Sauna Science Explained: Infrared vs. Traditional, Detox, Heart Health, and What to Look For

Today, really excited to share this episode with you. We are talking all things saunas and we are doing it with Sunlight and Saunas co-founder and co-owner Connie Zach. I have used personally Sunlight and Saunas for over 6 years now, bought and paid for my own, absolutely love it. And she is filled with a wealth of knowledge. She's been doing this for over 25 years. We're going to talk about how to tell what kind of sauna you need, what to look for, what to stay away from, the differences between traditional and infrared, literally everything, the health benefits of it, which are pretty fascinating. So if this is something you're interested in, really excited to share this episode with you. Let's dig in. Connie, thank you so much and welcome to Modern Thyroid and Wellness. I'm excited to have you here.

Thank you, McCall. I'm excited to be here.

So for those of you who might not be familiar with Connie's work, she co-founded Sunlight and Saunas with her husband and has a pretty unique journey from working in pharmaceutical sales, probably 180 degrees from where you are now in health, wellness, really giving people the tools they need to help create healthspan, lifespan. I'd love for you to share a little bit about how in the world you ended up doing saunas in life and not pharmaceuticals.

I know, so strange. It's such a strange story. Strange in a very, very good way, but not something that you would normally expect. This is not something that I studied or anything like that. It really fell into it because my brother was really ill, chronically ill, and he had symptoms of chronic fatigue and inflammation and pain and vertigo and just overall just malaise. I mean, he really— he lost his job because he couldn't work. I mean, he couldn't really do anything, and he was young. I mean, it was just so sad. And it wasn't until his dentist, who he was seeing regularly because he had a lot of fillings in his mouth, and his dentist recognized the fact that they were mercury fillings, he thought, you know what, I think there's a connection between the fact that you have all these mercury fillings in your mouth and what's going on in your body. I think you have heavy metal toxicity, and I've been reading about this wavelength of energy called infrared that could potentially detoxify the body. Safely and naturally in the comfort of your own home. And I think you should check into it. And that's what my brother did and changed his life. And then I decided to leave my comfortable life at P&G in the pharmaceuticals, and so did Aaron. And we jumped off a cliff and without a parachute and decided to mortgage our home and mortgage our cars and just put everything— we're still all in. We're all in. And Yeah, there was no plan B and just spent the rest of our lives studying this really powerful healing energy called infrared and figuring out how to master it so that it's the most effective and efficient and highest quality product in the world. And our purpose is to help people feel better and do more and live fully and bring light, hope, and happiness to people everywhere.

I love it. I kind of want you to build on a couple of basics.

Sure.

I would love for you to compare infrared saunas to regular saunas, kind of highlight the differences, the unique benefits of both, because I think people lump saunas into one group and they can't, they don't even know they don't know the difference. So I'd love for you to share a little bit about that.

Yeah, they do lump it together, which is, which is fine. I mean, heat is wonderful, whether it's traditional heat or infrared heat. Heat Heat's really great for your body. Tons and tons of studies and benefits on both. The difference is, is how you are receiving the energy. So what I mean by that, let's start with traditional. And traditional heat, everybody's familiar with, and the air gets hot. And like the way it typically works is it's really focused on extremely hot air. So 160 above, 70, 180, some at 220, and it just depends. And so when you walk into that environment, the air is hot and you get hot instantly because the air is hot. So that's the transfer. And you sit in there. Most people can't stay in that level of heat that long, but that's the really simplistic form of explaining traditional saunas. Infrared energy is completely different in the sense that it's light energy. That comes from the sun. There's 4 different parts of light energy that's within this spectrum. 2 of them are received by heat, 2 by LEDs, which we can talk about later. But I'm just trying to break it down because the first piece of difference is the fact that traditional is what I call, like, one-dimensional, right? It's heat and you get hot. Infrared is multidimensional, like, very different the way it works with the body. In a very basic way, the energy is absorbed into your body. And so when you receive that energy, it starts to increase your core temperature. So you start to get hot because the energy is absorbed into your cells. And then we can talk about what happens after that. But that's— I'm trying to make it really simple and basic, you know. So hot air versus hot body. Directly.

Yeah. And one kind of thing that I like to point out to people, I always talk about this with my patients, is people should not just go out and buy any infrared sauna.

Yes.

It's kind of like sitting in a microwave in a lot of cases. I would love for you to share a little bit about that with people because I think it's so important when someone's deciding, oh, this is really cool. I think I want to do it, but I'm just going to go down to like Home Depot and pick up one there. And it gets a little tricky. So just some basics we'll lay out before we talk about all the incredible benefits.

Yeah, the basics. Okay, this is a podcast in itself. So the basics are that when you're looking for an infrared sauna, what you're really looking for is a sauna that has the most amount of far infrared heat. And the reason I'm breaking it down like that is because far infrared is the foundation of the infrared spectrum. It is the most important one for all the benefits we're gonna talk about. There's benefits to all of them, but when you just talk about building a home and you're laying the foundation and you're doing something great for your body and you want the foundational benefit, far infrared is the foundation. Why is that? That is because that's the wavelength that is absorbed the deepest into the body, and it sets off this biochemical cascade of benefits, which we've been talking about, but that you need that transfer of energy. Okay, so here's the key of what to look for. So first is it's farm-fra— but the second is the quantity and the quality of the frequency of that wavelength. And that's defined by this is getting a little bit deep, but we're just going to go here for a second.

Yeah.

It's defined by the surface temperature of the heater, not defined by the air temperature. Air temperature has no— does not matter whatsoever because you're not getting the transfer of heat from the air. That's a traditional sauna. In a traditional sauna, it matters. This doesn't matter. What matters, and this is where I would totally double down on your comment of not going to Home Depot because they're using a generic infrared heater. You don't know how much far-infrared energy is being transferred because you don't know the surface temperature of the emitters. And I guarantee you Home Depot doesn't either. If you were to ask them, there's no way they would know that. That's the magic. That's the secret sauce. And in order to get the surface temperature, and what you want is the surface temperature to be as low as possible because that's when you get the highest absorption into the body. Low temperature, high absorption. And that's what Sunlighten has mastered and specialized in. But we've been studying it. Keep it— let's put into perspective. We've been studying it for 25 years. I mean, we started this a long time ago and every year we learn things and then we change and innovate and adapt. And the one thing we haven't had to change is because we learned early on was the mastering of delivering the highest amount of infrared into the body. We patented that. So people can rest assured if they, if you're coming to Sunlighten, we've already done the research for you. You're, you really found the easy button because we have lots of different collections to choose from, which we can talk about. But the thing that is consistent across all of them is you're getting the most amount of infrared absorbed into your cells, and that's where the magic happens. So that's one. Well, that's the most important because people typically are buying an infrared sauna for all of the wellness outcomes that they're receiving. But other things to pay attention to is the quality of materials. Wood matters. The quality of the wood matters because you're heating up the cabin. And if you have toxic woods, which there's plenty of them, an example of one is hemlock, and then you're going to be, you're going to potentially have adverse effects from the air heating the wood oil and then you receiving it. And then trust me, from the very beginning in the basement when we started the business, we worked with some manufacturers that told us that their sauna woods were hypoallergenic. And then we had all these calls saying, my eyes are itchy, my skin is itchy, I got a rash. All these bad things happen. And that's where we went on this journey to find the highest quality, most effective, non-toxic woods. Then you also want all the materials. You don't really want them with toxic glues. We use magnets. Yeah, I mean, there's lots of other things that we do, but that's, that's the high level of what to look for. And, and the surface temperature, which most people don't know what their surface temperature is. But when you buy it off a shelf, like you buy an infrared heater, which you can buy anywhere, you typically have a high surface temperature because they're trying to get the cabin hot quickly. They're going for that efficiency play. And that's not— that's fine for that play. But we're in the wellness space and we want to have people get as healthy as possible as quickly as possible.

I love that. And then does EMFs play a role at all?

Yes. Thank you for mentioning that. Yeah, EMF is important because you're you want to make sure that you're in the safest, most healing environment, that space. It's to me, it's such a safe space of just where the magic happens. And you don't want anything fighting with your ability to heal your body naturally. And so let's limit the EMFs, let's cancel the field out. When we started our company back in the basement, that was one of the first things that we tackled was shielding the wires, making sure we're doing everything we could to give a safe place with as little, if none, if possible, EMFs.

I love it. Talk to me a little bit about— so red light therapy is having a moment right now. Everyone's really into it, which I love. Like, I love red light therapy. I want you to talk with me a little bit about what combining red light therapy with heat or sauna potentiates, like, together, the synergy of them. How that impacts our body. Does it— can it play a role in women's health, their hormones, their thyroid? That might have been way too many questions at once. I'll let you take it away.

Okay. There's a lot to unpack in that question. I'm going to start with one question that I heard that is probably one of my favorite benefits of combining the entire spectrum. And the entire spectrum, let's just define that, what that means right now. That's far infrared that I just talked about. That's your foundation. If there's one thing you guys remember, remember that when listening, because it's really— because what happens is when you feel confused by doing research is because there's so much noise in this space, and people use the word infrared in a very generic term. And infrared is actually the spectrum of light. It's not— there's no such thing as just infrared, if that makes sense. So There's far infrared energy, there's a mid-infrared, there's near infrared, which we're going to talk about in a second, and then there's red light. So there's, there's those four parts of the infrared spectrum. And I want to answer your question of like, as far as what's benefit if you combine heat and light energy. And one of my all-time favorites, gosh, forever, has been for skin. And here's what I, what I mean by that. So far infrared is the detoxification hero. That's the wavelength of energy that's going to heat up your core temperature, as I said earlier, sets off this biochemical cascade of benefits that starts to impact every single system in your body, everything. 'Cause it's changing your water molecules and it's moving them around. And that change and that activation starts to increase circulation, increase blood flow, increase oxygenation to your tissues, increase brain activity. Then you get that increased core temperature at which you start to sweat. So you start to activate all of your detox pathways. That activation and that purge of these toxins that are stored deeply into your body gives you the most beautiful looking skin because you're detoxifying your body from the inside out. So we have a saying called purify the body and the skin will follow. So you're getting this beautiful skin because you're detoxifying the body. Then when you combine it with near-infrared light, which is the invisible, invisible part of the infrared spectrum, and combine it with red light, which is the visible part of the light spectrum, those two penetrate the skin superficially directly. So far infrared is absorbed like deeply, right? It changes your water molecules. These two, near infrared and red light, they penetrate the skin. And so they start to repair the skin and increase the collagen and increase elastin. So you're getting repair on your skin from the direct application. So if you just picture like direct application, deep application, I'm getting the inside out and I'm getting the outside in. So that's a perfect example of why you would want to combine the far infrared heat with the near infrared light and red light therapy.

Is that why whenever I get out of my sauna, I literally feel like my insides— I like to— I describe it to my husband as It feels like my insides just took a shower.

Yeah, that's a great analogy. I love that. I may steal that, McCall.

Yeah, you can.

Feel free.

But that's what it feels like, right?

Yeah. You feel cleaner. And that's maybe probably what you're talking about. Yeah. You have this purge feeling, cleaner, lighter. All 100% of the time when I come out, I feel lighter, more energetic, feel like my skin is just saying thank you to me, and my brain is just so much more creative and, and happier. That's the other thing which I don't talk about that as much as I probably should, but that mood aspect, the mood change, the mood shift I like to do it in the morning, and I generally wake up in a good mood and a happy mood, but I have more happiness, elation, and energy, which makes me in turn happy because I want that energy to go do the 20,000 things I've committed to for the day. The interaction with this energy and your cells, it's really when you combine it all together, when you combine all the wavelengths, you're supercharging your cells. I mean, you're just like taking this battery and like helping your body become more energetic and stronger and more efficient. And you're impacting your systems. It's really such a great resource and such a great tool that affects your entire body. I always call it the best whole body longevity hack there is.

It kind of is. And there's some research to back that up. Yeah. You know what's so interesting? Interesting. Let's move a little bit towards that. So there are some pretty powerful research in regards to sauna. The research that I'm most familiar with is like cardiovascular research and all-cause mortality. I think what a lot of women forget is we get very focused on cancer prevention and early detection, which is all so important. Heart disease kills more than all forms of cancer combined every year, and heart disease is really something that we should be looking to reduce risk on. I'd love for, if I'm sure the statistics, I'd love for you to share a little bit about that and any other adjunctive studies that you're aware of that maybe I'm not even aware of as far as longevity, healthspan, lifespan, all of it.

Yeah, I, there's a lot. I'll start with, since you talked about heart, I'll start with probably one of my, there's so many cardiovascular disease is the most out of all of the wellness outcomes and benefits, it is the most studied, the longest studied. So let's put into perspective, when I— well, my brother healed himself, I started doing research back then. This is, this is 25, 26 years ago. This is a long time ago. And even at that time, there was already research showing the benefits on the heart, showing the reduction of blood pressure, showing that the change in the endothelial lining showing the elasticity of the arteries, essentially, like, just helping your heart be healthier and helping the transportation of everything that you need improve. So that's not the study I was going to share. But that it just— I want to emphasize that this is not like a flash in the pan overnight thing. I mean, this is something that's been around for way longer than— than any of us have any idea. So my favorite study, 'cause it's so important, is a study that was done with infrared a long time ago and it's called Waon therapy. Waon therapy is defined by soothing warmth therapy, 15 minutes with infrared and then 30 minutes with just a regular blanket just to keep that warmth in. And there's like 169 patients with congestive heart failure who were studied over 5 years. The 5 years compared people who did infrared therapy and then people who did not. And in the infrared group, there was a 50% reduction in hospitalization and death. So pretty powerful, pretty important. And so if you know that it helps reduce by 50% of patients with congestive heart failure. Just imagine some of the benefits that it can provide you. So that's one of my favorite data points for the use of infrared on having your heart get healthier. I'll also share my— our own Sunlighten study. It was amazing back in 2005. And that study, it was a double-blind placebo-controlled randomized trial, basically comparing our Sunlighten Solo with our patented most emissive, most highest absorbed heat that's in that, and then comparing it to another infrared sauna. So this kind of further validates your comment earlier of people shouldn't just buy just any infrared sauna. And so we compared the two. This, the control group that was produced did not provide the benefits. It was the Sunlight and Solo that provided a statistically significant difference. And that's really, I mean, I come from pharma, like my very, very early baby days, and that was one of the first things when we were learning all about studies that they, that taught us is it has to be statistically significant. And so we produced statistically significant results on lowering blood pressure with using the Sunlight and Solo, as well as increasing quality of life scores as well as detoxifying the body. So it's pretty powerful data. There's another study that is my recent favorite, which is because I think for women specifically, we don't take our nervous system, the importance of not straining our nervous system, as seriously as we should. And we go, go, go, go, go and push and push and push. And we live in, in the sympathetic state, which is the state that you're just supposed to be there to survive. Like, that's, that's the point of that state, is it's survival mode. It's the mode that, like, we all know that we would be in to save our kids or to, to, to make those kind of decisions. Your brain reacts and it's like, okay, we, we got this, we can do this. You— we don't need to be there 24/7. And what happens when we live in that, that state is it really puts a significant strain on our autonomic nervous system and on our heart rate on our circulatory system and it causes inflammation and lead to disease and can lead to all sorts of negative impacts on our body. And I bring it up because there is a recent study that showed infrared positively impacts the shift between the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system as defined by the markers. We're monitoring the markers for heart rate variability. And which is the key one if you're measuring your strain on your nervous system. So that's— if you know there's a tool, and what, what's so great, McCall, and I know you know this because you do this, what's so great is you don't have to be in there for that long. Like, you don't have— it's not this massive commitment, A. It's not an uncomfortable commitment. It's not like you're committing yourself to go run 10 miles or do HIIT for 45 minutes, high-intensity training. You're, you're sitting in a relaxing environment that's like giving you this wonderful hug to your body from the inside out. And there's all the studies to, to validate everything that I am, I am saying, as well as not only the studies, because the studies are great, but to me what really matters is the impact like on people that are using it, right? I mean, it's just on the transformational stories that we have received for 20+ years of people who had mold and they had Lyme disease, suffered with mood issues, depression, hormone dysregulation, and all of the, the positive results after using a sunlight and sauna. That, that's what fires me up and that's what gets me out of bed. Every day is just the mission to bring in light, hope, and happiness to people everywhere, to helping people feel better. Ultimately, like, I just want everybody to be walking around with a big smile on their face.

Absolutely. And I even feel myself, like, the shift. I think a lot of, like, entrepreneur-driven women kind of live in the sympathetic state, the really activated state, and then you combine that with maybe a lot going on at home, and it's just a transition of one stress state to the next. And I really do feel that shift into parasympathetic whenever I go into my Sunlighten, which for me is kind of hard to get to, to be honest. That's why I normally use it at night. But hearing you say, no, I use it in the morning, it like preps me for my day to get through all of this stuff, I'm like, maybe I need to try that too. Like, maybe I need to start my day in more of a parasympathetic state and not try and just wind down at night that way. It's really interesting.

Yeah, there's benefits to both. And I've done— I mean, you can imagine, there's probably not a location in my house I've not had my sauna. There's not— I've tried it all sorts of different times in the day. I mean, I have all of that going on in case there's any questions about that. But I particularly for my routine, and I, I've learned in wellness it's so important to have healthy habits and healthy routine. And our body is like muscle memory, right? They just— it knows what to expect. And so I like to get up early and do a lot of my other healthy habits while I'm in there, so I'm more efficient. So I'm habit stacking And mine's in my basement. And when I get out, I just— every single time I open the door and I just, I feel so much better and I feel so much more charged. It's probably the best way. I always say it supercharges you. It's like, that's how I feel is just that boost of energy, that just whole total motivation to go into my day. But I'm doing it, McCall, in a very parasympathetic state, right? Like, I come to it I show up in a very just relaxed, almost like meditative type state, which is so helpful because I go upstairs and I prepare and everything for my kids and help my husband and get ready for work and all of that. So it's really nice to come to that place really relaxed and calm and feel like no matter what comes No matter what comes my way today, I've got it.

I need you to tell me what habit stacking you're doing in there, Connie. I want you to run us through what all you're accomplishing for your health and wellness in your sauna, because I want tips.

Okay. So I start my day with hot water with lemon, and it just starts— it just starts. The lemon has antioxidants and helps just get everything going inside my body. So I feel. And I love, I love the feeling. And there's now, there's actually benefits, but I've been doing this forever. I didn't know there was actual benefits. I just love the feeling of the warm water going into my body in the morning. It just, it helps me wake up and it helps. I'm not drinking coffee first thing. I'm drinking my hot water and the lemon with all the benefits. So that, that's like a routine. It has been forever. And I will take my hot water with lemon in my sauna. A lot of people ask me, that. And, and then, and I always do it in a glass versus anything else. And then, then it varies depending on what's going on in my life. Um, but the things probably that don't vary is the— it varies the order, really. Typically I will start with beginning with the end in mind. So what I mean by that is, how do I want my day to play out? Like, what does success look like today? What do I have going on? And just kind of walking my brain through that and telling my brain, just getting prepared. And then I will do intention setting. And so here's a— today, like, waking up, I look forward to meeting McCall and having a great conversation about wellness and bringing light, hope, and happiness to her audience and engaging with them and having this connection. So that's an example. And Then a lot of times I will do— go into a very brief— it's not a long one— brief meditation or a deep breathing or just something to get really centered or a gratitude piece. And then I do— I just kind of go be still for a while. And, and all this is not a lot of time. And then I get out.

I love it. I'm taking notes from you because for a lot of reasons, but part of it is you are biologically two decades younger than you are as far as your biological age. Did I get that right?

Something like that. Yeah.

Hey, if it's—

I don't like to talk. It's in the ballpark. It's in the ballpark. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, that was astonishing to me.

Do you feel like so much of your habit stacking, your sauna use, like what would you attribute that to? Top 3 things.

Sunlight and sauna for sure, because I've been doing that the longest, uh, for sure. Everything else in my life has evolved, and a lot of it has evolved from sitting inside my sauna and just paying attention to my breath and just paying attention to how I feel. And then getting other things out of it. I think that if I had to mention another staple in my life, it's gone in and out of this too, as far as a strength, but it would just really leaning into gratitude and taking time to just be blessed and, and, but verbally or mentally affirming that and just being— not taking anything for granted, instead really just giving thanks. I just think that's really important. And that's just some— that's— and then probably the other aspect that has my thread throughout my life is the, the mental resilience piece. And what I mean by that, let me say a little bit simpler, because when I think of it, I think of my mom and how she raised me. And she raised me to always say the word can, and she would never allow me— like, literally would never allow me to use the word can't. It was not a word in our house. If I said that, she's like, that's just— I'm so sorry, honey, but I just, I, I don't believe you. It's not— that's not a word that we use. And that has played out my life, and I do believe in the power of positive mental thinking and as how it connects to your body. There's a direct connection between your brain and your body, as I'm sure nobody would argue with that. And so I think those 3 things have— I mean, obviously, like, nutrition. I eat really well. But yeah, so that's probably a really important factor that I completely forgot about because I wasn't thinking about what happens out after the sauna. I was thinking about my experience inside the sauna. And just kind of going through what are the things I do when I'm in there. Yeah. And those are, those are the couple key things.

I love that. I want to ask a few little rapid-fire questions.

Yeah, let's go.

Serious, but I've read that getting in the sauna 4 to 7 times a week can reduce your risk of sudden cardiac death by about 63%. Is that true?

I don't have that memorized, but that sounds pretty accurate. I know that it 4 to 7, the consistency piece is key and there's extensive data showing cardiac death, hospitalization, I mean all sorts of cardiovascular. So if I was having to answer this on a test and be graded, I would say that is true.

Yeah, correct.

I have the same view on it.

Also, 66% lower risk of dementia, 65% less of a risk of Alzheimer's, which is incredible.

Yes, yes. All of the wavelengths of infrared help. Far infrared helps the brain, and so does near. Near is probably between near and red the best between those two for the brain because near-infrared penetrates deeper. So it has, it provides a neuro, just a protection effect on the brain. Trying not to use like two fancy words here. It also like, it increases a lot of the factors in the brain that help to make the brain healthy and have better cognitive functions to be able to think clear and also retain your memories, which is part of the cognitive decline.

I— this is inspiring me so much to get back into my sauna more because I never go 4 to 7 days a week. So I kind of want to switch the conversation a little bit.

Sure.

I sort of have these conversations with my patients already when I'm talking to them about saunas and sunlighten. And so I feel like there's different versions of sunlightens. For most people. Like, there are— and I'd love for you to tell the names and a little bit about them— but there's one version that has lower heat. The, the— a lot of your saunas have lower heat, more infrared. And then there's one that has higher heat, still with all the red light spectrums that you guys normally use. So it's almost like, look, if you want to sweat, you still have that opportunity. If you don't want to sweat as much, you also have that opportunity. And I love that they— there's different lines for each of those. I have the Signature Series, the Sweat a Lot one, which I love. But I'd like for you to talk with people a little bit about the differences of this.

Yeah, I'll start with the Solo because the Solo is really— I mean, that's how we learned everything. That, that's how we— that's, that was the trajectory-changing product and we still have it today. So the Solo is a portable product that has two domes, and it's about 6 feet 4 inches when including when your head is out. So it can fit people that are 6 foot 4 and under inside it. And you pull the dome up, up to your neck, and you get in and you are immersed into our patented heating environment. It is, it's such a wonderful experience. I love that product so much. What's nice about the product is you can customize it to meet the experience that you want, like you were talking about. So there's, there's different levels of heat. So if you want to take it and not have it as intense, you can take it on a lower temperature or you can crank it all the way up. Either way, it provides that. That's the product. Remember I talked about the UMKC clinical trial that we did in 2005? That was done in that product. So how awesome.

The headless sauna that many years ago.

Yeah. 2000.

So ahead of your time.

2005. Yeah. It's, it's also the Sunlighten Solo is, is that type of sauna is a sauna that has been used to prove depression benefits. So that, that's just getting off on a scientific study again. But after the Solo is the Signature Series, and that is by the name, that's our signature. What happened is we found out all the benefits of the heating elements we were using in the Solo, and we figured out a way to take those heating elements and heating materials and put them into a wooden cabin in the Signature Series was born. And then after that, we introduced a sauna called Amplify. This one is a little different because we designed it for that person that wants a more, like, intense heat experience. They want the benefits of far infrared. They also want intense heat. So in the Amplify, you have our Sunlighten patented far infrared heaters behind you. So you're getting the most amount of far infrared into your body. And then in front of you, You have full spectrum heaters that are dialed up to be more intense. So you're going to feel— it's going to be— I mean, it— I, whenever I take M.Fly, I'm like, whoo, that was a lot. And then the unicorn, um, out there is Impulse, which is the sauna that's behind me. And that's the only product in the world that separates fully separates each part of the infrared spectrum. So you're getting 100% of far infrared at the right tuning to be absorbed into your body more than anything else. You're getting the right tuning of— in the highest amount of mid-infrared. You're getting separately— you're getting near-infrared LEDs that are tuned into the right frequency to give you the, the all the skin benefits and the, the mitochondrial repair and regeneration. And same with red light. So there's those 4 are independently separated out. And then what we did to make it easy on people is we designed a tablet that has 6 wellness programs: cardio, pain relief, relaxation, anti-aging, weight loss, and relaxation. And you just press the button of whatever you're looking for that day, or you can do custom, or you can do quick start. So there's many different options. And then what we've done behind the scenes is developed a brain that's in underneath the sauna that, based on science, it gives you the right pulsation and frequency of each wavelength to deliver, for example, the cardio benefits, or to deliver the weight loss benefits, or to deliver the anti-aging benefits. Wow.

I love that.

I've tried those. There's 4 different collections. And then we also have a red light panel that's a standalone that's combined. And this is really important, anybody who's listening, it's really important that the most powerful way to get red light and near-infrared is to combine it together because near-infrared goes deeper, red light doesn't go as deep. So you're getting like a deeper tissue with a superficial blend together versus just doing one by itself.

I have y'all's red light panel. I say, yay, from Texas. I absolutely love it. I went through like a really stressful situation. I lost my brother recently, and I— for like 2 months, I'm pretty sure that thing kept me alive. Like, I just sat in front of it for 20 minutes twice a day, and I just felt like my nervous system calmed down so much. And I'm so sorry, one thing I want— thank you. Yeah, the one thing I wanted to share about that too is you guys also have programs that you can do with the red light panel as well, which I thought was so cool and unique.

I love those programs. I love— yeah, because I a lot of times will use my panel alone if I have something specific that I'm trying to target. For example, if I have a specific skin, something I want to focus on. And I love it because you just go to your app and then I go to skincare and I go— there's 3 different levels. There's beginner, advanced, and intermediate. I always do intermediate. And press that, and then bam, powers on. And then it tells you how long you are going to take the session, as well as the distance that you should sit away from the panel. It's awesome. There's 7 programs. It's amazing. There's sleep, reducing cellulite, muscle recovery, immune system, skincare. It's really a fantastic app. I love it.

No, it really is. It's the— and I probably have 3 red light panels, it's 10 times better than my other best one that I have. So I— if people want a red light recommendation, there you have it for sure. Is there anything else that we should know? I of course put it— we'll put the discount code in the show notes, and I'll insert it also in this episode in case you all want to start your Sunlighten journey. I'd love to hear how it goes because I've been on mine for, gosh, close to 6 years now. and I'm so grateful I started it so long ago. But anything else that we should know, Connie?

The only other thing I would mention that we haven't that people may be interested in, and on the discount, let's just address that for a second. Make sure you mention McCall. So I know it'll be in the show notes, but that's what unlocks the discount. So it's really important. The only other thing is we recently introduced, and I'm not sure you know this, so we'll just pop it out there for everyone. We recently introduced an infrared, a near-infrared combined with red light combined with yellow light combined with green and blue light therapy mask. And it's pretty spectacular. I'm really proud of it. So it's on the website called Red Light Therapy Mask. If you're interested in it, you want to do something specifically for your face, it's cordless. And it's really quick. So if you have 3 minutes to do a program, that's all you need. There are longer ones if you want to cycle through, but 3 minutes, put it on, walk around the house. You can see out, you can do other things. I'm really committed to efficiency just because I don't have that much. I just don't have time or focus or ability to just have a gazillion things. So I have to stack everything and the red light therapy mask is a great way to stack.

I had no idea. I'm so glad that you shared that. And I get asked about red light masks all the time. So thank you.

Oh, it's beautiful.

I'm sure it is. All your products.

We'll send you a link.

I love it. All, all of y'all's products are amazing in terms of work and how they operate, but they're also aesthetically really beautiful, which I appreciate as well.

Aww, thank you. Thank you so much for that feedback.

Yeah, well, Connie, thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you for the decades of work that you've put in and poured into helping us achieve the healthiest version of ourself. And I can't wait to see what's next for y'all. Yay!

Thank you so much. Appreciate it.