November 16, 2016

Podcast from:  https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2016/11/low-emf-saunas/

[01:12] Facebook Sauna Give Away

[01:48] Sun in our Pocket – The Human Charger

[03:54] Teeter Inversion Table

[05:45] Introduction to this Episode

[09:03] About Raleigh Duncan

[09:23] About Andy Kaps

[11:04] What is Infrared?  What is Near-infrared, Mid-infrared and Far-infrared?

[16:04] Why the Body Produces Infrared Light and How is it Measured?

[17:56] What’s the Difference Between the Near-infrared, Far-infrared and the Mid-infrared?

[18:31] Have Studies Shown the Effects of Different Infrared Wavelengths to Tissues of the Body?

[22:03] The Effects of EMF in the Sauna to your Body and How to Lower EMF in a Sauna

[27:15] Why Does One Sweat More From an Infrared Sauna Vs. a Dry or Wet Sauna?

[30:02] Nuts.com

[30:44] Organifi Green Juice Powder

[32:28] How Long Must One Stay in the Sauna?

[35:36] How the Detoxification Effect Occurs in the Sauna

[37:11] What Causes Vasodilation?

[38:18] Is There Supplementations to Enhance or Accelerate Detoxification Through Infrared?

[43:42] The Effects of Heat Shock Proteins as a Response to Sauna/ Sauna to Maintain Muscle Mass

[46:40] How the Use of Sauna Can Increase HRV (heart rate variability)

[1:03:26] End of podcast

Ben:  Eoow, it’s is Ben Greenfield.  Let me paint a picture for you, a 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 like lard, and ghee, and butter, and raw milk, and fat soluble vitamins at this conference, so I’ve just been dumping copious amounts of 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.

Anyways, though before I jump in to today’s show which is all about how to not microwave yourself in a sauna, and a lot of other little tips about how to sauna effectively.  I wanted to tell you though something pretty special because we just gave away a 6,000 plus dollar sauna over on our Facebook page at facebook.com/bgfitness.  Yeah, those are the kind of cool things you can win if you’re a facebooker and you stalk me on Facebook.  But the sauna winner, I’m gonna announce at the end of today’s show.  So if you’re listening in and you entered into that contest then stay tuned because we had I believe over 5,000 entries and somebody possibly listening in right now won.  So stay tuned for that.

So what else before we jump in to today’s show?  Well, I am off to Finland tonight.  I’m flying to Helsinki, Finland tonight to speak at a biohacking seminar over there The Finland Biohackers Summit and of course, jet lag is one thing that I constantly have to fight with all the globetrotting that I do.

There is this product that was actually created in Finland and it’s referred to as Sun in Your Pocket.  So it’s this bright light therapy device and it’s really cool.  You put it in your ears.  It’s called the human charger, and what it does is it sends completely UV-free, blue-enriched white light through this LED headset to the light-sensitive regions of your brain.  And the reason that it does that is because when you do that in the morning at whatever time zone that you happen to have arrived in, it eliminates jet lag.  It sends your circadian biology a message that it’s morning, a very big message that it’s morning because your ear canals have some really light-sensitive regions in them that leads straight into your brain.

You put it on for just 12 minutes and you get this huge dose of light therapy.  So you can check them out at humancharger.com but they’ve got a pretty special offer for anybody listening right now.  You can get 20% off a human charger.  And I’ll give you the code in a second but know this is not just for jet lag.  This thing is good if you have trouble sleeping at night.  If you need to adjust your sleep so you can’t get to sleep at 10pm, so you need to start your sleep cycle early in the day, just throw this thing on when you get up like 6, 7 am, or if you find yourself getting up too early, you could say, ok I don’t want to get up at 5am anymore so I’m gonna turn it on at 7am.  I want that to be my new wake time.  Lucky you of that’s how late you can actually afford to sleep in.

Anyways, though so 20% off of this thing and the code that you can use for it is BenG30HC.  Gosh, that’s a mouthful, but that’s it BenG like Ben Greenfield, 30HC as in Human Charger.  BenG30HC and you go to humancharger.com/ben.  That’s humancharger.com/ben.  It’s called the Sun in Your Pocket – The Human Charger.  It’s recommended by 87% of the people that use it which is huge and I’ve been using it since 2015.  I discovered it in Finland at a biohacking conference.  Imagine that.  So check it out The Human Charger.

Also, this podcast is brought to you by the other thing that I do when I travel a lot and when I sit a lot on airplanes, or in cars, or at the end of a day working at a standing workstation, and that is Inversion Therapy.  I use this thing called a Teeter t-e-e-t-e-r Inversion Table.  So this is the Cadillac of inversion tables.  It not only comes with gravity boots which means that you can take these boots anywhere and I even have your table like anywhere there’s a pull-up bars, and anything you can hang from.  Just put the gravity boots on there and hang and decompress your knees, and your ankle, and our hips, and your spine.  Your legs feel light as a feather after you finished hanging from the gravity boots or from the inversion table itself, but it also has acupressure points in it.  So you kinda like stimulate certain areas of your spine as your hanging, and then it has like a low back stretching device.  Like a lumbar support device that goes in the middle of it.

I hang, my kids hang, my two 8-year old boys hang.  We haven’t yet finagled mom into hanging but we’ll get her onboard soon.  In the meantime though, you get a Teeter Inversion Table and you don’t just get the inversion table, you get the gravity boots, they throw in a free pair of gravity boots and you get free shipping.  That’s over a hundred and thirty-eight bucks of savings and all you do to get that along with their 60-day money back guarantee, along with free returns and all those bonus accessories like the lumbar support and acupressure pads, you go to teeter.com or I’m sorry get teeter.  I don’t know what’s gonna happen if you go to teeter.com that could be a dirty website.  Go to get teeter getteeter g-e-t-t-e-e-t-e-r dot com/ben that’s getteeter.com/ben.  No discount code that you need to know.  Just go straight to that website, getteeter.com/ben and now let’s learn how not to microwave ourselves.

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 ‘cause detoxification which we’ll go into a little deeper later I’m sure is all about mobilizing the toxins”.  “They did a second study which was 8 weeks and they only had people come in to use  the sauna after 3 pm and those people lost the same 4% body fat but in half of the amount of time, and they attributed it to 2 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 the 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.

Ben:  Hey folks, its 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 and there 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 breathe work, or sometimes I’ll just bring some magazines in there that I wanna 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 the Clearlight Sauna and it’s infrared.  Infrared can be tough to understand.  It’s a little bit difficult unlike 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 gonna 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 Kaps is also on the show as well and Andy is the President of Saunaworks and they make this Clearlight Saunas, and 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 in saunas and utilize these things called 500 watt full-spectrum heaters.  All sorts of technologies that they’ve developed that you can have in a sauna.  So today we’re gonna delve in to 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.

Raleigh & Andy:  Thanks Ben.  Happy to be here.

Ben:  It’s always awkward when we have 2 people on the show, right ‘cause you gotta (laughs) everybody has to figure out who’s who.  So Raleigh can you say hello and introduce yourself?

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

Ben:  Awesome, cool.  That’s the voice of Raleigh for those of you curious and Andy go ahead and intro yourself.

Andy:  Hey, Ben thanks good to be here 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.

Ben:  I think that Andy’s voice is lower and softer.  What do you think, Raleigh?

Raleigh:  Yeah, I definitely.

Ben:  Yeah, you’re very harsh and Andy is softer.  He’s more of the radio voice.

Raleigh:  That’s what my wife says.  Says I’m just harsh, so I’m working on that (laughs).

Andy:  (laughs)

Ben:  Well, you guys know which of you are best equipped to answer which questions but the first thing I wanna ask you is about infrared in general.  Most people know that infrared is different than like UVA radiation, UVP radiation from the sun or LED light or fluorescent light, but can you just kinda go on to real briefly what infrared is and then perhaps more run 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?

Raleigh: 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 microwave and this and that, it gets a little scary and people don’t wanna 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 that we’ve used for the longest time or in what is called in the healing race 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 sand’s been beating down and then the cloud covers the sun, you feel the heat coming up from the sand.  So that’s infrared also or a warm building, or a brick building that’s been heated by the sun and maybe it’s getting dusty, you walk by that building there’s this really nice heat coming off kinda soft, so that’s infrared.

And so, it’s very safe, it’s very gentle and that’s why 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 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 wanna 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 ever wanna 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.

Ben: What do you mean you ping it, you like hit it with a fork or whatever?

Raleigh:  Oh yeah, with you take your fingernail and you have to hold it by the bottom.  So you’re just gonna flick it and ping the top of the wine glass by the rim and then a note will come off.  That’s the wine glass’ own note.  And so, if you wanna break that wineglass 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 and 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 ‘cause detoxification which we’ll go in to a little deeper later I’m sure is all about mobilizing the toxins.  So that’s how this far-infrared is 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 the toxins so that they can be eliminated.  So…

Ben:  I wanna ask you a little more about the…

Raleigh:  Yeah.

Ben:  The detox effects later on.

Raleigh:  Sure.

Ben:  ‘Cause I think sometimes it doesn’t get explained well enough to people and we end up sounding kinda cheesy, right like you sweat in your detox and somehow you completely clean out your body, or do something your liver or your kidney would 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?  Is that a well-known fact in science or how exactly does that work, and if we produce light how do we do it?

Andy:  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 then 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 you know, it’s pretty much everywhere.

Ben:  Okay, gotcha.  So we know that we’re producing this infrared rays and humans you said, produce primarily far-infrared?

Andy:  Exactly, there’s a scientific principle called Wien’s Law or Planck’s Law, your only variable is the surface temperature with our 90 degrees surface temperature of our skin that comes out to about 9.4 microns which is in the far-infrared band.

Ben:  Ok, gotcha.  So humans don’t produce the near-infrared or the mid-infrared primarily just the far-infrared?

Andy:  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 of the far-infrared but with the way we look at infrared therapy and that’s what we kind of…  we call it an infrared sauna but it’s really more about infrared therapy just happens to be that sauna environment we can put infrared heaters all around you, have the infrared heat under your body you’re not wearing any clothing in there, so all of that is a great environment for you but we believe that near-infrared enhances the far-infrared therapy.

Ben:  Okay, and then what is the difference between the near and the far and the mid?

Andy:  Technical difference is the size of the wavelength.  So if you look at almost like a bell-curve, it’s the distance from peak to peak.  And so, it’s actually infrared is a very wide wavelength.  It starts at basically zero microns and goes up to a thousand.  We mostly after a thousand is where microwaves are.  We mostly look at the range in the 6 to 12 micron range for far-infrared and 0 to 5 ½ for near and mid.

Ben:  Ok.  Alright, gotcha.  So in terms of the difference in the micron of the wavelength how does that affect the human body, like if I’m shining far-infrared on my body, how is that going to be absorbed differently or react differently with tissues until like a near or a mid?  Has that been studied?

Raleigh:  It has and here’s the big distinction.  Near is really different because if you put near-infrared into the body alright, you have a near-infrared source, it goes much deeper because it is not trapped or stopped by water.  So it will go much deeper into the body so it’s great for heating the core and things like that, but it doesn’t have that resonant frequency.  It doesn’t do the same thing on the (inaudible) passes right though them.  So if you wanna 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 gonna heat the core much faster.  Where with the far we’re wanting to get that resonant frequency, we’re wanting to get the toxins out and then also what happens with the tissue is you get a vassal dilation.  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.

Ben:  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?

Raleigh:  That’s correct.

Andy:  Put it in a nutshell.  And we say there’s two parts to infrared therapy: the far-infrared band between that 6 and 12 microns, your body absorbs the infrared at about 9.4 microns that stimulates your lymphatic commune 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 idea’s that the vibrations of those cells cleans off toxins and they get eliminated to your various elimination systems.  So there’s kind of 2 parts there’s whole body therapy and there’s cellular therapy when it comes to infrared.

Ben:  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 and that’s something that I’m constantly cautious about.

Like I did a podcast a few months ago where I talked about like the steam rooms of gyms and how a lot of people will go on there and breath eucalyptus and everything, but in many cases whatever water is being used in that gym, 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 like you’re breathing it in.  Or the same thing maybe we go to a dry sauna at the gym or at your house that huge coil heater, a lot of times is putting out a lot of electricity, is putting out a lot of EMF similar to what you might get from a cell phone or a wifi 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?

Raleigh:  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 wanna do any harm.  That’s the oath I took to not do harm, and if people going into the sauna they wanna heal, so we check for VOC’s, we check for any electrical pollution that EMF, ELF all these things that we worked tirelessly to eliminate this, and where could be a hundred percent eliminated and get it down below thresholds of concern so that when you’re in the sauna at least in our saunas in the Clearlight, you can be assured that it’s safe, it’s healthy and you’re gonna have a good sauna experience.

Ben:  What do you mean like how do you lower the amount of EMF that a heater would produce for example?  How is that done from a mechanical standpoint?

Raleigh:  So that was very daunting for us, in fact the story behind the backstory is that the large carbon ceramic panels that we use is we wanted to put in our saunas.  So there’s been 6 generations of heaters in the past 20 years, so we’ve 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, Ben how to lower and then really eliminate the EMF and that took us about 3 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 2 heaters that are put together, so these are large flat heaters and they’re out of face with each other.  So EMF comes out, have you heard the term sixty hertz in the wiring in our electrical system in the US?  And so that means at sixty times every second there is a peak and a troth, a peak and a troth as the AC current oscillates, and at the top of that and at the bottom of that EMS is thrown off.  So by putting 2 heaters together one on top of the other at a hundred eighty 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 eaters 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.

Ben:  Ok.  So basically the frequencies are cancelling each other out?

Raleigh:  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, it 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 it was right before our eyes but it took us a while to get there.

Ben:  Ok, so if I understand correctly based of what you said there’s 2 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?

Raleigh:  Exactly, ELF is the electric field.  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 a metal conduit in the walls to shield the wiring.  We actually carbonized a mesh in front of the heaters and ground it I order to cancel the ELF.  We run a metal tape in the ceiling wherever there’s any wires to cancel out the ELF.  So our saunas are the only ones that are both the EMF and the ELF-free so they’re very, very safe that way.

Ben:  Ok, gotcha.  So you’re not gonna microwave yourself when you’re inside this sauna?

Raleigh:  Exactly, quite the opposite (giggles). 

Ben:  Alright, so this kinda relates to another question that I wanted to ask you and that is the difference between 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 twenty to thirty 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?

Andy:  That’s a great question and that’s really, Ben because the infrared wavelength goes deeper into the tissue.  So it’s not about heating with the air and that’s what you noticed but probably when you’ve been in there 5 minutes or so, it feels like the air temperature has gone up.  So the regular kinda what we call a traditional box of hot rocks-finished sauna that heats by heating up the air.  Heats the air to two hundred, two hundred twenty degrees and then the heating medium of the air, that’s what’s heating your body.  Infrared’s completely different in that the wavelength comes off the heaters, and then it doesn’t give up its energy until it penetrates an 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 rocks sauna, once you start to perspire, now you’ve got a layer of water in between you and the heating source which is the hot air.  In infrared, it just comes straight through and keeps on going so that’s the biggest difference and you feel that, you feel that.  That is what you’ve talked about.

Music Plays.

Ben:  I’m going to interrupt today’s show to tell you a joke.  That’s right, joke.  Might as well lighten up the mood a little bit.  Geez, we’re talking about frying ourselves to death inside the wrong kind of sauna.

Anyways though, so there’s this big chess tournament that was taking place in New York City at The Plaza in New York, and after the first day’s competition a whole bunch of the winners were sitting around the foyer of the hotel and they’re talking about their matches and bragging about how wonderfully they played, and after a few dinks they started getting louder and louder, and finally the desk clerk at the hotel can’t take it anymore, and so he kicks ém out and the next morning the manager called the desk clerk into his office and he told him there’ve been many complaints about him being so rude to the hotel guests and instead of kicking them out he should have just asked them to be less noisy and the clerk responded and said, I’m sorry but if there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s chess nuts boasting in an open foyer.  Get it?  Chess nuts boasting in an open foyer?

Alright, well that fell flat.  Anyways, the reason I bring this up is because it is actually chestnuts season and chestnuts roasting on an open fire are something that everybody loves.  If you haven’t yet fresh-roasted chestnuts in your home it is freaking amazing.  You can bake them in the oven at about 425 for ten or fifteen minutes until the outside of the skin starts to peel off.  You can also cook them on the stovetop or if you’re really nuts over an open flame, but chestnuts you can get from today’s sponsor nuts.com.  And when you order chestnuts or any other nuts or seeds or flowers or chocolates or gifts or anything else from nuts.com, you get 4 free samples on any of their tasty treats from around the world delivered straight to your door.  So those 4 free samples are a fifteen dollar value.  You get to choose from over fifty different options, and all you need to do is you go to nuts.com/fitness, that’s nuts.com/fitness to get those 4 free samples with your order.  So go to nuts.com/fitness, get yourself some chestnuts, and if you didn’t like that joke just go to the comments section and tell me a better one.

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Music Plays.

Ben:  Can it get dangerous after all because I know they make, actually I wanna try this out.  They make infrared cookers for turkeys for example where you can actually cook a whole turkey inside this infrared grill, and supposedly it gets super crispy on the outside and the flesh is like butter on the inside ‘cause the infrared actually penetrates the tissue of the turkey.  I was thinking about that the other day while I was in my sauna, I’m like what happens if I stay in here for like 2 or 3 hours.  Have there been studies to see how long you should actually stay in a sauna?

Raleigh:  You know we’ve looked at a lot of that over the years, generally we say a maximum of 45 minutes.  The wavelengths they’re using to cook the turkey are the much shorter wavelengths and higher temperatures and that’s why they’re cooking.  You’re not gonna cook in our farm for its saunas or full spectrum sauna, either the infrared sauna’s raising you’re 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 were infirmed we say start out a little bit slower maybe start with fifteen or twenty minutes.  You could even start with the door open for a little bit just to acclimate yourself to it.  Some people who have heavier toxic loads need to do that.  They need to start out slower.  Start to get the toxins mobilized and moving out of their bodies before they actually really delve into deep.

Ben:  Right.  Now before we delve into this whole detox effect I should paint you guys a picture of my sauna ‘cause you 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 them into the glass bottles and I picked up this trick from Rick Rubin who we’ve had on the show before.  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.

Raleigh/Andy:  Nice.

Ben:  I like 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 forty-five to sixty minutes but I’ve got the glass bottles in there as well to allow me to maintain minerals and maintain water and take one 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 these essential oil around the floor of the sauna so kinda as the infrared heats up the sauna, you get these essential oil diffused into the air so you get aromatherapy at the same time that you’re doing the sauna.

Raleigh/Andy:  Very cool.

Ben:  The last thing that I do and I get laughed at for this sometimes by my wife is I’ll take my laptop and set it outside the sauna, ‘cause I don’t take anything electric into the sauna and like my phone or anything like that, but I’ll set up like yoga DVD’s you know, like kundalini yoga and stuff like that, and I’ll be watching an instructor like through the glass window of the sauna walking me through 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 the sauna?  Can you go into that?

Raleigh:  So it’s a, 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, 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 toxins.  So once the toxins are mobilized they’re gonnna go into interstitial fluid in the body and there’s 4 pathways of elimination. And you’re gonna have the toxins are 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 wanna do that’s gonna bypass all that is gonna 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, alright?  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.

Ben:  What is it that’s causing the vasodilation?  Is it natural nitric oxide release or something else?

Raleigh:  There’s a natural nitric acid, yes, that comes out and that just happens.  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’s going down we better start pumping some blood.  So then we call this a passive cardio, so your heart’s gonna 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 the chemicals and toxins and boosting the immune system and all the other things, you know.  Any type of healing is gonna happen at a faster rate boosting the metabolism, so.

Ben:  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?

Raleigh:  The most famous one and the one that were closest to knowledge-based is definitely niacin because niacin has been used to help the body to flush out the toxins and it does that same action.  They used niacin to great success with saunas for Gulf War veterans, for 911 first responders, you know different people that higher levels of toxicity and this was all shown by a Dr. Yu and Dr. Ruth by actually taking fat samples.  And so you take fat samples before, and you take fat samples afterwards, and that’s like the gold standard of are we removing toxins.  But niacin is definitely been very effective and works in synergy with any type of sauna but even better with an infrared sauna.

Ben:  Now some people complain about the flush, 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 hexaniacinate.  There’s a company called Thorne that makes one called Niasafe, it’s like a non-flushing form of niacin.  I’ve used that in the sauna once I realized that niacin was pretty uncomfortable and this stuff 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.

Raleigh:  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.  It works the same.  That’s correct.

Ben:  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?

Raleigh:  I haven’t.  Andy anything?

Andy:  Not really.  No not with caffeine.

Raleigh:  The only caffeine I do is my first cup in the morning that’s about it. (laughs)

Ben:  Ok, gotcha.  Yeah, caffeine can accelerate and basically it opens up pores.  It causes a little bit of vasodilation.  It increases body heat, so that’s another one I found to work pretty well in combination with infrared.  So I’ll do coffee and or niacin beforehand and then of course the water with the trace liquid minerals during, so.

Raleigh:  Gotcha.

Ben:  How dangerous can that be though?  Can you obviously have to be careful about mineral loss and replenishment of minerals, but this whole detoxification effect.  Is it dangerous like how often can you do it?  How long can you do sauna?  And one of the reasons I ask too is I know for example the Finnish research that they’ve done on how saunas can increase longevity.  You know these guys I think were in there in a sauna 5 days a week anywhere from thirty to sixty minutes.  Obviously, a traditional smoke-Finnish dry sauna and not an infrared sauna which I think they would think we’d be blasphemous over there versus the big rocks on it.

Raleigh/Andy: (laughs)

Ben:  But either way, like how often can you do this?

Andy:  You can be in there 4 to 5 times a week even every day.  You are losing some good minerals in addition to the toxins.  You wanna make sure you’re eating a healthy diet, mineral supplementation like you’re doing is a great way to go.  You know, from ninety-nine percent of the people detox is not a problem.  There are some people that will have different types of reactions like for example, people with lyme disease they can have what’s called a Herxheimer Reaction.  They’re deep body’s detoxing too fats and it actually just makes them feel really, really sick, it’s almost flu-like symptoms.  So for those people that are detoxing fast or have a lot of toxins that are being mobilized and they’re starting to react to, we just ask them to slow down.  You know, take a step back and do it 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 a thousand to two thousand sessions a month and we’ve never heard of any issues with anybody that way so it’s very, very safe.

Ben:  What do you mean sauna facility?  Is that like places you go just to sit in a sauna?

Andy:  Yeah, there are actually infrared sauna centers, they call them sauna studios.  There’s higher dose, there’s perspire, and these are centers that all they have are our infrared saunas.  There are people going in sitting in a sauna on a pay-per-session basis and they’re extremely popular.

Ben:  Interesting, now do they have like exercise sessions as well?  Can you go like do spin classes surrounded by infrared or anything like that?

Andy:  Some of them do, some of them you know, there’s one Sauna Sensation that has the vibration machines in there as well.  You can combine both the vibration machine with the infrared sauna.  Some are located associated with the gym, so you can partake in gym facilities and the infrared saunas so, it varies.  Some are strictly just infrared sauna centers as well.

Ben:  Ok, gotcha.  Now are you guys, familiar at all with Dr. Rhonda Patrick in some of the research that she’s done or spoken of with regard to the production of heat shock proteins as a response to sauna?

Raleigh:  Yes, in fact Rhonda’s down here in the Bay Area and she’s really done some great work on the effects of heat on the body.  So I follow her pretty closely, yeah.  It’s amazing what she’s found out.

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

Andy:  Yeah, I can.  Rhonda that’s sort of her bailiwick, but it seems to work very well in a way 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.

Ben:  Yeah, that’s the same thing that I found is this production of this heat shock proteins essentially induces almost like a hormedic response very similar to what you would get if you were to say lift weights.  They basically decrease the rate at which sarcopenia would occur, or decreases the rate at which muscle mass 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 the heat shock proteins that helps you to maintain some muscles.  So I think it’s almost like a cool hack if you’re injured or if you can’t work out every day.

Andy:  Yup, so then that expands our knowledge of what a sauna how that’s gonna help someone who’s working out regularly.  You know, before we would talk about the obvious benefits that you’re gonna keep flexibility, you’re gonna allow your ligaments and tendons, everything to soften up, so if you go in before work you’re probably gonna 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.

Ben:  When you talk about post workout use of a sauna probably the most popular thing that’s come out 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 these, but they found that when athletes finish an exercise session, right so their already hot after the exercise session and then they do about thirty to forty minutes of sauna it actually simulates the same amount of erythropoietin production that you’d get with like the illegal use of like the EPO injections like 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, 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.

Raleigh:  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.  You know HRV is being used to train now and we’re seeing a lot of correlations of improvement in HRV if people just using the sauna to that has effects on how you sleep, and how you’re stress level is, so there’s a lot of effects.  I think we’re mining and understanding the effects of this in the next 5, 10 years because the technology for testing has gotten so much better.  We’re gonna 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.

Ben:  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 obviously the plasma volume expansion and the increase in blood volume is one effect from a cardio vascular standpoint, but this idea that you’ve seen improvement in HRV and I think the interesting thing is in most cases what I’ve seen is an improvement on what’s called the sympathetic nervous system’s core which is the parts of the nervous system that tends to be more, to use the highly scientific term beat up in like Crosfitters 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 kinda regulating your autonomic nervous system or regulating your heart rate variability.  So it’s really interesting.

Raleigh:  It is really interesting and then the implications for the entire society are huge ‘cause 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.  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 in the parasympathetic, so in that way you’re stress level’s going down and as we know stress is related to all kinds of diseases.  So we see this is as a good tool against the tide of just a stressed-out world.

Ben:  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 kettle bell into my sauna and just destroy myself you know, I’ll be covered in sweat and [0:49:16.2] _______ 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 you’re rating of perceived exertion gets to a certain level, that kicks in at a later point if you’ve experienced extreme heat discomfort or a regular heat exposure.

Andy:  Right, well 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 wanna feel better and happier?  So this can do it naturally and very easily.

Ben:  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…

Raleigh/Andy:  Exactly.

Ben:  You know, glutathione or curcumin or a lot of these anti-oxidants 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 what they’ve shown in terms of blood volume and everything, but the anti-inflammatory effects are different than these other supplements because what supplements can do or with even like a cold bath can do is it can blunt the inflammatory response to the extent where you don’t actually get the same hormedic effect of exercise.  You don’t get the same response to exercise.  You can almost kinda 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 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.

Raleigh:  Well, it’s interesting too being up to university used one of our saunas for a weight loss study, and they found an average people lost about 4%  body fat in sixteen weeks but the part they found significant was the people that used the sauna later in the day lost more body fat.  So they did a second study which was 8 weeks and they found the people and they only had people come in to use the sauna after 3 pm and those people lost the same 4% body fat, but in half the amount of time and they attributed it to 2 things: slightly lowering your cortisol levels and slightly raising your HGH.  So it has that overall effect on your whole body.

Ben:  That’s interesting and actually that surprises me not to be too contrarian here like 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 off 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 kinda like what we see with exercise like exercise stresses you out, but the long term effect is it destresses you.

Raleigh:  Yeah, I think that’s it.  I think you hit the nail on the head and this was a pretty short study.  So we’re probably gonna 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.

Ben:  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 cause a thirty percent 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.

Raleigh:  Right.

Ben:  Probably lounging around the sauna reading magazines.

Andy:  That’s it.  Did you see that there was a hamster study too that was done putting hamsters in the infrared and that increased they showed the nitric oxide which is all the different chemicals that are used for erectile dysfunction you know, that’s what they’re doing they’re increasing the nitric oxide, so which shows another benefit at that.

Ben:  It does and when you’re bringing up erectile dysfunction it reminds me of another study that I recently posted, and this one’s 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 from men who exposed their testicles for 5 to 8 minutes per day to a wavelength of, it was between six hundred and seven hundred nanometers of infrared light they tripled their testosterone levels in response to that light exposure.

Raleigh:  Wow, no I haven’t seen that one.  So that’s kinda interesting.

Ben:  Well, this is what I wanted to ask you guys, do you know the actual wavelength put out by for example, in my Clearlight sanctuary there are 2 red heaters like from the front of it.  Do you know if that falls between the six hundred to seven hundred nanometer like if I were to say sauna in the nude?

Raleigh:  It does.  The full spectrum heaters are basically between zero and we tend to look at these microns, I have to convert, but it’s about between zero and a thousand, so you are getting that six hundred.

Ben:  Ok, gotcha.  Interesting.  Well, if I burn my balls off I’m gonna blame you guys but…

Raleigh/Andy:  (Laughs) Yeah, I would (inaudible)

Ben:  (laughs) You know what’s kinda funny is what I’ve been doing is 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 etcetera don’t really know this but there’s been times when I just pull my pants down and straddle the light and let myself bathe in all the glory of the infrared light, so lots of…

Andy:  You might have to charge more now, Ben, now that people know that (laughs).

Ben:  Exactly, yeah.  So this is really cool stuff and I know first of all for those of you who wanna access not just the research that we’ve been talking about, but also everything from the niacin that I recommend and the minerals and 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/saunapodcast.  If you wanna 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 and kind of addicted to my daily sauna, and then also this is the part that’ll make you guys grit your teeth Raleigh and Andy, but I’ve actually hacked my sauna, so I ripped the wood off the top and I insulated it to make it get hotter, and I stuck like a wine cork in the temperature sensor and 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 issue a disclaimer here that I do not endorse destroying your sauna and insulating it but…

Raleigh:   We don’t recommend that.

Ben:  Yeah, you guys don’t recommend that, but should you want the instructions I will put those in the show notes (giggles) as well just for any of you biohackers out there, and you guys we have a special discount for anybody listening in, right?

Raleigh:  We do.  We have a website, one of our websites healwithheat.com h-e-a-l-w-i-t-h-h-e-a-t dot com, use the discount code Ben and you can save up to four hundred fifty dollars off of our regular price.   We’re also throwing in an additional ergonomic back rest 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 5070, that’s 800 317 5070.

Ben:  Ok, got it cool.  And the main thing here is I wanna 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 ELF and low EMF, and then as far as the protocol goes I personally like I mentioned to you guys I’m in there 4 to 5 days a week for thirty to sixty minutes, but make sure that you include minerals if you experiment with niacin make sure you 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.  I’m a huge, huge fan of saunas, and Andy and Raleigh, I wanna thank you guys for actually creating a sauna that allows me to get my daily sauna without microwaving myself.

Raleigh:  You’re most welcome.

Andy:  It’s been a great journey.

Ben:  Or turning myself into a Thanksgiving turkey.

Raleigh:  That’s right.  We wanna avoid that.

Ben:  Alright, well if you’re listening in, go to bengreenfieldfitness.com/saunapodcast.  You wanna get the fat discount on what of these saunas just go to healwithheat.com and you can use the discount code Ben, you get four hundred fifty bucks off, you get the cool little ergonomic backrest to throw in them with your sauna.  And I am serious like these things are easy to set up.  My boys and I got the kit to our front door and within 2 hours like we had built the entire sauna, like 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 also just gave away on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Facebook page.  So if you stay tuned to the end of this podcast which is coming up in just a moment you’re going 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.

Raleigh/Andy:  Absolutely, our pleasure.

Ben:  Alright, here we go as promised if you’re listening in you wanna 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 thirty days and nearly five thousand entries from twenty four 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 gold US of A, and twelve other countries, so all over the world really.  The grand prize winner of the Clearlight Sanctuary II – a full spectrum sauna with free shipping right to your door as selected by random drawing, alright random.org that’s what we use for that for those of you who wanna do random giveaways, so the winner is… I hope you’re sitting back.  It’s a female, so that just narrowed down fifty percent of you.  A huge worldwide sigh from a bunch of dudes.  It is Emily Johnson of Denver, Colorado.  Woohoo!!   (cheering sound).  Insert the party noises here, the fireworks exploding, the little things that you blow in and out of, the kazulus, everything, every noise that you make when you win a giant sauna because that does not happen very often.  So congratulations Emily, this is your lucky day.  Clearlight’s gonna 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.

Alright, 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.

 

 

It’s no secret that I am obsessed with heat therapy, infrared sauna, heat shock proteins, infrared and just about anything that has to do with sitting in a sauna…

For example, in the article “Ben Greenfield’s Sauna Workout (The Exact Sauna Workout I Do Every Morning)“, I describe my elaborate morning routine that I perform each day in my sauna.

In “Ten Scientifically Proven Reasons I Am Addicted To A Daily Sauna“, I delve into the nitty-gritty science behind sauna use for everything from increasing growth hormone to maintaining muscle to enhancing skin health and more.

Then, in “Three Ways To Biohack A Sauna For More Heat, A Better Detox & Enhanced Fitness“, I show you how I biohacked my own home sauna to maximize the effects of daily sauna.

My first guest in today’s podcast, Dr. Raleigh Duncan, is a Chiropractor who recognized the health benefits of infrared saunas early on when he was using them with excellent results with his patients. In 1996, he decided to dedicate his efforts to designing, manufacturing and distributing infrared saunas, as a way to help people heal and live healthier lives. Dr. Duncan is recognized as an early pioneer in the infrared sauna industry and has numerous patents and patents pending for his unique sauna technologies. Prior to becoming a Doctor of Chiropractic, Dr. Duncan spent 20 years as a manufacturing consultant. He’s actively involved in the day-to-day operations of Sauna Works and Clearlight Saunas and he’s always discovering better ways to heal the human body through the power of infrared.

Andy Kaps is also on this show. He is the President / COO of Sauna Works, and has spent the last 25 years building and implementing management systems, networking and Internet systems to streamline businesses. Andy joined the Sauna Works team in 2004 and has worked closely with Raleigh to develop the new technologies and innovations used in Clearlight Saunas.

Together Raleigh and Andy have collaborated to take the infrared sauna to new heights of functionality and therapeutic value. Some of their firsts include combining carbon and ceramic into one ultra-powerful hybrid infrared heater, eliminating EMF and ELF exposure in the sauna, utilizing powerful 500 watt Full Spectrum heaters, and creating the world’s 1st full spectrum yoga sauna.

During our discussion, you’ll discover:

-How to cut through the confusion between near-infrared, mid-infrared and far-infrared…[11:20 & 17:55]

-Why your body produces infrared wavelengths…[14:45 & 16:05]

-How you can “lower EMF” in a sauna, and what happens to your body if you don’t do that…[20:55 & 23:00]

-Why you keep sweating for a long time after you get out of an infrared sauna…[26:48]

-Two easy ways to accelerate the detoxification effect that occurs in a sauna…[35:30]

-How you can use a sauna to maintain muscle mass…[43:50]

-How the use of a sauna can increase heart rate variability (HRV)…[46:40]

-And much more!

Resources from this episode:

-For more information on getting yourself a Clearlight sauna, call 800.317.5070 or go to HealwithHeat.com. Use discount code “BEN” to get $450 off the regular Clearlight sauna prices for any sauna and a “Gift with Purchase” of a very cool ergonomic backrest.

–Ben Greenfield’s Sauna Workout (The Exact Sauna Workout I Do Every Morning)

–Ten Scientifically Proven Reasons I Am Addicted To A Daily Sauna.

–Three Ways To Biohack A Sauna For More Heat, A Better Detox & Enhanced Fitness

–Infrared turkey fryer

–The YoungLiving Essential Oils Ben uses in his sauna (try the blend “Clarity”!)

–The BenGreenfieldFitness Clearlight Sauna giveaway

–Niasafe by Thorne as a non-flushing form of niacin

–The Trace Liquid Minerals Ben uses in a sauna