Heat is more than temperature. In the right environment, it becomes a signal: circulation rises, sweat begins, the nervous system shifts, and light interacts with the body in ways that conventional warmth alone cannot explain.
I am so excited because in this interview we're going to dive deep into sauna which I believe not just sauna but near infrared sauna which I believe is one of the most important Health interventions because almost every one of us is not getting as much sun exposure we need especially on our skin and what science has shown Us in the last few years is this this near infrared exposure not just the UV to create vitamin D but the near infrared that creates one of the most important antioxidants in your blood but in your subcellular spaces specifically mitochondria called melatonin just a phenomenal maybe the most important antioxidant your body makes because not only does it directly scaven free radicals but it also increases other uh uh antioxidants like glutathion peroxid and glutathion reductase and calat and superoxide dismutates so these are really important uh strategies your body has to protect against oxidative damage so we're going to go deep into all the different types of Sonos and the benefits and the features and the disadvantages of of each type so that you can have a very clear understanding of which one makes the most sense for you the sun is um over over 40% infrared a uh near infrared and and from a photon per second perspective it's like 70% photons per second or near infrared so if you're not somewhere close to that you're you're not in a really you're not in that ancestral context of bi what's biologically relevant and what we're evolved to get um there is a little bit from these infrar you know lower energy infrared sources but not nearly what you get from the incandescent bulb photobiomodulation is the use of near infrared light to heal and repair uh degenerate and damaged tissue and cells and also optimize
healthy tissue if you look at the Spectrum of the sun you know 43% is near infrared and if you add in red you know it gets to be over 50% is in this photobiomodulation range that photobiomodulation is light controlling biology but in this case it's it's all about near for light uh activating healing and repair biology in the body it's repairing damaged tissue it's it's improving protein function it has anti-aging effects in the cells uh you know in the DNA and the epigenetics and it's boosting and modulating the immune system you know people are using it for inflammation reduction also sauna for inflammation reduction so if you look at the list of photobiomodulation the list of sauna there's so much overlap um that it's like wow these are probably the two most powerful things you could do for your health at the end of the day Dr mcole I think if you sweat and the and you you get that sweat response you get that elevated core temperature increase you're getting great benefit you because not only you getting the detox and heat Shack protein benefits but you're getting the increase in that melatonin which is going to really improve your mitochondrial function overall increase your energy levels and ATP production and decrease damage to your cells your DNA cell membranes proteins stem cells all of it welcome everyone Dr marola helping you take control of your health and today we're going to talk about one of my favorite absolute favorite and I consider essential biohacks which is sauna and you know I did a article earlier this year on sauna that that I think is really an epic and landmark article and quite truthfully I don't believe anyone has ever written as comprehensive and detailed uh and how to do sa a article in the past I mean this is epic and I was kind of surprised that people didn't really get it but we're going to talk to Brian Richards who I'm a big fan of his company because he provides the B bis for what I believe is creating the best Sona and we're going to talk about why
Sona is so important because it's not just for detox absolutely not just for detox that's one good benefit but there's three two other major benefits and not all sonot types provide these benefits and we're going to go into details of in specific so Brian Richards is the uh founder of SAA space uh really clever entrepreneur who's committed to providing high quality uh resources to help you take control of your health and and actually U start a process of somewhat substituting for one of the primary deficiencies that most people have in their life and that is not insufficient sun exposure uh so sauna obviously is not going to create vitamin D but it can provide something that almost equally as good we'll talk about that in a bit so welcome and thank you for joining us today BR thank you for having me Dr M Okay so uh where do we start uh light the yeah start with the light actually most I mean if I'll put a link to the previous article the The Landmark epic article I referenced in the intro uh so that people uh if they want they can look at that uh it's behind a substate substate substack firewall at this point but uh we have a large number of readers who have subsc access so uh and it's available if you want to participate subsec so anyway the that article goes into great details of the benefits of sauna so I don't really want to dive deep into there I want to really go into some of teasing out some of the details of how we can achieve these benefits but essentially the foundation the premise for why this is such a useful tool the scientific validation for that occurs from an evaluation of where sauna is the most popular country in the world is Finland and almost all the primary basic research is based on that and and this I
want to explore with you because it's a foundation it's it really is what gives us the confidence that we can be so uh spectacularly assured that once someone implements these therapies that they're going to get benefits not some benefits we're talking spectacular reductions in all cost mortalities and and just improve radical improvements in health uh so the the basis of a finish which I'm sure you've studied carefully is is a a room that has a heater of some sort uh and that is essentially a dry heat um but from my best understanding it's far infrared only uh because the heat is Carri is infrared there's no there may be some mid infrared but I don't think there's any near so maybe you can help us understand that and more importantly describe the most common ways that Thea Finnish sauna is also referred to as the traditional sauna that that these traditional sauna is use to create the heat yeah the the history of sauna goes back thousands of years really in every human culture has a sauna tradition and the original uh sauna Traditions are are Woodfired saunas in Finland uh which still exist today but uh not just there in Russia the the Russian Bas the the Japanese the Korean Hot pool schols they had uh saunas actually in Ireland like little cave saunas and of course the the Native American sweat lodes so you you see various ways of of sweating passively in in a inside an enclosed space that's heated up that dates back a long time but nowadays everybody uses or most people use electrically powered saunas very few people have access to a Woodfired sauna per se uh interestingly the first electric leap uh powered sauna is the sauna technology that sauna space
incorporates um and it was invented in 1893 shortly after or excuse me 1891 shortly after the Advent of the incandescent lipo in 1887 Dr John Harvey Kellogg invented What's called the electric incandescent light bath and so he was using uh a in this Victorian style cabinet a a aray of a large number of incandescent light bulbs and he didn't know it was was he he knew there was something special about the light and he said you know what this might be a better way to do sauna let's use this these light bulbs and this light to heat the body radiantly uh little did he know how how powerful the you know the the photobiomodulation benefits are that I'm sure we'll talk about in a minute but but anyway that that SAA is 130 years old that's 130 years of safe use yeah and he used it uh for over 50, 000 patients with chronic uh disease in the first decade of the 20th century and he wrote a book on it called uh light Therapeutics he published that in 1910 so Dr Kellogg's light Therapeutics which you can read about you can read it on the you know um online and and uh it's fascinating that there was such a high level understanding of light therapy uh over a hundred years ago and yet uh like do Arthur dinshaw's work and other other work other uses of light therapy in the early 20th century was kind of lost in time for a long time what what people think of as the uh when people commonly think of an electrically powered sauna they think of the Finnish hot rock sauna so it's it's a big 30 amp heater a very you know High electrical use heater that heats up electrical coils in a in like a little little box that's sits on the ground in the sauna and has hot rocks on the top and so you that heats up the air really hot you know to uh the the
average finish saunas you know like you say about 170 degrees Fahrenheit or so and and uh that is what is the most common type of of electrical sauna prior to the introduction of infrared saunas okay so I've got some questions on there because at least I'm confused about some if I'm confused about it I'm sure others are so the would it be fair to classify the heat that's being rated in this electrical one uh electrical that contemporary version of the Finish Ono which is typically electric uh that that rad that that heat is given off as far infrared well it's not even really infrared so much I mean yeah the heater glows a little bit so there's some infrared there but it's it's primarily heating the air conductively and then that hot air moves around through convection and and then the hot air heats up the user uh conductively so the hot air and us being T the body touching the hot air heats the uh the air heats up the body through conduction directly so from the outside in it's it's not uh I think when people think of infrared heat they think of radiant heat right and and it's really not that it's uh it's it's more of a conductive heating system so you heat the air up hot just as the Woodfired would do the same it's primarily this really hot air around that uh will slowly heat the body up um but if he had a wood fired son You' definitely be getting INF fored you would be getting some uh but yeah I you know I'm sure we'll talk about it but in terms of biologically relevant photobiomodulation levels that's you know they're there but not certainly not what you get from an incandescent lamp or or the Sun so a big downside of the Finish s at least in the Contemporary even even the the traditional ones would be no infrared or very very clinically insignificant amounts of infrared yeah yeah very
little you're talking about you know the sun is um over over 40% infrared a uh near infrared and and from a photons per second perspective it's like 70% photons per second are near infrared so if you're not somewhere close to that you're you're not in a really you're not in that ancestral context of bi what's biologically relevant and what we're evolved to get um there is a little bit from these infra you know lower energy infrared sources but not nearly what you get from the incandescent bulb okay this is great and because it's confirming some of my suspicion so I I guess the other major issue with imple implementing a traditional finish type sauna is that you mentioned there's an electrical heater of some sort to create the the conductive heat that's produced so in that process one has to be very careful because any type of Electrical uh unit is going to potentially have emfs and I'm wondering if you and that's one of your Specialties which is what uh really caused me to massively Embrace on a space early on because of your commitment to really mitigating it against the dangers of bemf so what is your experience in the saas and the heaters that have been using finish sonas with respect to their um radiating emfs both either magnetic in electric Fields uh the the primary EMF stressor in uh those is probably electric field uh it's just as bad as magnetic field um uh magnetic fields you know a little more difficult to mitigate but electric fields and any unshielded wiring are significant and if you talk about a electrical heater that uses 20 or 30 amps it's a lot of voltage that in an unshielded scenario um you know um electric Fields travel through water if they travel through humidity in the air and in in the stools and everything that's that's why they're so pervasive in homes you think my electric my
unshielded electrical wiring in my room is no big deal because it's far away from me but the fact is it can travel through the air through the the moisture in the air and in the carpet and the wood in the floor and and reach you and then increase your body's voltage so uh having a 20 or 30 amp electrical source from a finish electric heater that's not shielded is is problematic it's uh but it's not just those either it's it's really any electrical device has the potential to subject you to undesirable electromagnetic stress so you know the traditional electric heat finish sauna the electric hot rock sauna I would say is actually not the most common sauna out there uh the most common sauna out there really is the far infrared sauna that's certainly true the United States is that true worldwide globally uh no but you're you're right in Finland is it's a sauna as a main State you know I think they actually have a mandate there for building new homes that they they must include a sauna in new buildings but uh most countries are not like Finland and I I suppose my my experience is most uh I have most of my experience here in the US where we're based and here in the US the most common sauna out there is the far fored sauna that uses either ceramic tube amids or or it has little black carbon panels that amid primarily low low energy long wavelength farm fored and in my personal testing of those they're they tend to all be um High electric field and high magnetic field and and especially your how you sit in those your back is usually at very close proximity to the the ceramic heater itself and so you're within that magnetic field and then without using shielded uh technology you know you are exposing yourself to Electric Fields both in the Finnish electric hot hot rock sauna and in the
traditional farm for red sauna so uh though for those who may not be familiar with it magnetic fields are really problematic but fortunately they fall off typically very rapidly so that with you're usually a few inches but certainly within a foot if you're a foot away way it's it's almost insignificant because of the the rate at which they fall off but that's not true for electric Fields they really permeate quite distance so um when did far infrared saunas become widespread in the US is it 20 years ago or so 15 yeah maybe even more than that you know the ceramic emitter the farm Fred ceramic emitter technology I think dates back to the late 60s uh early 70s but as far as the incorporation into consumer products that we ffred cabinet saas you see that more in the in yeah in introduction in the 70s and 80s um at a time in which there was no concern over electromagnetic stress nobody had any idea that uh it it was not mainstream at all there was no yeah deep study you know there wasn't the Martin Paul research and other research there was the Body Electric and and some you know some indication of it but Becker yeah sure so uh the uh that's really inter kind of like smoking was in the you know 30s 40s and 50s you know it wasn't people had no clue that it was but but it was there was obviously an issue there it was just yeah 100% simar story it's an analogy I made quite quite clear in my book MF so um I want to get back to the forign Fred because so many I mean I have some some of the hugest pet peeves I have in the health industry is against many of the far infrared sauna manufacturers for essentially blatant lying and fraud and deception that you know that should least should in reality the truth be told their their company should be shut
down for for fraudulent advertising so there this not true for all of them but it's true for many um certainly so the the many claim that there is they have a there's a lot of claims they make that I have problems with one is that there's they have it's an EMF free sauna or low EMF sauna and my experience with that and I want to get your input on it is that the most a with the exception of one maybe two sa manufacturers that make this claim that it's it's true that the typically that the magnetic fields are really low they mitigate against that which is the biggest uh claim against most of these devices that they had high magnetic field so they were able to lower it to essentially biologically re reasonable level but they almost every single one of them fail to to mitigate the electric fields and this is particularly true for I'm not sure the type it's called but it's a it's like a little tent it's much smaller than yours where your head is out of it uh and um I could think of two companies specifically who just are just terrible for this because of their claims are making and they they claim that they just lie I mean they they say these electric fields that they have no EMF and their electrical fields are through the roof we've measured them many many times it's just outrageous so you know so that's my experience there's a few that get it that have actually low emfs both electric and magnetic fields but I've only seen that in one that I know of it could be another one that I just can't recall at this time so what what is your experience in that my experience is really that and i' I've measured many uh many Brands uh uh over time and you're right the ffred style of sauna comes in a couple different forms the the most obvious one is the cabinet style that looks like a traditional finish sauna but there's
ceramic tube emitters or black carbon panels in the walls and all the ones that I've seen have high magnetic fields and high electric Fields there is one company that I actually measured with uh Brian Hoyer as it were we were together at a conference and it was low in magnetic field which was great that's a great Improvement but the electric Fields were like you say they were through the roof they were uh in uh Beyond Mill volts and hundreds of molts into the volts range and I had one that I measured that I was given to try it was tens of thousands of molts it was 60, 000 molts yeah it it's like 10 volts it's like a lot so so yeah that that's my experience too especially the style that's a little more portable where your head and your arms kind of stick out it's it's more of a usually it's a usually the arms are still in there or the arms can be still in but it's a foil foil bag it's more marketed as a portable far infrared sauna so they yeah they they all have issues uh even the ones where they've managed to to minimize the amount of magnetic field they all seem to have electric field issues and furthermore they don't offer any protection from the ambient uh electromagnetic stress that's in the environment and and that's why for example you know one of the products that I offer um has a a faraday liner system that protects you from the ambient electric Fields it's not enough to say okay U let's Shield this technology so there you know there's no electric field or magnetic field exposure from from the sauna space uh panels on the user what about making their sauna experience uh electromagnetically clean and pure and and protecting the ambient EMF so we're you know I worked really hard to provide that sort of solution and you don't see that really in any of these M uh infrared products uh whether it's or or finish onas uh either but yeah they're they're you know I don't like to disparage any companies I think there's
some great products out there and at the end of the day Dr mcole I think if you sweat and the and you you get that sweat response you get that elevated core temperature increase you're getting great benefit but but to have to be exposed to the oxidative stress of EMF stress during the session for me is like not ideal that would be like meditating in a polluted environment or something yeah I I agree I and I don't really want to push that benefit because it's clearly a benefit but in my view it's almost the icing on the cake because you have to to accept that as a primary benefit you have to believe that emfs are dangerous uh but because essentially if you don't then adopt that I mean the people who believe that typically have done pretty good work in their own home to get a relatively low EMF exposure like I have in my house so I mean I don't feel badly although I'm using one of your systems that is shielded I would have no no problem using a non-shielded because my ambient levels are so low relatively speaking Yeah and and my original healing story Dr brola was with a bricolage version of what I offer now and there was no electromagnetic shielding at all and I still had incredible uh Incredible Journey yeah I don't want to make it that we're claiming that oh this shielding is the cats meow you got to have it clearly is is beneficial no question but the benefit you're going to get is kind of related to your ambient exposure and that's highly variable so we can almost put that to the side it's another great benefit but the core that I really want to discuss is that the comparison of these Technologies because you know people routinely in in this this field are going to hear the benefits of sa and they're going to be intrigued about it and seek to implement themselves uh and you know the I guess the foundational concept that I'm not sure I mentioned in my original sauna article but is is sort of intuitively obvious is
sauna is a really personal thing because if you're if it's going to be an effective sauna you're going to release toxins that are stored in your body and those toxins are going to contaminate the enclosure that your sauna is in so you really ideally do not want to be sharing a sauna with someone unless you're really careful about cleaning the sauna and absorbing those those toxins that are released from the previous user of the sauna so that in my mind almost eliminates the use of sauna in a gym or some other therapeutic inter that's my what's your take on what's your take well the the you know that uh to uh you know the Counterpoint of that is that the Finish sauna is a social experience and and they are always in there and they're getting together they're they're sweating it out but I definitely agree with you that the sauna it's it's an intimate experience it's something that you you want to have your own I of course share mine with my wife but I live with my wife we have the same microbiome and and all that um it's well and also she she leaves pry you both live pretty cleanly so that you're not she's not excreting a lot of toxins and she and she's been doing sauna for a while so in that scenario the exposure is relatively minimal yeah but I I think ultimately all these things again it's you know there's there's definitely ways you can tweak the experience and and improve it but ultimately just getting in there four times a week you know that that that's that's the the results of the The Dr Ronda Patrick uh study that reference the stunning benefits of sauna and and these long-term finished studies they show that uh what you need to do is use it four times a week uh and even um once a week's really not as amazing as three or four times a week so having a sauna at home for nothing uh else uh just for the convenience and the ability to maintain that discipline of frequent uses is the most important thing okay
now I want to dive into it I think is probably the most a significant benefit in my view my humble view of of being a a passionate advocate of Natural Health healing strategies is and this is something I more really relatively recently appreciated long after I've gotten an interest in sauna and and this is the uh issue I referenced and you referenced earlier with respect to photobiomodulation so that essentially is a fancy term for ascribing the biological benefits of light exposure to the human body um so optimizing that so the reason this is important is in my mind is that I don't have that maybe you have the numbers on this but I'm pretty sure they're shocking the number of minutes per day that the average person in the US is actually outside in the sun oh it's it's wul I don't know what it is under 10 minutes I guess and then it's not they're wearing shirts and long pants so it's almost no exposure clinically almost no clinically significant exposure to the Sun and that is there is just absolutely no doubt in my mind that it's this prescription for health disaster you cannot violate one of our most pervasive ancestral practices which is being outside regularly for long periods of time without significant biological consequences so um the only sauna that provides photobiomodulation despite some of the Absurd ludicrous in same claims that some of the far infrared SAA makes say they're a full spectrum far infrared sauna I've never seen anyone that is never never except for yours because it truly is indeed a full spectrum infrared
son and and yours is see that well there's are analog too that means they they produce it over a wide range it's not just several dis discrete frequencies like they use in the PBM units the poal biom modulation units like uh the three primary manufacturers out there which which has its own own benefits and I I think they're all good I use all three of them I use natural sunlight I use the mid infrared SAA like yours which I think is the best description for it and then the uh sun exposure so anyway the the reason why being exposing your skin to the sun is so useful it's not just for vitamin D and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that because I've talked about it for over two decades and people know how passionate I am and you know they probably read and listened to me much my information on this in the past but I have not swallow a vitamin D pill for over 15 years and my vitamin D levels are optimal and that's because I'm out in the sun and I'm out in the sun with no shirt and I'm and shorts and pretty much 80% of the days of the year this is happening you know there's a number you know I'm traveling and if the weather is is less than good or I'm just tired I won't do the walk but I almost always do and I didn't understand or realize I kind of intuitively knew there was something else going on but I didn't really fully appreciate it at that that infrared exposure and as you mentioned well 40% of is near infrared of this of the light coming out of the sun is near infed because only 7% is ultraviolet B and uh I think it's uh 40 39% is visible light and then 54% is infrared 40% of being near the other being mid and far so but the vast majority of all of it if you could sequence it is near infrared and the benefit of that near for is it increases melatonin uh in what's called subcellular melatonin in the past we thought almost all of it came from your pineal gland in response to bright light exposure in the daytime
and no light exposure at night but that's only 5% 95% of it is in your mitochondria and to me this is the pro this I believe this is the biggest benefit of using your typ of sauna is that you're going to increase subcellular might andrial melatonin which is going to radically decrease oxidative stress lower your risk of almost every single chronic disease I think this this is the mechanism maybe not the primary it can't be because we know traditional saers don't do that but it's probably partially related well actually couldn't be that because there you're just getting heat so it's got to be the other reason but I'm convinced this is a more powerful strategy to to optimize things because not only you getting the detox and heat Shack protein benefits we'll talk about in a bit but you're getting the increase in that melatonin which is going to really improve your mitochondrial function overall increase your energy levels and ATP production and decrease damage to your cells your DNA cell membranes proteins stem cells all of it so anyway that's that's a big thing so what's the question here the question is yours is the only Sona that does this no fire threed SAA does it and no finish Sona does it it's it's a question of of more bang for your buck it's it's the Dual therapies together you know uh we don't have to belabor necessarily the benefit of sauna I think Dr you've uh you Dr brola have highlighted in your latest blog article Dr Ronda Patrick is uh has shown you know she in her review article the stunning benefits that came out last year it's essentially increasing your health span increases the the years of your life that you're really healthy and it it reduces your risk of dying of all things so it's really great and everybody should be doing sauna but then if you look at photobiomodulation which uh another way to define photobiomodulation is the use of near infrared light to heal and repair uh degenerate and damaged tissue and cells and also optimize healthy
tissue so I like that definition that's good uh yeah that's a recent one I I've just read from an article it's it's a really you know you're using light to to heal damage and also there near infrared light and it's it's near infrared light uh like you said the if you look at the spectrum of the sun um you know 43% is near infrared and if you add in red uh you know it gets to be over 50% is in this photobiomodulation range that photobiomodulation is light controlling biology but in this case it's it's all about near fored light uh activating healing and repair biology in the body and the mitochondrial systems are are amazing you know um and you mentioned the the mitochondrial melatonin systems melatonin is such a powerful antioxid uh but if you look at it kind of in the macro all uh it has a it has though it's a different biological system it's having similar benefit overlap to sauna it's repairing damaged tissue it's it's improving protein function it has anti-aging effects in the cells uh you know in the DNA and the epigenetics and it's boosting and modulating the immune system you know people are using it for inflammation reduction also sauna for inflammation reduction so if you look at the list of photobiomodulation the list of sauna there's so much overlap um that it's like wow these are probably the two most powerful things you could do for your health and and especially since especially here in the northern uh hemisphere in the western culture you know we have the highest incidence you know the number one causes of death in America are are cardiovascular disease and cancer currently and and also worldwide it's quite similar but in the north uh in the northern hemosphere we also have the highest incidence of of neurod degenerative diseases like Ms and Alzheimer's and Dementia and and both of these therapies this this near for light therapy and the sauna therapy
appear to be quite beneficial uh for neurod degenerative diseases and that was a later I think uh uh conclusion of that laanan study and that long-term finished mail study was it's not just good for cardiovascular disease for reducing your risk of that but also reducing your risk of of Parkinson's dementia and and Alzheimer's and so forth so if both of these things are doing that and if it's just a matter of the technology you use you know to heat the body and um and that's how that technology is available so you know it's just like well why would you not do sauna that way so it it comes down to the form of the light um a couple things to note about sunlight is uh it's not just majority near infared and and from a photon perspective photons per second perspective like I said before 70% uh of your photons per second you get from the Sun is near infrared uh it's also uh not so much far infrared if you look at the Spectrum of the sun it's only about 3% far infared so uh we don't have much historical exposure to it and one could argue maybe from an evolutionary perspective that's why our mitochondria have not evolved to harness that they're they're designed to harness the number one stimulus which is the near infrared portion and and again on the other side of the spectrum like you said the there the benefit of dose dependent ultraviolet light exposure for vitamin D production is is great but that's still a a minority of the dose you get from the Sun the the biggest dose is near infrared and and it's uh it's it's um among other things you know refilling daily your antioxidant reserves in your body to do a cell turnover and repair and just all the things our bodies are so so complicated they're constantly uh needing to fix themselves and and correct themselves otherwise they get out of whack really quickly and so uh it's just like well why would you
not do the two together and also I would say well people say well I get a lot of sunlight I live in Florida I I don't need a sauna space you know I don't need photobiomodulation because I'm in the Sun every day but they're closed and also the Sun and all the photobi the world photobiomodulation in the world doesn't uh sort of address some of these aspects of heat shock protein amplification and detox that sauna does and we live in this modern toxic world that it's a title you know a veritable tidal way of toxicity it's more than ever that we need sauna and because we live indoors in these weird synthetic Lifestyles it's more than ever that we need uh maybe an alternative Source uh for a daily dose of near infed light and so that's where the incandescent bulb style of s becomes such a a p a powerful contributor to maintaining uh our health in this weird modern lifestyle that we have that's totally unnatural yeah so before before I go into one of the crit criticisms that have been leveled at your sauna strategy I want to make insert a note about melatonin nect to mentioned earlier and that is that it's about about a billion and a half years old that's what the speculation is and it's first evolved in Plants it you you can make a fairly convincing and valid argument that is the most important antioxidant in our body because not only he directly scavenges free rad radicals but it also like molecular hydrogen catalyzes the production of other antioxidants like glutathion peroxidase glutathion reductase catalase superoxide dismutase so these are all quenched of oxidated free radical so and even some of the nitrogen ones like peroxy nitrite so really really important but one of the criticisms that have been level we we talked about at sa space is uh it's sometime I think you your bulbs
have been your setups at least I did in the past and I think others have too referred to it as a near infrared Sonet when reality is it isn't a near infrared it's a mid infrared sauna so the and correct me if I'm wrong but I think% of the radiation coming up from those bulbs that you have are near infrared it's only 15 as opposed to 40% well it is more than that it's actually so but it's definitely not the same as the Sun so yes let me clarify what the spectrum is give us the detail so and this is on on my website in our learn section you can see the spectrum of our bulb and compare it to the Sun Spectrum so the Sun as I said before is about 43% pure near infrared that's 700 to, 1500 nanometer wavelengths okay the this thermalite bulb that I've developed this this large 250 watt um incandescent um heat lample is 39% near infared so it's a very similar amount of near infrared how did I not know that that's great this is it's more near infrared than the the standard heat lamp you have at this you know that's more commonly available so I I basically tune the filament Dr mola to run at a higher Kelvin so it does shift it up a little bit into more near for but it's not the same as the sun because the sun has a lot of like you said the a huge chunk of the sun's emission is near is uh visible light an ultraviolet light and the the difference is with this uh the thermalite bulb that I've developed that saunaspace uses there's no blue light no ultraviolet light and there's not a lot of red light either it's all pretty much near infrared and midinfrared and so the the where the sun has a lot of visible light and ultraviolet light that percentage of the spectrum with the saunas space thermalite bulb is shifted into near infrared and mid infrared okay so it's actually it is fair to call it a Min infared bulb as well because it's about 40% near infrared 40% mid infared okay I didn't know so it's
about the same so it's about the same and then there's about 15% far infared okay so it's but all infrared and it's it's interesting I I think it's uh even better in a sense for heating the body for sauna benefit than the sun because the the radiant benefits um uh come from the body absorbing light through the water absorption and water absorption starts in near infrared at 980 nanometers at the first overtone of water but then uh um increases very quickly so that once you're into the mid infrared Spectrum 1500 to 3, 000 nanometers or so you're getting strong water absorption and so that's a really effective way to radiantly heat the body so that's more midinfrared than you get from the Sun okay and also I mean fered also can heat the body it's just not a it's not a deep penetration because the of the let's go into that now because that's huge uh so I think far infrared from my understanding is just a few millimeters depth penetration so and this is another false claim that most off fire rest they want to convince you that it goes deep into the body but no that's near infrared that goes deep to to like maybe a few inches deep into your body yeah and that it's complicated this the the biology of it's called wi absorption but you know uh you know how we mentioned that incandescent technology is30 years old uh uh in in agriculture Farmers understood this for over a hundred years then and you can see old Phillips heat lamp bulb product specification sheets that have a little uh tissue penetration chart where they show yes uh infrared a AKA near infrared is much better for heating biological tissue because of tissue penetration and that's because near infrared uh that's because water begins
to absorb light in in the near infrared region but not 100% as you proceed into the mid infrared and the far infared water absorption increases that's one of the protective mechanisms of our body is is the chromophor that is water it um and so it absorbs this light in different different ways near infed light tends to penetrate several inches into the body there's actually one NASA study that showed that water filtered near infrared penetrated like a ridiculous amount like 20 centimeters into the body you know five or six or seven inches but on average it's several inch penetration once you get out to this long wavelength low energy infrared called Farm red which starts at about 3, 000 and greater nanometers the tissue penetration is is a fraction of an inch it's a millimeter or two a few millimeters and we're talking about the average photons that go into the body so with near infrared uh on average there's some photons that you know are absorbed by water in the skin but then others go in and get absorbed by water in in the liver you know deep in the body and then others of course hit the mitochondrial light receptor protein and activate photobiomodulation so uh every second that you're exposed to millions of near infrared photons you're getting a radiant deeper penetrating heat that heats you from within and raises core body temperature more quickly because you're not just relying on the hot air around you and that's what I've said for many many years uh uh basically since the beginning the most efficient way to the most effective way to heat biological tissue is using a near infrared Centric light source uh in terms of using light to heat the body and using light to heat the body via radiant heating will always be more efficient than than using just hot air or contact with water like a hot tub or or a bath yeah you're the Harvey kog of the 21st century I hope I'm not that crazy well yeah well at least what expects to light therapy and that that uh art the book that he wrote is freely available you
just have to type in the name of it on C your favorite surgery certainly not Google and then because it was written prior to 1921 it's freely available there's no copyright protection so um the where was I going with this well I just we're just wrapping up the photobiomodulation discussion I would just say you know you don't get photobiomodulation from far infrared wavelengths period there's no photoi modulation effect so sure none it's zero zero not biologically significant put it that way it may be fraction of a percent but it's biologically there there's also but with all wavelengths of light and this is another benefit that you know I don't know it's kind of like EMF protection it's less well understood and less well researched nowadays but this idea of structuring water in the body and making it more bioavailable putting it into a more bioactive State all wavelengths of light do this but Dr Gerald Pollock would say and I actually heard him on a podcast recently mentioning in this that the best light uh is near INF fored because that's the only light that penetrates bone tissue if you're talking about structuring water and having these photobiomodulation benefits in the brain that's protected by the thickest bone tissue in the body it's only a near infrared Photon that is is addressing and and reaching that tissue to activate these these healing systems yeah and that's why when people ask me or discuss this my views on structured water I think it's great and if you want to drink it that's fine but it's nothing nothing in comparison to having your body make its own structured water and this happens naturally when you expose your skin to near infrared that's the ultimate way to do it and structure water is important because it puts energy into your body that is transferred to do biological processes like the simple measure of your red blood cells which are larger than TP your typical capillary they have to squeeze through there and certainly the pressure generated from your heart pulsing is or pumping is not going to be
sufficient Force to get it through there it's done through the the energy that's contained in structured water yeah we're like 70% Water by weight but we're over 99 or 95% water volumetrically it it just permeates all of our body so you you to not have that part of our body working optimally is is definitely you know to our detriment yeah and I wanted just I recall what I was was wanted to share is that a personal experience and anyone could have this experience if they engage in uh a near infrared sauna is that it you can go into the sauna and your current model I believe doesn't have an analog thermometer in it so you can pick one up for $ 10 it has to go up to at least 200 degrees or so uh but you can go into the sa and see the temperature is like 16070 and you could there's a heat Source it's the bulbs and if you're facing the bulbs the front of your body your chest and your you know the front of your body will start to sweat literally within a minute to it the most at that temperature and the well the back your back is absolutely absolutely not sweating which is a strong clinical confirmation supporting the fact that that heat is going in inches into your body and being absorbed by your body because it's not the ambient temperature that's causing it's the heat from the sauna and I guess so that's anyone can prove this to themselves I mean this is not rocket science so I'm wondering from your perspective if you have a feeling or an impression as to what the difference is because you know I don't recommend people going much above 160 in near infrared sauna you can but I don't think it's necessary because of this fact so you know because some people are saying 180 to 200 degrees in a maybe even higher in in a finish type SAA uh what do you think the diff the additional temperature difference is in
a in a near infrared compared to finish SAA I mean is it 20 30 degrees it's hard to compare the two side by side uh because of the radiant heat uh you know the the radiant heating um methodology of the near fored SAA of the incandesent bulb sauna is such that you don't use the Ambient Air Temperature to heat you up really you're using this penetrating light it's really but but you're still getting it though you're still getting the benefit of the ambient heat you are and and so I I've always said you need to have the ambient air be above body temperature so the air is not cooling you down you know it's you need to be an enclosed space of some kind you can't just have the panel in the middle of your room uh that's you know air conditioned to 70 ° uh and and provoke a sweat you need to have the air above 100 degrees but if you do that you remove the air as a cooling force and then you can sit in front of this effective radiant near Fred Heating and heat up the body uh very very effectively and this is you know this is one of the criticisms that's uh you know out there that's leveled at sauna space in general I believe Ari RIT Ari Whitten who you um who you quoted in your article mentions this um and this is a misunderstanding that I think exists out there because it's not an apal to Apples comparison with finish saunas require the air to be really hot because they're only using the air to heat the body near infrared saas that are using incandescent bulbs use radiant more efficient heat to heat the body so even at a much lower Ambient Air Temperature um you can provoke a strong sweat and provoke a elevated core body temperature increase and I would argue that in some ways maybe that's a a more prudent approach for anyone who has any sort of health issues of any kind there's a lot of people that and that's pretty well understood I think Dr Ronda Patrick mentions that in her article that if you're not acclimated to the sauna or you have a neurodegenerative condition or any health condition of any
kind or for whatever reason you're not like you and I are Dr marola where we're healthy we're maintaining a healthy lifestyle we're acclimated to sauna you can't even handle a finished sauna uh and and uh and so for uh for what it's worth uh I think the near fored sauna provides a much more tolerable accessible experience that still achieves what you want to achieve and by that I mean do you sweat and do you elevate your core body temperature me personally I get into my sauna cold I don't preheat it and I only use the four bulb Faraday sauna so I have four bulbs and um I I usually lose one to two pounds of water in about 25 minutes in 28 to 30 minutes I lose two pounds of water in in about 15 to 18 minutes I I elevate my core body temperature uh by three degrees or so and then I start to sweat and then I remain in there another five or 10 minutes and I try to reach that sort of state of subjective exhaustion that is sort of the goal of sauna the the goal of sauna is not just to be in a hot room uh it's it's to sweat and to elevate Cor body temperature and get that that body response so that's why there's people look at the Finish they look at the pro predominant body of research into sauna and it's predominantly on healthy men and women using finish saunas that are heated to 170 degrees but there are other there's are a lot of other research out there that supports the use of infrared saas in general there's the WAN Therapies in Japan there's these sauna suits even that are kind of funny looking and there's a really good cardiovascular and thermal regulatory uh outcome benefits to using these what look really silly these saos suits so this stuff works it's just a question of uh how long does the person need or you know uh each person and and depending on the person's uh individual health profile and the modality of of heat therapy they're using uh how long
that they need to sit there to to elevate core body temperature 3 degrees to lose the average one pound of sweat that you lose in a finish Sao session is really quite subjective so for me in my sauna it's it's 25 to 28 minutes and so for someone who's you know really uh is really healthy really well acclimated the sauna they can handle these you know maybe more bulbs maybe an extra panel uh but there's there's others like Dr Wall's community of the MS uh Dr Ken charlin a neuro uh a a neurod degenerative disease expert he's actually based here in Missouri um he's dealing with people and and frankly my customer base is it's usually people come to sauna space and they have a health problem they're not coming from a state where they've solved everything and they're they have amazing discipline like you and I well that's a good point uh and I I really want to dive into that because it's you're you're correct that's probably the biggest criticism that's been hurled at your company is that you don't get hot enough and um but actually I think because they're not integrating the radiant uh heat component into their evaluation and Analysis I think they're missing the boat and probably the not getting hot enough could more accurately be hurled at the vast majority of far infrared sonas that rarely go above 140 I mean there's some that go higher but not many and some of them only get to 110 120 right the the average F fored SAA is about 140 degrees and if you talk to people who use it they they usually state that it takes them 40 minutes to an hour to sweat or more and then that's after preheating for a significant amount of time beforeand yeah and with no photobiomodulation with no photob no no benefits like so you can make you know it just occurred to me as you were describing your process that that is a pretty good way to to do SAA because
you're doing it gently but more importantly while your body's building up this heat response so that it can generate the heat shock proteins which actually modulate the repair and modification of your damaged proteins that can lead to neurod generative conditions like you mentioned like Alzheimer's so that you really do want to generate the heat shock protein response and if you're not in hot enough environment you won't do that so that's you know my guess is that the vast majority of f for on is you're not getting hot enough you're just simply or you got to stay in there way too long and plus no photobiomodulation benefits but but ultimately you outlined very accurately the two clinical criteria because there's a wide variability in response to this so ultimately it's your personal individualize response to accounts and the simplest way is to measure you know people probably wondering how you measured a pound or two well it's pretty simple actually all you do is measure your naked weight before you go into the sauna and measure the naked weight after you get out of the sauna and then the difference is what the what you lost is water yep it's a very simple gauge that anyone can do at home they don't need a yeah lab or a clinic well you need a lab I mean you need a a scale an accurate scale need a scale but the presume and I'm not a healthcare provider you know I that's that's what's that's what we have you for and others out there in the industry but for me I like to know that what I'm doing works and yes and so and I like to have the tools to do it myself so measuring the weight loss and then measuring the core body temperature using different thermometers are out there and there's definitely variability between the armpit and and the mouth temperature and infrared thermometers versus others but you get a sense of elevated core temperature uh as you continue to you know continue to measure this and gauge your sauna sessions as you start using sauna if you're new to sauna and you'll see that you're getting the El when you get about a three degree temperature increase that's when the body begins to sweat strongly and then
if you can kind of and again subjectively and cautiously watching yourself if you can reach that point of subjective exhaustion what uh is this referred to is the DOR uh dorphin response where you kind of feel uncomfortable uh that's actually what you kind of want to go for because that is when you've you've kind of maxed out your benefits of this orenic stress therapy and you haven't taken it too far and you get the Ben the Endorphin benefits afterwards and all the benefits you get and it can be uh if you have your if you have a you know if you're well ACC made to the sa that will take you longer to get there but if you are dealing with health conditions and maybe neurod degenerative issues I have some customers Dr mcole Who start out with two bulbs and they're only using two bulbs and and they're only sitting there for five or 10 minutes and they just and they've been contraindicated uh to get heat exposure to their head initially and they may take six months to build up to using the sauna as as or more even as using the sauna as you and I would use the sauna so yeah there's no nothing wrong with that that's it's better safe than sorry go slowly if you need to there's not anything wrong with that process yeah and so yeah you can measure it yourself and then you know if you're getting the sweat response and you're getting the elevator core body temperature you've had a good solid sauna session and you know that if you just do that one to four times a week you're going to get these benefits that you read about all everybody's talking about in the literature and of course you can do lab testing to further buttress your your you know your appreciation of your results and U I don't know what you recommend um what kind of you recommend it probably isn't the most accurate because it's blood levels but the goova Diagnostics has a test called neutraal that I'm particularly fond of it's not a cheap test but it it is provide so much benefits it actually shows you your linolic acid too content but uh when I
had mine done recently it it was it it rates it subjectively from a zero to a 10 and it was a zero and the health care practitioner that was doing the test for me said she's just she never saw a zero before I got the first zero so measures Mercury arsenic lead and cadmium I think levels so U anyway because because of the criticisms of the the temp the temperature being insufficient you were kind enough to uh not acknowledge but uh consent to creating a a different an advanced type of sauna that has two sets of bulbs um two two basically four panels bulbs that I'm using in my existing Zona now and you're you right before I went on you talked about a new panel you just you're going to resurrect it has three bulbs which essentially allows it to be used in almost any home circuit because it's under 15 amps um but the I did notice a big difference when I do do I it's actually my preference but so that's to in my mind it after you're sharing all this it's pretty clear that the vast majority of people may only need four bulbs and it really I mean you could do an eight bulb system yet you don't you still continue use to four uh and and you just need to be in the sa longer longer downside you're getting more photo photo biomodulation benefit now admittedly there's a basic response and you can overdo the infrared exposure right but I personally live in that modern lifestyle where I don't get as much sun as you I'm working a lot indoors in the shop here and just a lot lot of indoor activity I don't have an ideal uh light diet with regard to daily you know morning and evening sun exposure so for me it's crucial that modulation I get not different much different than much of your customer base so I think that you can make a pretty strong argument that a four ballb system is all that's needed um but if you really want to go the full monty I think
it's like seven or eight bulb system will will really get the temperature up and and I'm wondering you mentioned your temperature goes up 3 degrees what your what the absolute value because I think mine goes up four or five degrees typically closer to five because I'm typically coming in the High 102s um it just depends on how long I stand I usually get three degree increase after about 16 or 18 minutes but by the time I'm done I'm getting up to you know over four degrees sometimes five what's your FAL the temperatures coming out with um you're doing oral I would assume right yeah oral I've tried those infrared thermometers on the head and the they seem unreliable I infrared temp senses are great but not really for taking your body temperature is my experience I agree but I usually get over 102 degrees uh somewhere over 102 which is about for me is I I don't think you want to go over 103 I mean occasionally we'll hit the low 103s but typ I it's it's a matter of discip discipline and acclimation you know in the beginning you don't want to do that you don't want to overdo it but but and and that's why I recommend you know everybody just go with the you know what we do now our four bulb system and and you build up and you acclimate and you and then you start to that has a positive influence on other areas of your life and you correct your diet and you do these other things and you slowly get to a point where yeah I can stay in longer now I can handle more and that's great but I would urge everybody to just take a really precautionary prudent approach and and start out with that and and that's why you know I've always offered a long trial for our product and for some people who are in the that have health conditions or neurodegenerative issues they may take a long time to appreciate wow wow um you know a month or two even to appreciate and other people who are maybe young uh are are physically fit do a lot of uh exercise a healthy lifestyle you know they'll be able to handle more more quickly but eventually you know those
who reach a level of like you have where you're you're a super healthy guy you're working out every day you've used the sauna for years you know you can take it you can potentially uh increase the number of bulbs uh and that's why uh like like you mentioned I we are we're we're resurrecting we're printing it out of the closet the the very first SAA space panel was a three Bowl panel that we offered back in 2015 I think uh or 16 and so we're bringing that back uh into the for and we'll be offering that starting I think next month uh this summer um so summer 2022 yeah and it's a great solution be uh for the I would argue the minority of people who leave that level who reach that level of of Optimal Health yeah that they can handle more and they can add in a three bulb a uh the core bulb is or the core panel is four bulbs that's 1, 00 Watts plus three more bulbs 1750 Watts which is about 14 1 12 amps it's just under the 15 amp um threshold that is the standard household breaker you have an in all Breakers of the home in American households is 15 amps so the seven bulb system can be kind of plugged in anywhere more or less in any standard circuit you could potentially use an eight bulb system which is what you have but it requires uh a 20 amp dedicated circuit and that's not so common throughout homes you see that kit and bath yeah but it's easy to swap out you can do that you can swap it out and you can potentially have that but but again it's at the same time you know it's uh also something that you can achieve through just staying in a little bit longer right you can do like you personally do and you can easily put an eight bulb system but you chose not to for the reasons you explained and that's a pretty valid argument so uh one of the okay so I I'm
confident that many people watching this have said oh darn you make such a compelling argument for the near and for red sauna but I've got a far infrared sauna well nothing to worry about because all you have to do and I want your comments on this for almost any near far INF foret son it is take out the bench because you're going to have to do that because there's not enough room there if you leave the bench in uh attach some hooks to one of the walls and you could put hang one or even two panels um on there and you've got it a a sa us just literally for the price of a panel nothing more yeah that's absolutely uh absolutely possible so uh our panels have a a really convenient handle on the back of them that can be allow the panel to be hung on the wall so it's secure and safe and it's it's uh you know it's it's fixed in place and they can do this really in any enclosure so most commonly people will have a farm for it SAA they want upgrade to near INF FR technology they can do exactly what you said with one panel or even two panels again with caution as they get to that point uh over time but you can also do that in any enclosed space in a small closet even uh you know uh we offer a shower conversion uh kit there's it really doesn't matter what the enclosure is it's just an enclosure that it's just a space that needs to be enclosed so you can really um do this in a wide variety of enclosed spaces and the smaller the better as long as it's big enough to allow for the twoot clearance from the bulbs and ideally the ability to rotate that's why it's really nice to take the bench out in the standard farm for it on and and either get one of our stools or purchase a seat of your own and um and do the near infrared style SAA protocol which involves um the traditional protocol is a quarter turn rotation about every five minutes I know you've just been kind of
rotating front to back in your well it's a derivative of yours and it occurred to me because if you're sitting down you are clearly not hitting some of the largest muscle groups of your body so I just face the sa initially uh and then sitting down then I face then I turn my back to the SAA sitting down then I rotate again but I get off the stool and stand up now I have an eight panel system so standing up literally exposes almost my whole body to that whereas the four bulb system it wouldn't but still you're going to get enough reflection and stuff but so anyway when you stand up you hit your quads initially and when you turn around your hamstrings right so uh and those are huge muscle groups as I said two of the biggest muscle groups in your body so I to me that works well if I get for some reason I'm more sensitive to the back of my body to the Heat and I don't know the reason for that is maybe because my the current enclosure I have is not I'm a little bit further away when I'm in the front where I'm in the back at my I'm six foot tall so this I have to bend my head to fit into the sa so I just I'm a little bit closer to the bulbs but so when that happens I get too hot I just rotate and then I'm getting somewhat of a side exposure yeah so and then it's what you said before how it's such a directional radi and heat that the front heats up and and the back is not you know being directly heated and so when you rotate in a near infrared SAA the S sort of you're you're getting you're giving the side that was just heated a chance to rest a little bit and then the Blood starts pooling to the new side that's focusing you know that that has the focus of the Heat and the bulbs and you get a a more efficient vigorous heating of the Torso and this Blood shunting effect that goes on through some type of rotation but also you're not overexposing kind of any side you get a side a chance to rest so another way to just make this the Sona experience more tolerable is is through rotation so you can do rotation or not but yeah you can take a panel and basically convert and upgrade any small space it's more or
less a volume of of you know 70 cubic feet or so what you see in a farm for it on a cabinet style enclosure and even built-in saunas as well in in some homes have custom built-in saunas in our product you can also add in uh one of our single bulb units the photon at the bottom some people uh that's typically recommended for people who have uh you know um edema or like you know problems in their lower extremities and they get direct photobiomodulation onto their foot or their leg but that also increases the heat uh uh somewhat as well especially down low so it's all these are all ways that you can upgrade and incorporate near infared style sauna technology into into your life whatever you have whether you have a a large home or a tiny little apartment or just the only thing you have is a little little closet under your stairwell we have yeah you know many customers who are making that work with our panels it's got to be enough I mean I think the dimensions are it's well six foot tall I think it's 60 inches from the back wall where the panels are held to the door should be about 60 inches yeah our our panels are about nine inches deep plus two feet of clearance from the chest to the panel so you know you need something that's at least four feet deep at the minimum yeah and 60 in would be a lot more would be probably yeah this way you can move back a little bit because it's shocking what literally a few inches will do so you can really modulate and titrate the dosage that you're getting but but again it's a protocol that dates back uh over hundred years so it's very safe I mean people have been doing this for a long time it's a very safe way to to do sound and heat the body and now as we've gone over today the photobiomodulation benefits can't be underestimated yeah I mean there's such a strong argument to support using this type of sauna but one of the final criticisms that I think we've just literally obliterated was the
cost of your sauna and yeah the price of the the sa the the EMF free Faraday cage sauna is a bit high but if you just go and purchase the panels I mean you're significantly less than any about any fire for red sa the big cabinet style saas are can be also can be you know spendy but they're also kind of cumbersome you know um again back to the the average quotidian sauna user or the the sauna Enthusiast is not one who's in in the best of health they're looking for the sauna for solution so they don't necessarily want this big 500 pound construction that they need to set up themselves they they want something that is more manageable um and and yeah uh just it's however you want to start you can start you don't even need a initially if you want to try out this sauna stuff you could literally heat up the water in in your bathtub as hot as possible and in there to to appreciate hey actually sweating and he this is interesting this is making me feel good but you can also yeah you can if you already have a most people already have a farm Fred sauna who are sauna enthusiasts out there you can just get one of our our four Bowl panels to to upgrade it yeah um and and you're done and you're good and certainly if you want more portability and you want our design you know you can upgrade to that later you can even potentially add in a three bulb unit if you reach your level of of discipline and and of good health um it's all just all that matters is you do something you know you take take action now to to start on that journey of of sweating because that's for me that was the most impressive thing also in the photobiomodulation studies is this is a nutrient for our bodies and for our lives we we need this on a frequent basis we can't it's not a pill it's not something you take once it's not a surgery it's something that you need to figure out how to incorporate into your life on on again a week basis so using near infared
light to heat the body is the most efficient quickest way to get her done uh and get that sweat response uh without you know spending an hour and a half on your therapy you know nobody has any time for anything and and uh and and also yeah I mean uh cost-wise uh you know a panel compared to some of these built-in saunas or or these very large uh cabinets onas is it's it's a lot more accessible for yeah and so say you use a room in your house the panel that you offer it it's the most extraordinary cost value proposition because literally it's hard to imagine that not lasting for decades probably the rest of your life and you've move you can move five you can move every year it's buil to last we've got customers from yeah five years ago who still are using their panels even the bulbs people ask well well what about these bulbs are they going to wear out these bulbs are actually rated for 5, 000 hours so that's like you know even before we came out with my own thermal ey bulb that it took me many years to develop I still have customers who uh I shipped them their original panels Dr M with with heat lamps you know standard heat lamps and they're still using them six seven years later so it's a replaceable product but it does last a long time you take care of it it'll pretty much last forever it's it's a one time lifetime at least a lifetime it'll last a lifetime the very few things last it'll last to your health span yeah yeah so if and interestingly that Health span is going to be considerably increased if you're diligently and regularly using this so and it's just a caution final caution out of this is that more is not necessarily better and I've made that mistake I was doing sauna every day and then I realized it's probably not the great greatest strategy because it's just too much like you don't want to exercise every day you want to take some time off but with sauna you're losing these toxins they're clearly coming out through your sweat but you can also lose beneficial minerals so um and
electrolytes so one of the things that there's two two additions that I recommend in sa use one is we actually came out with an electrolyte H pack powder pack I used two of those put them in a quart of water and I add a little glycine a little monk fruit and usually I'm work doing this before workouts or I do a workout before so I use a little hydroxy methylate and I drink that quart about I try to finish it at least a half hour before maybe an hour before I do the saunas so has enough time for the water to get into my cells and then the other thing I use and I want you to talk about that the electrolytes and the minerals and the frequency but then also is um the aspect of protecting your head which you referenced earlier you don't really want it to get too hot so I W I went to Amazon I found a little cap that uh it's a wraparound piece of a device that goes velcro to top of to your head and you put in the freezer and it's got these little gel packs in there that freeze up so really keeps your head cool when you're in sauna yeah as as far as the latter half of your your comment about the head yes we want to be careful not to overheat the head but we still want we want heat chock protein response and we want photobiomodulation there yeah yeah so I the first five minutes I don't put it on I put it on especially that's that's another you know uh precaution to have when you have a sup sauna like a seven bulb style is is to be very careful with the head one one solution is to our panels have multiple switches so one solution is to turn off the switches that are directly align with the head to reduce the amount of heat there you could also cool it off though like you're saying with a cold pack or something but also the the single lamp therapy that a lot of people do is a localized PBM and heat therapy that using our single B product um it it's only recommended to use it on the head 10 minutes per hour so that's a limitation that you don't have really on the rest of of the body if you're doing your foot or your gut or other areas you
you put the one bulb uh 18 to 30 inches from the naked flesh and you can keep it on there for half an hour or more more or less but on the head we're or the throat we're very careful to limit our exposure so it's it's something where again if you once you when you take a precautionary approach and a slow methodical approach you know what you can handle and and you don't overdo it um but yeah regarding the former uh uh you not only are you losing electrolytes basic sodium chloride and other potassium other Basics you're also when you pull these toxins out of your cells you need to replace them uh with the healthy minerals that they were supposed to be there in the first place like the the cadmium sits in the DNA and and it takes the place of of zinc in the zinc finger um epigenetic uh structure so so when we lose that cadmium you know that's just one of million examples of where you need to replace that with a healthy mineral so it it also argues for having this be a part of uh of a healthy lifestyle which includes you know food is medicine a real healthy diet but also yeah supplementing somehow with minerals and electrolytes can be uh can be quite beneficial most sauna enthusiasts really recommend that uh so you got to be careful with that that's another reason to go slow and safe and prudent but one other thing I would mention another reason to be slow and safe and prudent all this is everybody's different and you have what are called detox reactions M so some people call them healing reactions in the world of addiction it's called a detox reaction you get withdrawals and and you uh it's really specifically it's you experience the symptoms of of a poison or a toxin as it's being detoxed and so that's something where you uh you don't want to overwhelm your organs of elimination you want to activate the skin as the most powerful elimination organ it's it's one of the three systems we don't use you know we we urinate we defecate every day but but
we don't unfortunately in the modern uh lifestyle we don't perspire every day so we want to activate the skin but just like with the light it's ortic stress therapy you don't want to overdo it because it takes the body time to correct itself U it takes time and so if you do overdue you can have a healing detox reaction where you you may get a headache you may uh get really uh fatigued all of a sudden some people experience you know just the symptoms related toxins there's a thousand different healing reactions you can have and so to make that the speed bumps in the journey uh as gentle as possible again just go slow with things okay good and then your light bulb on the right side of your body the the photon being uh is a reminder that that is a strategy that I've also incorporated into into my uh personal workspace uh after I think was Brian ho or you helped me understand that most every window in your home has uh filters in it that essentially prevents the majority not all of it but the majority of the near infrared coming into your house so it looks like you have full spectrum light coming through your windows but you don't you got visible light coming through you're blocking the near infrared and you're blocking you know some of the UV too uh but when you put that bulb on does amazing things so you know I I must have that bulb on more than eight hours a day maybe 10 or 12 hours a day when I'm in my office so uh when I'm walking on the beach obviously it's not on but you know when I'm doing an interview in my studio here I'm not on but most of the time it is on so uh just a really good way to increase your uh I was say digestion but absorption would be much better absorption of near infrared is really a food that your body requires or a nutrient might be more accurate it is and I'm not you know uh to be clear this is not I'm not
doing this in a targeted fashion it's not like pointing directly it's just in the general area and it does a couple of things it's it does essentially what you said it replaces the missing component this huge near infrared component that if we were just outside it would be in our light you would need you wouldn't need it if you're outside would need it but since we're indoors we have the low E glass on the windows and also indoors we have a lot of junk light we have a lot of blue LED and fluorescent light that is has a flickering effect that's stressful to the nervous system and blue light is causes free radical formation you've covered that in depth even in the mainstream now they have blue light blockers and other things because it's it's referred to as high energy visible light it's damaging to us and since if there's no near infrared coming from these led and fluorescent light sources unlike the sun it doesn't have that healing um antioxidant building uh component to it so putting this just in your interior space doesn't just replace the near infrared it also mitigates uh the perceived exposure to the flickering line the blue light you can measure this with a spectrometer or a flickering light meter you can see how just having a photon in this area next to you reduces the amount of of blue light and flickering light that your body perceives and and long story short if you work at a computer this thing is lovely just just because computer work is so stressful and these are LED screens and really not ideal to to live this way but we have to well in my case you know I was really careful and purchased a monitor that was flicker free and essentially have a filter on it so there's virtually no blue light coming out or very very little so but you're right for most environments that's not the case and and one of the it's interesting because you can turn that light on the photon bulb that you have 250 watt the INF infrared bulb and you can have the the flicker Monitor and if you have a monitor uh that measures really high uh you'll get you usually there's an audible signal to it also
it'll with a bulb off it'll be blaring and beeping really rapidly and then you turn the bulb on and virtually disappear so it Ma seems to mask the flicker issues pretty well and uh but just gener I I think that's a minor benefit because you can mitigate as I said by purchasing the right type of Monitor and essentially I I the I have the lights are rarely ever on in my office I mean almost never you know so it's not an issue uh but supplying it as a is a nutrient that your body requires because you're living IND doors most of your life is a good strategy it it is and and people we talked a lot about science and and nutrients and and all the cellular um in the weeds type of talk but if you just imagine yourself next to the campfire you imagine yourself to the fireplace that's what it feels like and and the feeling you're getting there that you can't quite put your finger on but it's lovely is is the the significant amount of near infrared absorption that you're getting and you just if you don't have something like this anymore or you're not living with a lot of sun or or like our ancestors did you're you're missing that and and it it doesn't just affect the health of your cells it definitely affects your brain and your mood and your outlook and and just feeling good yes yeah so as I mentioned earlier as we we started this conversation uh I'm a huge huge fan of sauna and have been for two decades but recent appreciation just absolutely confirms how much more important was than I ever thought possible and it's primarily for the near infrared and I'm just uh I i' learned in this interview that your bulbs were 40% I thought they were 15 but it's 40% the infrared so in my mind this is one of the most important bioh hacks or lifestyle Advan I I would classify this as a relatively Advanced lifestyle strategy I mean it's certainly
just getting out the sun is more important if you're GNA if you have a choice or you know eating the right foods but clearly once you one you want to move towards adopting relatively early on the investment is not that significant yes it's high for many people but again remember something that's going to last you pretty much the rest of your life this this is not something that you have to replace this these panels they're going to last for decades and the bulbs probably last five 50, 000 hours most people it'sot of 5, 000 hours is a lot it's years it's many years so you know even if even then you're just replacing a bold so it's you know it's a you know those that would be many years of use and I've yet to replace a bulb actually other than ones that exploded or got broke because I Dr dropped some sweat on them accidentally which can happen but you know with the shields you got around Prett because these bulbs get really hot you can burn yourself if you're not careful so you have to be careful here or cautious yeah and that's why you know we' developed this cage stainless yeah that cage is I like it so much better than than the first you know this has been running this whole time so it's yeah it's wow I didn't real I didn't notice that so you could actually touch the cage yeah I wouldn't recommend that but it's the important thing is to not touch the bulb itself yeah yeah because the older ones you had were the thicker they had the thicker bars and those did get hot you could burn yourself on those yeah and the Dr Kellogg on us didn't have any at all they were just the Bold you had to keep your body close uh but you know the S the technology has advanced in the last 100 years the safe use technology well I'm really deeply appreciative and grateful for your commitment to providing this as a resource and a strategy that pretty much is available to almost anyone and uh because it's such a radically foundational important upgrade to your health that will really help for the long run you know especially in these neurodegenerative diseases you know I mean Alzheimer's isn't pretty I mean it's yeah it's nice to good feel good
and healthy and have a lot of energy but you know when you lose your mind it's it's definitely more really disturbing incidents of early what's called early onset Alzheimer's nowaday below the age of 60 or but disturbingly common now it's that's not the the normal human lot it's not our condition that's a weird modern abnormality yeah so we we've you know modern society offers many advantages but you've got to be careful there's a lot of exchanges for convenience for health so this is one of the ways you can help remediate against that you know excreting all the toxins getting the massive dose of nrad uh and creating heat shock proteins you know bing bing bang so three wins all right anything else you want to add before we go uh that's it if you want to learn more you can go to my website Sona dospace I have a lot just son I thought it was son space. com uh they go to the same place it's okay SAA saunaspace saas space. com you can just uh search saunaspace but I I for those who want to dive deep into the literature uh we have a really nice learn section to explain our light technology and our spectrum and sort of the general uh and the EMF stuff uh if you're interested in that but if you go to the bottom of the website you can click on my research archive and I've curated a lot of literature it's a growing database where I've sorted it by topic so if you're interested in the skin or the eyes or the sauna or or uh you know brain health and other stuff you can go to that click on that topic and you can see a growing body of research uh using photobiomodulation and sauna um to improve health outcomes so that's a great resource for people and that's all on son. Space all right well thanks for everything amazing resource tool you've put together and made available for everyone to access so congratulations on doing such a great job and thanks for everything you're doing thank you for having me Dr marola
really appreciate it thanks so much for watching Remember hit the like And subscribe button so you can get more videos that can help you and your family take control of your health
Transcript auto-generated by YouTube. Verbatim — duplicates intentionally preserved.
Near-infrared sauna sits at the intersection of thermal stress and photobiomodulation. The heat raises cardiovascular demand in a controlled way, while near-infrared light penetrates tissue and interacts with mitochondria, the small energy centers that help govern repair, resilience, and daily vitality.
The practical value is not novelty. It is specificity. A thoughtful heat practice asks what kind of stress the body is receiving, how deeply it reaches, and whether the session leaves you restored rather than depleted.
The conversation returns often to mitochondrial health. Near-infrared light is discussed as a way to support mitochondrial function, antioxidant defenses, and cellular water structure. Some claims in this field deserve careful scrutiny, but the central principle is sound: light, heat, and metabolism are connected.
For a guest, that means the sauna is not simply a place to sweat. It is a ritual that can support energy production, circulation, and a calmer physiological state when used with intention.
The strongest sauna practice is measured, not heroic. Hydration, heat tolerance, duration, and recovery afterward all matter. A session should create adaptation without forcing the body into unnecessary strain.
Used well, near-infrared heat becomes a quiet intervention: warming tissue, encouraging blood flow, and giving the nervous system a clear boundary between effort and restoration.
The best sauna practice is not the hottest one. It is the one your body can adapt to, recover from, and return to consistently.
Treat near-infrared sauna as a recovery ritual, not a contest of endurance.
Build gradually so heat becomes a hormetic signal rather than an exhausting stressor.
Pay attention to how you feel after the session: clearer, calmer, and restored is the mark of a well-designed practice.
The useful lesson is not intensity for its own sake. It is designing a practice the body can absorb.
