Salus Saunas is the only sauna company that will tell you saunas will not make you skinny.
Research infrared saunas for any amount of time and you'll see countless claims for weight loss. Some of them might sound too good to be true and they are!
Salus Saunas is the only sauna company that will tell you saunas won’t make you skinny but we’re confident that our infrared saunas will still cause some weight loss.
There’s many factors involved in sauna weight loss and they include:
You can easily sweat off a few pounds in a sauna! According to Harvard Medical School, depending on time and duration, the average person loses around one pint of fluid in a sauna session.
Some athletes, including those we have a relationship with, use saunas to drop weight to meet guidelines for sports events. It’s ill advised to try this without professional or medical supervision and the results are likely only temporary. The thing about losing water weight is that when you drink water again, you’ll probably regain it. So, if you want to lose a pound or two before a big event, a few sauna sessions in the days before could help.
Don’t lose heart, though, the sauna can help you lose weight with other effects it has on your body and mind!
Sitting in the sauna at around 150F boosts metabolism by around 20%. This effect can continue for a couple of hours after your sauna session. In a study from the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, a sauna session can cause an elevated heart rate effect like cardio, which can last up to 30 min after the sauna session.
We all know that saunas are sublime stress relievers. When you’re stressed, the body releases cortisol, a type of hormone that’s responsible for things like mood, sleep cycle, and blood pressure. Cortisol can cause the body to work inefficiently and cause cravings.
So, if you’re under stress or are a stress eater, try regular sauna sessions! Stressing less can extend to outside the sauna as well.
Let’s face it, for most of us, if something hurts, we’re not moving it. The sauna’s ability to decrease pain and increase range of motion can make it easier to exercise.
Spending time in the sauna can help you breathe more efficiently. The heat reduces the effects of respiratory problems and dilates blood vessels, which increases blood flow. This means you can exercise harder or longer over time, which leads to increased weight loss.
Sauna companies like to point to a Binghamton University study that they say proves infrared saunas help people lose weight. In the study, people who used an infrared sauna three times per week for 45 minutes had up to a 4 percent drop in body fat after four months. To put that into perspective, for someone who’s 200 pounds, that’s only 8 pounds. The researchers didn’t account for participants’ other behaviors such as diet or exercise, so it’s hard to be sure that infrared saunas were the cause of body fat change.
Now What?
Incorporating an infrared sauna as part of a healthier lifestyle will probably cause you to lose a few pounds, but it takes hard work and a healthy lifestyle.
Check out our other online information on weight loss.
Start with 15 to 20-minute sessions twice a week and build up from there. The easiest way to do this is to invest in a sauna for your home. Are you ready to invest in your health? Contact us or check out!
- Dr. Richard Beever BSc, MD, CCFP. Do Far-Infrared Saunas have Measurable Health Benefits? A Sequential Longitudinal Interrupted Time Series Design Study. 2009. Dr. Richard Beever BSc, MD, CCFP. Do Far-Infrared Saunas have Cardiovascular Benefits in People with Type 2 Diabetes? Canadian Journal of Diabetes 2010; 34 (2) :113 – 118.
- Journal of the American Medical Association, August 1981.
- Dr. Masakazu Imamura, MD, et al. Repeated Thermal Therapy Improves Impaired Vascular Endothelial Function in Patients With Coronary Risk Factors. Vol. 38, No. 4, 2001. Journal of American College of Cardiology: pp 1083-1088.Dr. Richard Beever BSc, MD, CCFP. Do Far-Infrared Saunas have Measurable Health Benefits? A Sequential Longitudinal Interrupted Time Series Design Study. 2009. Dr. Richard Beever BSc, MD, CCFP. Do Far-Infrared Saunas have Cardiovascular Benefits in People with Type 2 Diabetes? Canadian Journal of Diabetes 2010; 34 (2) :113 – 118.