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by Pertti Olavi Jalasjaa
You may think of a home sauna as being little more than a luxury, an object that offers pleasure and comfort but is ultimately inessential to your well-being. However, the results of decades of research may just convince you of what sauna enthusiasts have believed for centuries – that regular sauna bathing offers significant, perhaps even life-saving, health benefits.
A chief objective of any sauna bath is to make you perspire, and perspiration is a natural, necessary function of the human body. It’s a means by which the body can rid itself of extra heat and water and eliminate harmful toxins that have, over time, built up inside it. As Dr. Sherry A. Rogers notes in her book, Detoxify or Die, “The bottom line is that sweat is the only proven method for getting the most dangerous toxins out of the body.”
Researchers in Japan have concluded that perspiration induced by far infrared sauna use contains as much as 300 percent more toxins than sweat expelled during exercise. Included among these toxins are mercury, lead, cadmium and aluminium.
The health benefits of sauna bathing, however, go beyond aiding detoxification. As your body increases sweat production to cool itself during a hot sauna bath, your heart increases blood circulation. Heart rate, cardiac output and metabolic rate all increase, while diastolic blood pressure decreases, helping to improve overall cardiovascular fitness.
Sauna bathing may also contribute to healthy weight loss. A letter in a 1981 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association asserted that “a moderately conditioned person can easily ‘sweat off’ 500 grams in a sauna, consuming nearly 300 calories, the equivalent of running two to three miles. A heat-conditioned person can easily sweat off 600 to 800 calories with no adverse effects. While the weight of the water lost can be regained by rehydration with water, the calories consumed will not be.”
Most irrefutable are the claims that regular sauna bathing helps to relieve stress and promote relaxation. It has been demonstrated time and time again that spending just a few minutes in a hot sauna bath can reduce anxiety levels, sooth nerves and warm tight muscles. Not only has sauna bathing been shown to encourage deeper, more restful sleep, far infrared sauna therapy has proved effective in alleviating pain associated with arthritis, backache, bursitis, fibromyalgia, headache, sprains, strains and other muscular and skeletal ailments.
“I am convinced that the far infrared sauna is something that everyone should do to restore health,” contends Dr. Rogers. Indeed, especially for people burdened by toxic build-up, heart disease, stress and anxiety disorders, and weight problems, it seems the home sauna is now regarded much less as a luxury item and much more as a necessity for healthy living.
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