equipment that people could use. Post results of the study and which is super exciting because the piece of equipment that Dr. Raison did was in Germany, number one. Number two, it cost $50,000. So kind of cost prohibitive for people to apply back in the comfort of their own home.

Years ago, I radically changed my metabolism because I was cold all the time. I had hypothyroid issues. And I talked to an industrial control engineer who talked about set points for systems, and he had a protocol. It was pretty extreme. You took higher than normal doses of thyroid hormone. You wore a jacket all the time, drank hot water all day long, and sat in hot saunas for a week. And you basically cooked yourself for a week as much as you could. And when you were done, your body temperature would rise. Cause mine was instead of 98.6, I was about 96.8. And right now, human body temperatures are dropping and all sorts of bad Stuff happens when you don't have the right temperature. But it was really expensive and you had to go to Germany and I didn't have cancer. The safest and healthiest way to get the benefit of a rise in temperature like that would be an infrared setup like the solo one that sunlight makes. So if you don't have cancer, which wasn't my concern, I just wanted the biological anti aging benefits of this. What's going to happen if you raise your body temperature with the single person head out model that you make? Give me a bullet point list of effects. But just want people to know this is a real thing. It's been going on for 20 years. This isn't new, it's just something you haven't heard about.

So what are the effects exactly? The theory is that a lot of people and there's a lot of different conditions, not just depression, you can talk about menopause, you can talk about lots of different things where your body is unable to regulate itself. So you know, if you're depressed. We know that people who have depression have higher base core temperatures and they are unable to cool themselves down. So like at night, their body stays elevated. Most people, their body cools it, you know, down well, sitting inside. So she answered your question. Sitting inside or lying down. And Silas, for example, a sunlight and solo sauna chamber allows the body to kind of unlock that regulation that's locked, right? So it like opens it up and turns on the switch that now the body says, oh, I didn't realize that I was supposed to regulate. And so now you go up. So we, so we know for sure. We did a study forever ago, which now that all the science is coming out, it's so interesting because we're able to connect the dots between our studies and the, the other studies that are being done. We did a study measuring the body's core temperature and how much can we increase your body's core temperature in 30 minutes? We were able to increase the body's core temperature in 30 minutes. That's something we did 20 years ago, Dave. But now we're able to say, okay, so we know we can do that. What does it do? What's the mechanism of action? What does it do to the body and what are the effects? And the effects are that when you're able to do that, then now you're going to regulate the temperature in the body. So the body is going to allow itself to cool down. So now, now the people who are suffering from depression, their brain goes, oh, oh, thank God. Like I'M cooler now. My body's going to be able to raise up, cool down, raise up, cool down.

So self regulation works better. It's like a form of exercise.

We know there are tools to help you. And the other thing is the length of time. So if, you know, if you're on medication, it can take medications a long time to make an impact on your body to relieve. But this happens for depression specifically. Yeah, because then it goes to. The other impact is people who have high temperatures at night don't sleep as well. Right. So now they can have a better night's sleep. And it's hard to sleep well if you're hot.

Don't you make saunas that make you hot?

Yes, but you're not sleeping in them, Dave.

Okay, so it leads to the question though, because if I use my sunlighten before bed, I see an improvement in deep sleep, usually not a decrease in deep sleep. What's going on there?

Correct? Well, because you're again, you're, you're unlocking the thermoregulation like so you're, you're helping your body to thermoregulate. You're also getting your body, you know, into a like, rhythm of. Okay, now like this is what I, my brain knows I'm doing this to unwind. I'm getting ready to, you know, pair my body. I'm getting. Plus you're, you're detoxing. So let's talk about that for a second. So you're, you're sweating and you're removing potentially toxic load heavy stuff that's inside your body. When that comes out, that's going to also, you know, lighten the load, lighten and then also help with the brain. You feel more energy as a result. Not an energy I like to go like, you know, you know, to not be able to sleep by any means, but an energy to say, okay, like, you know, I feel purged, I feel cloud cleansed. And then you do need a little bit of time. I don't know, do you go directly? I don't go directly to sleep. You do need a little bit of time in between. If you do it at night, your sauna session and sleep, how do you do it?

I'm kind of a mutant. I guess I can get out of the sauna, rinse off in the shower and go right to sleep.

That's amazing.

But I think it works because of exclusion zone water. And one of the things we haven't talked about yet is that infrared when it hits the water in your cells, I think you mentioned at the very beginning, briefly, it changes the viscosity of the water, so the water works better for making energy. And I've published a couple studies and probably headstrong my book about cognitive function, about how having better mitochondrial function equals better sleep quality. Because mitochondria power the glymphatic system that washes out your brain. So you've got dropping toxins directly in the sauna because they came out through the skin. And then you've got water that works better for making ATP that's left inside the body. So when you go to sleep, that's probably better than being hot. And the shower I take is not a cold shower, but it's not a very hot shower either. So that may help to return me to normal temperature. So. So that's a possibility.

Yeah, no, that's something that we have talked to Dr. Michael Hamblin about, who has become a medical advisor for Sunlightened and has really helped us to understand all this new science. And he has informed us that the way infrared is being received, if you kind of look at infrared as being the quarterback and you look at the different parts of the infrared spectrum, the near mid and far as receivers, each receiver has a different role and takes the wavelength and makes the changes to your body. And so with the easy water, the exclusion zone, absolutely. Like the infrared's being thrown, it's being absorbed, you know, by the mitochondria and then that is converted to re storing more energy and giving you definitely like helping you to sleep better, helping your cells be stronger, helping your immune system. There's a lot, I mean the, the list of benefits, it has always been crazy. What I love now is I can now go to certain elements, right? Like, or I can go to easy water, or I can go to depression studies, or I can go to some of the cardiovascular. I can go to these elements and say, okay, so this is why I feel like, you know, I can have so much more energy. It's very interesting to me that I always have been saying forever for 22 years after I use my sunlight and sauna, I, I am not drained. And intuitively with, you know, when I started, like the only saunas that were available were the hot rock sauna, right? And people would always say, I don't like, especially females would call and they were like, I don't want to feel drained. I don't want to feel like I'm exhausted after I get done. Like, I don't want to go through that experience. Like, well, it's not like that with infrared that you don't, you don't feel exhausted, you don't feel drained, you actually feel more energetic and more restored. And now with like the easy zone and with some of the thermal regulation, a lot of these mechanism of actions, we're understanding better about how infrared works and the receptors and the different parts of the spectrum. Now it makes sense why I feel so much more energetic after I use asana and inference on us specifically.

Let's talk about this. I'm getting comments from the upgrade collective. Half of them are saying I get energized when I do my infrared sauna. And others are saying, one, I get knocked out after 10 minutes. I know that if I stand for 45 minutes to an hour that I start to get sleepy. Is there a length of time that's energizing versus sleepy?

There's not a length of time. I mean, everybody's body responds differently. It also depends on what. When you're using an infrared sauna, there's three different parts of the infrared spectrum. And what makes enlightened special is we are able to capture near infrared with LEDs, mid infrared with a specific heating element, and far infrared separate ones. So you're getting all three ones and each wavelength responds. Your body responds differently to that. And so sometimes, like for example, in the near infrared, the way it works with the mitochondria, that's the energetic. So if you're getting a lot of near infrared, you probably will be more energetic than sleepy. There's this beautiful band of light that is the light from the sun without the harmful rays. But within that band, there's three separate categories, and each category is, has its own receptors and its own benefits. So depending on how your receptors respond to near infrared, mid or far, and depending on the type of infrared sauna you are using, you're going to have, you know, a little bit of different experience.

It's, it's interesting. You could mix all three of these things, but you wouldn't see any difference at all. Right. How would people know if they're not getting a sunlight and whether they're getting a specific part of those wavelengths? Because most time it just says either infrared sauna or far infrared sauna. When you're buying something that's a generic white label sort of thing.

Yeah, that's a great question. Most infrared saunas are usually in the mid category. Based on this, it's. So I'm going to go deep here for just a second on science. So what defines the wavelength is the surface temperature of the heater and most infrareds on a surface temperature, not the air temperature I'm talking about if you were to put your hand up next to the heater, the surface temperature, most of them are not as cool and do not definitely have all three wavelengths as sunlighten does. Because we have the patent on two or more separate wavelengths. So there can be some that have two, but there isn't. Well, I know we have the patent on two or more. So most are just one singular wavelength. And then within that wavelength it's usually within the far to mid category.

What's going on is we know now the biology knowledge, we know the physical knowledge. We're putting those two together. You took it. But talk to me about what the the range of infrared that actually absorbs in water is and why you chose a very specific number.

Yeah. So the range as we know for that transforms the body is between near and mid infrared. So in that range so so near, just to be more specific is about 7nm ish. And when I say near it is invisible light. So there is also some colored lights that are of a different wavelength. Near is invisible. And the right way to receive near to get the maximum absorption into the body is via LEDs, not via heat because you can't. It would be excessively hot and you would get such a small, small amount. Basically it would be like the filament of a light bulb if, if you were to sit inside a quote unquote like just near infrared. If there was any heat, it's LEDs can deliver. And we've chose. We worked back when we developed impulse. Gosh, back at. I don't know, in 2008. So 14 years ago we worked with some experts efforts in Minnesota and Wisconsin and out east MIT to help us figure out the right nanometers and the right units of measurements. Now as science is evolving, we thought it was really just in the near infrared category. But you're actually even in a little bit of the mid. You can get your receptors in the body can respond and make the transformations that you're talking about. As far as into the exclusion pollution zone so far is a totally different, like totally different the way it receives, the way the body responds. Far infrared, which is how we started back in the basement, is it comes into the body and it's absorbed. It actually doesn't penetrate as deep as near infrared. It's. But it's deep as far as the absorption into the water molecules and the water molecules. Those are the receptors afar, they vibrate, they resonate, they move and that's where you go.