How *Not* To Microwave Yourself In A Sauna, Cooking Turkeys With Infrared Rays, Low EMF Saunas, Heat Detox Protocols & More!

Yo, it's Ben Greenfield. Let me paint a picture for you. Pretty picture for you. I'm actually kneeling on the floor of my hotel room with a microphone sandwiched in between a pillow here in Montgomery, Alabama. I'm in my hotel room because I was just speaking on how to fuel the ancestral athlete at this conference called the Weston A. Price Conference. And basically they're really into lard and ghee and butter and raw milk and fat soluble vitamins at this conference. So I've just been dumping copious amounts of like cod liver oil and dark orange butter down the hatch. So my apologies if I'm a little sluggish. I got a full tummy. I'm actually a very happy man. Needless to say, fun conference in this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

So if we will give that same frequency back to the body, what happens is that the cells will actually start to vibrate and in that vibration, this is how detoxification is aided. Because detoxification, which we'll go into a deeper later, I'm sure is all about mobilizing the toxins.

They did a second study which was eight weeks and they only had people come and use the sauna after 3pm and those people lost the same 4% body fat, but in half the amount of time. And they attributed it to two things. Slightly lowering your cortisol levels and slightly raising your hgh.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield.

Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's a natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy.

All the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And it's probably no secret that I'm kind of obsessed with heat therapy, meaning that for the past several years I've talked about on the show how I go out of my way to get into a sauna multiple times per week. Not just based off of all the studies they've done over in Finland on like the longevity benefits of saunas, but also to do things like increase production of growth hormone and sleep better later that night and even get a little bit of a, as woo woo as the term may seem, detoxification effect. And what I use is this infrared sauna. I have an Actual infrared sauna in my basement. It was this kit that got sent to my house and my kids and I put it together and I sit in that thing just about every day like 90% of the mornings. My morning routine is getting into my sauna and it's like a big sauna that I can do yoga in and I'll do like Kundalini yoga or I'll do breath work or sometimes I'll just bring some magazines in there that I want to get through. And I swear by the amazing feeling that I have the rest of the day when I get out of that thing. So today I thought I would get the masterminds behind not only saunas in general, but this particular sauna that I use every day is called a Clearlight sauna. And it's infrared. Infrared can be tough to understand. It's a little bit difficult than like the dry sauna or the steam room that you get at your gym. But it is super interesting and there's a lot about infrared that we can delve into. And so when you finish listening to today's show, you're going to be a complete ninja in all things infrared sauna. I've got Raleigh Duncan on the show today and Raleigh is a chiropractic physician and he's been using saunas since 1996, designing, manufacturing, distributing specifically infrared saunas. And he works in the day to day operations of this clearlight saunas company. And then Andy Capps is also on the show as well. And Andy is the president of Saunaworks and they, they make these clearlight saunas and they, they have worked together to do some really cool things like combining carbon and ceramic to produce these things called hybrid heaters and eliminate EMF and saunas and utilize these things called 500 full spectrum heaters. All sorts of technologies that they've developed that you can have in a sauna. So today we're going to delve into how you should actually use a sauna, how you could use a sauna, what happens to your body when you use a sauna, how not to microwave yourself in a sauna, and a lot more. So guys, welcome to the show.

Thanks.

Happy to be here.

It's always awkward when we have three people on a show, right, because you gotta, everybody has to figure out who's who. So Raleigh, can you say hello and introduce yourself yourself?

Hi, this is Raleigh and yeah, I've been working with the infrared saunas for 20 years now. So it's definitely my passion.

Awesome. Cool. So that's the voice of Raleigh, for those of you curious. And Andy, go ahead and intro yourself.

Hey, Ben, thanks. Good to meet you on. On the podcast. Like you, I'm a big believer in infrared saunas. I'm in mine literally almost every single day as well.

So I think. I think that Andy's voice is lower and softer. What do you think, Raleigh?

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, definitely. You're very harsh. And Andy is softer. He has more of the radio voice.

That's what my wife says.

I'm just harsh.

So I'm working on that.

Well, you guys know which of you are best equipped to answer which questions. But the first thing I want to ask you is about infrared in general. Most people know that infrared is different than, like, UVA radiation or UVB radiation from the sun or LED light or fluorescent light. But can you just kind of go into real briefly what infrared is and then perhaps more in more detail, the difference between something like near infrared and far infrared as far as how they work from a spectrum standpoint and what they do to the body's tissues?

Sure. This is Raleigh, and I'll answer that one. So probably the best way to think about it, when we start talking about different wavelengths of energy, when you mentioned, you know, microwave and this and that, it gets a little scary. And people don't want to get fried, that's for sure. So the best way to think about and the way I like to talk about it is we give off infrared from our bodies. So it's something. When you get a hug from somebody and you feel that heat coming off, that's coming off from infrared, that is infrared wavelengths. So infrared is in the spectrum and the spectrum that we've used for the longest time or in what is called in the healing rays or the healing spectrum, because it's natural to our body, it's natural to our environment. So when you go to the beach and maybe you're lying on a towel on the sand and the sun's been beating down, and then a cloud covers the sun, you feel the heat coming up from the sand. So that's. That's infrared also. Or a warm building, a brick building that's been heated by the sun, and maybe it's getting dusky, you walk by that building, there's this really nice heat coming off, kind of soft. So that's. That's infrared. And so it's very safe, it's very gentle, and that's why we. We utilize it. And I can get into a little more detail of how that works on the tissue, but there's Far infrared. There's mid infrared and near infrared. And we have used far infrared almost exclusively for years and years and years. So you asked about how the infrared reacts with the tissue, and this is very important. So I don't know how in depth you want me to go, Ben, but I can. I can get pretty deep with this. As to how this far infrared helps the body to heal, there's something called a resonant frequency, and that's basically if you give the same tone. Let's say if you want to break a wine glass. I don't know if you've ever seen this. There used to be a commercial, Ella Fitzgerald. Is it live or is it Memorex? And she would break a wine glass just with her voice. So if you ever want to try this as a party trick, you take the wine glass, you hold it by the base, and you ping the wine glass. The wine glass will give off a note.

What do you mean you ping it? You, like, hit it with a fork or whatever.

Oh, you take your fingernail and you're holding the wine. You have to hold it by the bottom. So you're just going to flick it and ping the top of the wine glass, you know, by the rim. And then a note will come off. That's the wine glass's own note. And so if you want to break that wine glass, that is the same exact note you give back to the wine glass. And if you can do it with sufficient clarity and force, the wine glass will start to vibrate. Okay. And then shatter. So it was Japanese scientists in the 70s that found out their names were Inoue and Kabbalah. They found out that this same resonant frequency can be used with infrared on the body. So I talked about that. We give off infrared from our bodies in the far infrared spectrum at about 9.3, 9.2 micron. So if we will give that same frequency back to the body, what happens is that the cells will actually start to vibrate. And in that vibration, this is how detoxification is aided. Because detoxification, which we'll go into a little deeper later, I'm sure, is all about mobilizing the toxins. So that's how this far infrared, this very safe, gentle, familiar wavelength, helps to heal the body. And that's just one of the things that it does on the tissue, mobilizes a toxin so that they can be eliminated.

I wanna ask you a little bit more about thatthat detox effects later on. Sure. Just cause. I think sometimes it doesn't get explained well enough to people. And it winds up sounding kinda cheesy, right? Like youyou sweat and you detox andand somehow youyou completely clean out your body, you know, or do something your liver and your kidney wouldn't normally be able to do. And I do wanna ask you about that, but before we get into that, there are a few things you touched on there that I think are kinda funky. The human body produces infrared light. Has that ever been measured? I mean, is that a well known fact in science or how exactly does that work? I mean, and if we produce light, how do we do it?

Well, not all this is Andy, not all infrared is actually perceived as light. Far infrared is actually perceived as heat. Everything in the world gives off and receives infrared in some wavelength. You know, a perfect example, put your hands together, they move them about an inch apart. That heat you feel between your hands is far infrared heat. So it's all around us, it's totally safe. Everything again gives off infrared heat. They even use it to keep newborn babies warm in hospitals. So it's pretty much everywhere.

Okay, gotcha. So we know that we're producing these infrared rays. And humans, you said, produce primarily far infrared.

Exactly. It's based, there's a scientific principle called Wien's law or Planck's law. The only variable is the surge temperature. With our 90 degree surface temperature of our skin, that comes out to about 9.4 microns, which is in the far infrared band.

Okay, gotcha. So humans don't produce the near infrared or the mid infrared, primarily just the far infrared.

Exactly. We do have saunas that offer near infrared and mid infrared. We feel, the way we look at it is that's an enhancement. The near infrared will penetrate a little deeper into your body. It'll help raise your core body temperature. It's good for relaxing your muscles, it's good for your skin. So it enhances the benefits, benefits of the far infrared. But the way we look at infrared therapy, and that's what we kind of, you know, we call it an infrared sauna, but it's really more about infrared therapy. It just happens to be that, that sauna environment, we can put infrared heaters all around you have the infrared heat on your body. You're not wearing any clothing in there, so all of that, you know, it's a great environment for it. But we believe that near infrared enhances the far infrared therapy.

Okay, and then what is the difference between the near and the far and the middle?

The technical difference is the size of the wavelength. So if you looked at like Almost like a bell curve. It's the distance from peak to peak. And so there it's actually infrared is a very wide wavelength. It starts at zero, I'm sorry, at basically zero microns and goes up to 1000. We mostly, after 1000 is where microwaves are. We mostly look at the range in the 6 to 12 micron range for far infrared and the 0 to 5 and a half for near and mid.

Okay, alright, gotcha. So in terms of the difference in the, in the micron of the wavelength, how does that affect the human body? Like if I'm shining, say like far infrared on my body, how is that going to be absorbed differently or react differently with tissues than say like a near or a mid? Has that been studied? It has.

And here's the big distinction. Near is really different than. Because if you put near infrared into the body, all right, you have a near infrared source, it goes much deeper because it is not trapped or stopped by water. All right, so it will go much deeper into the body. So it's great for healing, heating the core and things like that. But it doesn't have that resonant frequency. It doesn't, it doesn't do the same thing on the passes right through them. So if you want to heat the core, near is really good. It's also good at different skin conditions, things like that. But we look at mainly if someone really wants to heat the body up, like your sauna, you have the near mid and those big heaters in the front that's going to heat the core much faster.

Right.

Where with the far, we're wanting to get that resonant frequency, we want to get the toxins out. And then also what happens with the tissue is you get a vasodilation. And that's probably one of the biggest things that happens in the body as to why infrared saunas work so well. So it's not magic, it's actually very scientific.

Okay, gotcha. So the near is going to heat the body, but it's not going to actually cause the cells of the body to vibrate based on the frequency of the actual infrared wavelength?

That's correct. That's it in a nutshell.

And we see it as two parts to infrared therapy. There's the far infrared band. Between that 6 and 12 microns, your body absorbs the infrared at about 9.4 microns. That stimulates your lymphatic, immune and cardiovascular systems. And your body's response is to sweat. But then on a cellular level, when water is exposed to infrared at a particular wavelength, which is right around 6 microns, it actually vibrates. So the idea is that the vibration of those cells cleaves off toxins, and they get eliminated through your various elimination. So there's kind of two parts. There's whole body therapy, and then there's cellular therapy when it comes to infrared.

Okay, got it. Now, another question that I have before we get into. Into some of the physiological effects of sauna exposure is this idea that, like, when you are in a sauna, technically, there. There's not just infrared, right? There's, like, electricity and there's radiation, and there are all these other components that are present inside of a sauna. And that's something that I'm constantly cognizant of. Like, podcast a few months ago, where I talked about, like, the steam rooms at gyms and how a lot of people will go in there and, you know, like, breathe the eucalyptus and everything. But in many cases, whatever water is being used in that gym, you're breathing in, you're breathing in, in really concentrated amounts, right? Like, so if that water has fluoride or chlorine or birth control pills or pharmaceutical derivatives or anything else in it, like, you're breathing it in, or the same thing if you go to a dry sauna at the gym or at your house, you know, that huge, like, coil heater a lot of times is putting out a lot of electricity. It's putting out a lot of emf, you know, similar to, you know, what you might get from a cell phone or a WI fi router. So in the case of something like an infrared sauna, what's going on when you get inside of an infrared sauna when it comes to your exposure to electricity?

So that's one of the things that we really worked on, was to eliminate any hazards to the human body because, number one, you don't want to do any harm. That's an oath I took to not do harm. And if people going into the sauna, they want to heal. So we've checked for VOCs, we checked just all. Any electrical pollution, you know, that emf, elf, all these things, and we work tirelessly to eliminate this. And where it couldn't be 100% eliminated. Get it down below thresholds of concern so that when you're in the sauna, at least for in our saunas, in the clear light, you can be assured that it's safe, it's healthy, and you're gonna have a good sauna experience. So.

Well, what do you mean? Like, how do you. How do you lower the amount of EMF that. That a heater would produce, for example, how's that. How's that done from. From a mechanical standpoint?

So that was very daunting for us. In fact, these. The stories behind the backstory is that the large carbon ceramic panels that we use, we wanted to put in our saunas. So there's been a six generations of heaters in the past 20 years. So we successively moved towards these large carbon ceramic panels because they give off the best wavelength. But we couldn't put them in our saunas until we figured out how to lower and then really eliminate the emf. And that took us about three years, working with a very good heater manufacturing going back and forth. Initially we thought it would be about shielding the emf. And in the end, how we did it was that it was actually two heaters that are put together. So these are large, flat heaters, and they're out of phase with each other. So EMF comes out, you've heard the term 60 hertz, you know, in the wiring in our electrical system in the U.S. and so that means that 60 times every second, there is a peak and a trough. A peak and a trough, as the AC current oscillates, and at the top of that and at the bottom of that, EMF is thrown off. So by putting two heaters together, one on top of the other at 180 degrees, when the top heater is kicking off EMF at the top of this oscillation, the bottom one is kicking off the corollary, or the negative part of that, and it cancels out the emf. And we found that the most effective way. And we were the first ones to pioneer this type of technology in the infrared sauna. And that really revolutionized the whole industry. And we wanted these big heaters because they gave that very important, very large percentage of that 9.3 micron, so we could get that resonant frequency so we could detox and really optimize the healing of the human body. So that's been our journey. Yeah.

So basically, the frequencies are canceling each other out.

That's it, exactly. And that's really the best way to do it. We found that by the time we had the heater shielded from emf, there was virtually no heat coming off. So then we went back to the drawing board. It was a long process, and the solution was so simple. It was like one of those things that was right before our eyes, but it took us a while to get there.

Okay, so if I understand correctly, based off what you said there's two different types of electricity that you'd normally need to be concerned about in a sauna, is that correct? The emf. But then there's also elf.

Exactly. ELF is the electric field. We don't, you know, looking at the research, we don't see as much that ELF is as harmful as emf. There is a lot of research from cancer on down that negative part of emf. With the elf, we see more people tend to be more sensitive to that. So we're actually the only sauna company that shields the sauna from the elf. What we do is we run metal conduit in the walls to shield the wiring. We actually carbonize a mesh in front of the heaters and ground it in order to cancel the elf. We run metal tape in the ceiling, wherever there's any wires to cancel out the elf. So the R centers are the only ones that are both EMF and ELF free. So they're, they're very, very safe that way.

Okay, gotcha. So you're not gonna microwave yourself when you're inside this sauna?

Exactly. Quite the opposite.

Alright, so this, this is, this kind of relates to another question that I wanted to ask you. And that is the difference between like an infrared and a dry sauna. Like when I get out of an infrared, when I first step in, it's not quite as hot. You know, I preheat mine for 20 or 30 minutes before I actually hop in. But when I'm in there, like the air isn't as hot, but I break out in this intense sweat that I don't get from a dry sauna or from a steam sauna. Why is it that you sweat more in an infrared versus a dry or a wet sauna?

That's a great question. And that's really been because the infrared wavelength goes deeper into the tissue. So it's not about heating with the air. And that's what you notice. But probably when you've been in there five minutes or so, it feels like the air temperature's gone up. So the regular kind of what we call a traditional box of hot rocks, finished sauna that heats by heating up the air, heats the air to 200, 220 degrees. And then the heating medium of the air, that's what's heating your body. Infrared is completely different in that the wavelength comes off the heaters and then it doesn't give up its energy until it penetrates inch, inch and a half into the soft tissue. So a totally different thing. Now also with the traditional type of Sauna, the box of hot rock sauna. Once you start to perspire, now you've got a layer of water in between you and the heating source, the hot air and infrared, it just comes straight through and keeps on going. So that's, that's the biggest difference. And you, you know, you feel that, you feel that. That's what you've talked about.

Can it get dangerous after a while? Because I know like they make, I actually want to try this out. They make infrared cookers for turkeys, for example, where you can actually cook a whole turkey inside, inside this infrared grill. And supposedly it gets like super crispy on the outside and the flesh is like, you know, like butter on the inside because the infrared actually penetrates the tissue of the turkey. I was thinking about that the other day when I was in my salmon, like what happens if I stay in here for like two or three hours? I mean, have they, have they ever done such a, to see like how, how long you should actually stay in a sauna?

You know, we've looked at a lot of that over the years. Generally we say a maximum of 45 minutes. You know, the wavelengths they're using to cook the turkey are the much shorter wavelengths at higher temperatures. And that's why they're, they're cooking. You know, you're not going to cook in the, in our far infrared saunas or our full spectrum sauna either. You know, the infrared sauna is raising your core body temperature and that's one of the reasons why you're feeling really hot. But there's really no danger there. You know, we say a maximum of 45 minutes. After that point you're really starting to sweat out some good minerals. So we say leave it to about 45 minutes. And that's a very, very safe range. And for people that are infirm, we say start out a little bit slower, maybe start with 15 or 20 minutes. You can even start with the door open for a little bit, you know, just to acclimate yourself to it. Some people who have heavier toxic loads need to do that. They need to start out slower, startget the toxins mobilized and moving out of their bodies before they actually really delve in too deep.

Right, right. Now, before we delve into this whole detox effect, I shouldi should paint you guys a picture of my sauna because you mightyou might kinda like it. You mentioned the minerals. So I've got these big glass bottles that I put minerals into, right? So I use trace liquid minerals, put em into the glass bottles and II Picked up this trick from Rick Rubin, who I've had on the show before. And he has these big dry barrel sauna. That's what he uses. He's got a dry barrel sauna, and then he has a bucket of ice, like a metal bucket of ice outside of his with a commercial ice maker. The way that I do things is I've got the infrared sauna. And then outside my house, I've got like a cold pool that I'll jump into afterwards to get that hot, cold contrast. But I have these big glass bottles that I can put trace liquid minerals into so I can stay in my infrared sauna. I'll stay in there sometimes 45 to 60 minutes, but I've got the glass bottles in there as well to allow me to maintain minerals and maintain water intake while I'm in there. The other thing that I do is I use wakefulness enhancing oils. So I'll take like peppermint oil, or I'll take another one that I've used is cinnamon oil, vanilla oil, and I'll sprinkle a few drops of this essential oil around the floor of the sauna. So kind of as the, as the infrared heats up the sauna, you get thisthis essential oil diffused into the air. So you get aromatherapy at the same time that you're doing the sauna. And then thethe very cool. The last thing that I doand I get laughed at for this sometimes by my wife is I'll take my laptop and set it outside the sauna because I don't take anything electric into the sauna like my phone or anything like that. But I'll set up yoga DVDs like Kundalini yoga and stuff like that. And I'll be watching an instructor through the glass window of the sauna, walking me through a routine. And I'll do a full yoga routine in my sauna. So I've got all these stupid little things I do inside the sauna, but I'm constantly figuring out ways to make it work better. Detoxification, though, is what you were just talking about. And I'm curious how the detoxification effect actually occurs in a sauna. Can you go into that?

So this is Raleigh again. So it's all about mobilizing the toxins. So you even have people that say, oh, detox, that's a myth. We detox all the time. And that's true. The body will detox itself all the time. The problem is, Ben, there's. And you know this, there's 80,000 chemicals in our environment now that our great grandparents didn't have to deal with. So we have to somehow up the level of detox and help our body to do that. And what the infrared sauna does is it helps to mobilize the toxin. So, so once the toxins are mobilized, they're going to go into interstitial fluid in the body and there's four pathways of elimination. And you're going to have the toxins going out either through the liver, through urine, through feces. Toxins will come out also through exhalation. And of course, the big one that we want to do that's going to bypass all that is going to be through sweating. So those are the ways to do it. But in that mobilization, that's going to enlist what we talked about in that vasodilation. The vasodilation, that resonant frequency, liberating the toxin from the cell so that it can be eliminated. And that's how it works. And there's been studies that have shown this and the efficacy of detoxing in a sauna. So it's a pretty well standardized thing.

Now what is it that's causing the vasodilation? Is it an actual nitric oxide release or something else?

There's a natural nitric oxide release, yes, that comes out and that just happens. And so think about it this way, when you get the vasodilation and all the capillaries and everything, the blood vessels open up. What happens is the blood pressure drops. Then the heart senses that and it says, oh wow, blood pressure is going down, we better start pumping some blood. So then we call this a passive cardio. So your heart's going to pump faster to move blood through the body. Now with that, you're taking nutrients around in the body and you're eliminating and pulling out chemicals and toxins and boosting the immune system and all the other things. You know, any type of healing is going to happen at a faster rate, boosting the metabolism.

So there's this idea that you can use things like nitric oxide precursors or niacin or high dose caffeine, things of that nature to accelerate that effect. Have you guys looked into or researched anything like supplementation to enhance or accelerate the amount of detoxification that can occur when you're inside an infrared.

The most famous one and the one that we're closest to in a knowledge base is definitely niacin, because niacin has been used to help the body to flush out the toxins and it does that same action. They Use niacin to great success with saunas for Gulf war veterans, for nine, 11 first responders for different people that had high levels of toxicity. And this was all shown by Dr. Yu and Dr. Root by actually taking fat samples. And so you take fan samples before and you take fat samples afterwards and that's like the gold standard of are we removing toxins? But niacin has definitely been very effective and works in synergy with any type of sauna, but even better with an infrared sauna.

Now some people complain about like the, like the flush, you know, the tingling sensation that you get with niacin. I don't know if you guys know about this, but there's a form of niacin called inositol hexa niacinate. There's a company called Thorne that makes one called Nia Safe. It's like a non flushing form of niacin. I've used that in the sauna once I realized that the niacin was pretty uncomfortable. And this stuff's work, it works very similarly. You get this same type of increase of blood flow and you sweat a lot more but you don't get that same type of flushing effect.

Yeah, I think that would be a good remedy for people who just don't like the flush or don't want to experience that and works the same. That's correct.

Gotcha. And what about like caffeine or anything else that you could put into your system aside from niacin? Do you guys experiment with anything else?

I haven't. Andy, anything?

Not really, no, not caffeine.

The only caffeine I do is my first cup in the morning. That's about it.

Gotcha. Yeah, caffeine can definitely, I mean it can accelerate the. Basically it opens up pores, it causes a little bit of vasodilation, it increases his body heat. So that's another one I've found to work pretty well in combination withwith infrared. So I'll do you know, coffee and or niacin beforehand. And then of course like the water with the trace liquid minerals during so.

Gotcha.

How dangerous can that be though? I mean cancan you Obviously you have to be careful about mineral loss and replenishment of minerals but with this whole detoxification effect, like is it dangerous? Like how often, often can you do it? How long can you do sauna? And one of the reasons I asked too is I know for example the Finnish research that they've done on how saunas can increase longevity. These guys I think were in there in a sauna five days a week for anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes. Obviously a traditional smoke finish dry sauna, not an infrared sauna, which I think they would think would be blasphemous over there versus the big rock saunas. But either way, howhow often can you do this?

You could be in there four to five times a week. Even every day. You know, you are losing some good minerals in addition to the toxins. So you wanna make sure you're eating a healthy diet. You know, mineral supplementation like you're doing is a great way to go. You know, from 99% of the people, detox is not a problem. There are some people that will have a, you know, different types of reactions. Like for example, people with Lyme disease, they can have what's called a Herxheimer reaction. Their deep body's detoxing too fast and it actually just makes them feel really, really sick. It's almost FL like symptoms. So for those people that do are detoxing fast or have a lot of toxins that are being mobilized and they're starting to react to it, we just ask them to slow down, you know, take a step back, do it, you know, once a week, then twice a week. But, you know, for most people that are healthy, no problem. There's a lot of sauna centers that have opened up around the country using our saunas. All they do is infrared saunas. They're doing, you know, 1,000 to 2,000 sessions a month. And we've never heard of any issues with anybody that way. So it's very, very safe.

What do you mean sauna facilities? Like places you go just to sit in a sauna?

Yeah, they're actually infrared sauna centers. They call them sauna studios. There's higher dose, there's perspire, and these are centers that all they have is our infrared saunas there. People are going in, sitting in the sauna, you know, on a pay per session basis. And they're extremely popular.

Interesting. Now, do they have like exercise sessions as well? I mean, can you go like do spin classes surrounded by infrared or anything like that?

Some of them do. Some of them. You know, there's one sauna sensation that has the vibration machines in there as well. So you can, you can combine both the vibration machine with the infrared sauna. Some are located associated with gyms. So you can, you know, partake in, you know, gym facilities and the infrared sauna. So it varies. Some are strictly just infrared sauna centers as well.

Okay, gotcha. Now, you guys familiar at all with Dr. Rhonda Patrick and some of the research that she's done or spoken of with when. With regard to the production of heat shock proteins as a response to sauna.

Yes. In fact, Rhonda is down here in the Bay Area and she's really done some great work, you know, on the effects of heat in the body. So I follow her pretty closely. Yeah, it's amazing what she's found out.

Can you talk a little bit about heat shock proteins and how that actually works? Can either of you speak intelligently to that topic?

Yeah, I can. Rhonda's. That's sort of her bailiwick. But it seems to work very well in a way of maintaining. You can maintain my understanding you can maintain muscle mass in periods of time by going in something like a sauna, even if you're not working out.

So. But yeah, that's the same thing that I found is this production of these heat shock protein essentially induces almost like a hormetic response, very similar to what you would get if you were to, say, lift weights. You know, it basically decreases the rate at which sarcopenia would occur or decreases the rate at which muscle loss would occur. So like if you're injured, not only do you get the increased blood flow and the increased lymph flow that's necessary to accelerate the healing response, but the cool thing is that you produce these heat shock proteins that helps you to maintain some muscle. So I think it's almost like a cool, a cool hack if you're injured or if you can't work out every day. Yep.

Yeah. So then that expands our knowledge of what a sauna, how that's going to help someone who's working out regularly. You know, before we would talk about the obvious benefits that you're going to keep flexibility, you're going to allow your ligaments and tendons, everything to soften up. So if you go in before a workout, you're probably going to have a better chance of not getting injured. And then after a workout, of course, people use saunas for years and years to take the lactic acid out. But now this is advancing. Rhonda's work is just advancing our knowledge of what we can do. So it's really fascinating work.

When you talk about post workout use of a sauna, probably the most popular thing that's come up of late are the studies that have been done on erythropoietin production or red blood cell precursors. I don't know if you guys have seen this, but they've found that when athletes finish an exercise session, right. So they're already hot after the exercise session, and then they do about 30 to 40 minutes of sauna. It actually simulates the same amount of erythropoietin production that you'd get with the illegal use of EPO injections that Tour de France riders would use. And there was one really interesting study I just tweeted that shows that that even though the results disappear more quickly than what you would get from, say, like, altitude training up in the mountains, the use of a sauna or the use of heat therapy in combination with exercise actually causes the same performance at altitude as actual altitude training. Again, the effects disappear more quickly, but the effects are just the same as altitude training, which is really interesting for people who can't get up into the mountains to train.

It's very interesting work. I saw that study. And if you think about it, also, as this blood flow increases in your body, you're bringing more oxygenated blood. And I don't know if you've seen some of the HRV things that are coming out now. I know HRV is being used to train now, and we're seeing a lot of correlations of improvement in HRV of people just using the sauna. So that has effects on how you sleep and how your stress level is. So there's a lot of effects. So I think we're mining and understanding the effects of this, and in the next five, 10 years, because the technology for testing has gotten so much better, we're going to understand a lot more of how this is helping the body. We know it does help the body, but we're understanding it a little more every year here.

Yeah, it actually is pretty interesting, the research that they've done specifically on the sympathetic activity of the nervous system or the regulation of the autonomic nervous system and the use of sauna. So, you know, obviously the plasma volume expansion and the increase in blood volume is one effect from a cardiovascular standpoint. But this idea that you see an improvement in hrv, and I think the interesting thing is, in most cases, what I've seen seen is an improvement in what's called the sympathetic Nervous system score, which is the parts of the nervous system that tends to be more, to use the highly scientific term, beat up in crossfitters or extreme athletes, like people who are doing a lot of glycolytic work, strength training, stuff like that, it appears to be one of the better methods for actually kind of regulating your autonomic nervous system or regulating your heart rate rate variability so it's really interesting.

It is really interesting. And then the implications for the entire society are huge. Because when I look around, you look, everybody today is so stressed out. I did a poll one time, I walked around for a week and everybody I met, I would ask them, do you feel stressed out? And I did not have one person, Ben, that said, no, I'm fine, everything's great. So when you get into that, we think that the infrared from what we've seen in the HRV studies is you're resetting the sympathetic parasympathetic tone so you're more into parasympathetic. So in that way your stress levels going down. And as we know, stress is related to all kinds of diseases. So we see this as a, you know, a good tool against the tide of just a stressed out world.

Probably depends on what you're doing in the sauna too. I mean, I'll admit I've got some sessions where I'll take a kettlebell into my sauna and just destroy myself, you know, and be covered in sweat and wanting to like scrape at the walls and get out and go jump in the cold pool. And I would imagine I'm probably getting a potential decrease in sympathetic tone or a little bit more of a beat up effect on the nervous system from something like that. But I'll do that, for example, if I'm getting ready for a race at altitude or a race in the heat. Just because that's the other thing that they suggest that the improved performance that you see after heat therapy is not just due to the increase in blood volume, but the other proposed mechanism of action is that you actually increase youryour pain tolerance, your discomfort tolerance. And there's this idea that the central governor, the part of the brain that would normally kick in and shut you down from exercising when you're, when your rating of perceived exertion gets to a certain level, that kicks in at a later point if you've experienced extreme heat discomfort or regular heat exposure.

Right. Well, and that's something we've seen after talking to the people that are running sauna centers and spas. And our own experience is that people coming out of the saunas, and you may have experienced this yourself, they usually have a smile on their face. And that's because dopamine is being released serotonin, endorphins. And so when you talk about pain, these are some of the things, I mean, who doesn't want to feel better and happier? So this can do it naturally and very easily.

Yeah, it's interesting. I've seen some of that research that shows like the production of a lot of anti inflammatory compounds like noradrenaline and adrenaline and cortisol and growth hormones. But it should be noted though that those are acting differently than like a synthetic vitamin C or a synthetic vitamin E or even like you know, glutathione or curcumin or a lot of these antioxidants that people are shoving into their body. I actually don't recommend those post exercise. I like the use of a sauna post exercise based off of what they've shown in terms of blood volume and everything. But the anti inflammatory effects are are different than these other like supplements because what supplements can do or what even like a cold bath can do is it can blunt the inflammatory response to the extent to where you don't actually get the same hormetic effect of exercise. You don't get the same response to exercise. You just, you can almost kind of shoot yourself in the foot by like dumping a bunch of whatever like high orac berry powder into your body post workout. But what the sauna is doing is it's more increasing growth hormone, adrenaline and noradrenaline. You mentioned like the drop of lactic acid probably from the vasodilation increase in nitric oxide. So it's actually a smart choice for post workout. A smarter choice than an ice bath really.

Well, it was interesting too. Binghamton University used one of our saunas for a weight loss study and they found on average people lost about 4% body fat in 16 weeks. But the part they found significant was the people that use the sauna later in the day lost more body fat. So they did a second study which was eight weeks and they found the people and they only had people come and use the sauna after 3pm and those people lost the same 4% body fat but in half the amount of time. And they attributed it to two things, slightly lowering your cortisol levels and slightly raising your hgh. So you know it has that overall effect on your whole body.

That's interesting. And actually that surprises me not to be too contrarian here. Like I would imagine, justif noradrenaline and adrenaline and epinephrine were being increased, you'd actually see a slight increase in cortisol, which would seem to make sense based on the fact that you see an increase in sympathetic nervous system activity with the use of a sauna. So I wonder if it's a short term cortisol increase, like an acute cortisol increase in the sauna followed by a decrease in cortisol after you've finished the sauna. Kind of like what we see with exercise, right? Like exercise stresses you out out. But the long term effect is it de. Stresses you.

Yeah, I think that that's it. I think you hit the nail on the head. And this was a pretty short study, so we're probably going to go back and do a bigger one and see if we can figure out a little more. But what was impressive was just to lose that amount of body fat over a short period of time and not do anything but just show up, get in the sauna, listen to some music and then go home. So that was impressive.

Yeah, it is. And I know they've done some studies in mice as well in terms of insulin resistance. They've studied diabetic mice. I don't know if you guys saw this study in terms of heat treatment in diabetic mice. And they caused a 30% decrease in insulin levels and a very similar decrease in blood glucose levels. Just again, from the use of nothing going on there in terms of exercise or diet. The only variable that they threw in was heat exposure for these. For these little mice probably lounging around in a sauna reading magazines.

That's it. Did you see there was a hamster study too that was done putting hamsters in the infrared and that increased. They show the nitric oxide, which is all the different chemicals that are used for erectile dysfunction. That's what they're doing. They're increasing the nitric oxide. So it shows another benefit of that.

It does. And when you bring up erectile dysfunction, it reminds me of another study that I recently posted, and this one was really very interesting. They found that. And you guys can tell me, by the way, I meant to ask you this about the actual nanometers because I guess they use nanometers to measure the intensity of the light in some of these studies. And they found that for men who exposed their testicles for five to eight minutes per day to a wavelength of it was between 600 and 700 nanometers of infrared light, they tripled their testosterone levels in response to that light exposure. Wow.

No, I hadn't seen that one. So that's kind of interesting.

Well, this is what I wanted to ask you guys. Do you know the actual wavelength put out by, for example, you know, in my clear light sanctuary, there are two red heaters, like on the front of it. Do you know the. If that falls between the 600 to 700 nanometer, like if I were to say Sauna in the nude.

It does, it does those. The full spectrum heaters are, you know, basically between zero and we tend to look at as microns. I have to convert, but it's about between 0 and 1000. So you are getting that 600.

Okay, gotcha. Interesting. All right, well, if I, if I burn my balls off, I'm gonna blame you guys, but, yeah, I would stay at it. You know what's kind of funny is what I've been doing is I have another. I have another infrared light. It's like a light strip. And I actually have that in my office. And most people who are talking to me on consults or during podcasts, et cetera, don't really know this, but there's been times when I just pull my pants down and straddle the light and let. Let myself bathe in all the glory of the infrared light. So lots of ways, lots of ways.

You might have to charge more now, Ben, now that people know that.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So this is, this is really cool stuff. And I know, first of all, for those of you who want access to, like, the re, not just the research that we've been talking about, but also everything from, like, you know, the niacin that I recommend and the minerals and, you know, I'll even put a link to the infrared turkey fryer. For anybody who wants to fry a turkey this Thanksgiving using infrared, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com SaunaPodcast that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com SunNapodcast if you want to delve into the research. And also I've written some articles about this. For example, I have an article about the exact workout that I actually do in the clearlight sauna. I also have a really comprehensive article about everything from growth hormone to nitric oxide release to the production of heat shock proteins. A lot of scientifically proven reasons that I personally am kind of addicted to my daily sauna. And then also, this will probably make you guys grit your teeth, Raleigh and Andy, but I've actually hacked my sauna. So I ripped the. I ripped the wood off the top and I. I insulated it to make it get hotter. And I stuck like a wine cork and the temperature sensor and kind of, kind of destroyed the sauna that I have, the clearlight sauna that I have in terms of beauty, but it's extremely functional when it comes to heat production. So I would imagine that we should probably insert a disclaimer here that I do not endorse destroying your sauna and Insulating it. But we don't recommend that. Yeah, you guys don't recommend that. But should you want the instructions, I will put those in the show notes as well. Just for any of you biohackers out there.

There.

And you guys, we have a, we have a special discount for anybody listening in, right?

We do, we do. If we have a website, one of our websites, healwith heat.com h e a l w I t h e a t dot com. Just use the discount code Ben and you can save up to $450 off of our regular price. We're also throwing in an additional ergonomic backrest at no charge. So just visit healwithheat.com and mention Ben and get the discount. We also have a toll free number. It's 800-317-570. That's 800-317-500.

Okay, got it. Cool. And the main thing here I want to emphasize for those of you listening in is that you can't just go out and get any old infrared sauna. You need to be careful that you choose something that is as we described today, low Elliot MF and low emf. And then as far as the protocol goes, I mean, you know, I, I personally, like I mentioned to you guys, you know, I'm in there four to five days a week for 30 to 60 minutes. But make sure that you include minerals. You know, if you experiment with niacin, you know, make sure you kinda, kinda read some of the articles I've written on that so you know what you're doing as far as doses and stuff like that goes. But I'm a huge, huge fan of saunas and Andy and roll. I wanna thank you guys for actually creating a sauna that allows me to get my daily sauna without microwaving myself.

You're most welcome. It's been a great journey.

Or turning myself into a Thanksgiving turkey.

That's right, we want to avoid that.

All right, well if you're listening in, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Sauna Podcast. If you want to get the fat discount on one of these saunas, just go to healwithheat.com and you can use the discount code banny. You get 450 bucks off. You get the cool little ergonomic backrest too, thrown in with your sauna. And I am serious, these things are easy to set up. My boys and I got the kit to our front door and within two hours we had built the entire sauna, this huge sauna that you can do yoga in. And that one's called the Sanctuary, by the way. And that's the one, by the way, also that we just gave away on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Facebook page. So. So if you stay tuned to the end of this podcast, which is coming up in just a moment, you'll get to hear who actually won that sauna. It might be you, if you're listening in. So, Raleigh, Andy, thanks for coming on the show, guys.

Absolutely, our pleasure.

All right, here we go. As promised, if you're listening and you want to find out if you won that Clearlight Sanctuary Full Spectrum Sauna, the same one that I use every morning to do all my crazy yoga acrobatics in and get a full sweat on. Well, after 30 days and nearly 5,000 entries from 24 countries like Italy, Ireland, Australia, the UK, New Zealand, Canada, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Finland, Germany, and of course, the newly crowned Donald Trump's good old US of A and 12 other countries. So all over the world, really. The grand prize winner of the Clearlight Sanctuary two full Spectrum sauna with free shipping right to your door as selected by random drawing over@random.org is what we use for that for those of you who want to do random giveaways. So the winner is. I hope you're sitting back. It's a female. So that just narrowed down 50% of you. A huge worldwide sigh from a bunch of dudes. It is Emily Johnson of Denver, Colorado. Insert the party noises here, the fireworks exploding, the little things that you blow in and out of the kazoos, everything, every noise that you make when you win a giant sauna, because that doesn't happen very often. So congratulations, Emily. This is your lucky day. Clear Light going to be getting in touch with you very soon. And in December, just in time for the holidays, you will be enjoying and sweating in a beautiful, life changing Clearlight Sanctuary Full Spectrum Sauna. All right, folks. Well, this is Ben Greenfield along with Raleigh and Andy from Clearlight Saunas signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week.

You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.