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

Near-infrared vs far-infrared and how they affect the body

Explains the key distinction between near-infrared (absorbed by mitochondria via cytochrome c oxidase for cellular energy) and far-infrared (raises core body temperature for sweating and detox). Full-spectrum saunas combine both.

"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. We see it as two parts to infrared therapy. There's, you know, the far infrared band between that 6 and 9 or 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 six 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 systems. 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 some of the physiological effects of sauna exposure is this idea that when you're in a sauna, technically there's not just infrared, right? There's electricity and there's radiation and there are all these other components that are present inside of a sauna."

Heat shock proteins help maintain muscle during injury

Discussion of Dr. Rhonda Patrick's research on heat shock proteins, which induce a hormetic response similar to weight lifting. Sauna can decrease muscle loss during injury by maintaining these proteins, making it a useful hack when you cannot exercise.

"Yes. In fact, Rhonda's down here in the Bay Area, and she's really done some great work 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. 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. Yeah, that's the same thing that I've found, is this production of these heat shock proteins essentially induces almost like a hormetic response, very similar to what you would get if you were to, say, lift weights. 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 hack if you're injured or if you can't work out every day. 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 production. work. When you talk about post-workout use of a sauna, probably the most popular thing that's come up 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 even though the results disappear more quickly than what you would get from, say, 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, you know, 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. 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 uh you you you see an improvement in hrv and i think the interesting thing is is in most cases what i've 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. And like 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 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 level's going down. And as we know, stress is related to all kinds of diseases. So we see this as 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 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. 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 your 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 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."

Post-exercise sauna produces EPO comparable to illegal doping

Studies show that 30-40 minutes of sauna after exercise stimulates erythropoietin production at levels comparable to illegal EPO injections used by Tour de France riders. The effects disappear faster than altitude training but match its performance benefits.

"Right. Well, and that's something that 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 the production of a lot of anti-inflammatory compounds like noradrenaline 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 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 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 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 effective exercise. You don't get the same response to exercise. You can almost kind of shoot yourself in the foot by dumping a bunch of whatever high OREC 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 the drop in 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's 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 only had people come and use the sauna after 3 p.m. 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 it has that overall effect on your whole body. That's interesting. And actually, that surprises me, not to be too contrarian here. I would imagine just if 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 like 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, but the long-term effect is it de-stresses you. Yeah, I think that that's, 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 little mice, probably lounging around in sauna reading magazines."

Weight loss study showing 4% body fat reduction

A Binghamton University study using Clearlight saunas found participants lost 4% body fat in 16 weeks. A follow-up found that afternoon sauna sessions (after 3 PM) achieved the same results in half the time, attributed to lowered cortisol and raised HGH levels.

"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"

Sauna detoxification pathways and niacin synergy

Raleigh explains how infrared sauna mobilizes toxins through vasodilation, which are then eliminated via sweat, liver, urine, feces, and exhalation. Niacin supplementation works synergistically with infrared, and was validated in studies with Gulf War veterans and 9/11 first responders.

"I'm like, what happens if I stay in here for like two or three hours? I mean, have they ever done studies to see like 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 cooking. You know, you're not going to cook in our far infrared saunas or our full spectrum sauna either. 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. 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, start, like get 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 should paint you guys a picture of my sauna because you might kind of 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 them into the glass bottles. And I picked up this trick from Rick Rubin, who I've had on the show before. And he has these big dry barrel saunas. 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 infrared heats up the sauna, you get this essential oil diffused into the air."