In an earlier blog post, I talked about using a regular dry sauna for pneumonia. In this blog post, I’ll explain why using an infrared sauna is an even better option if you’ve got pneumonia. I’ll also briefly compare the infrared and dry sauna for pneumonia.
As a disclaimer though, I’m exclusively talking about using an infrared sauna to prevent pneumonia. For pneumonia treatment, consult your doctor immediately - using a sauna in such an instance is not intelligent without consulting your family physician first.
Having made that disclaimer, next up, let’s explore what pneumonia is and why it matters:
Pneumonia Basics
Pneumonia is an infection of your airways (1; 2; 3; 4). Bacteria, viruses, and other organisms such as fungi can cause that infection. Every single year, there are hundreds of millions of infections and a few million people die because of pneumonia.
Pneumonia is often paired with inflammation. The most common symptoms for identifying the disease, however, are coughing, having problems breathing, heightened body temperature, and “improper” breathing patterns - such as breathing that’s far too quick.
In general, very young and very old people are most at risk of getting pneumonia. The disease is also strongly associated with other health problems, such as other existing lung conditions, heart and blood vessel health problems, smoking, an improperly functioning immune system, and so forth.
Once you’ve got pneumonia, different treatment options exist. However, the goal here is to not let the health condition exist in the first place - that’s also where I’ll focus the rest of the blog post on.
The first thing to note here is that saunas already deal with many of the pneumonia risk factors - saunas improve heart health, for instance, reduce your risk of getting diabetes and help manage your blood sugar levels, boost your immune system, and keep your heart and blood vessels healthy. You might specifically want to know how is infrared sauna good for pneumonia though - I’ll explore the answer in the next section:
The Pneumonia Infrared Sauna Connection: Why Saunas Are An Underappreciated Tool
In this section, I’ll dig into some direct research on the pneumonia infrared sauna link. I'll cover a few topics one by one:
Lower Pneumonia Risk
A Finnish study followed 2,200+ men for a period of over 25 years (5). Participants were divided into two groups - one group that used a sauna once per week or less, and the other group that used saunas two to seven times per week.
Spending more time in the sauna reduced the risk of getting pneumonia over this 25+ year period by a whopping 21%. Also, the men who generally had higher levels of inflammation - as measured in their blood - decreased their risk of getting pneumonia.
Remember that inflammation is a symptom of pneumonia. In the past, I’ve written an extensive blog post on how spending more time inside a sauna lowers your overall inflammation levels.
A second study by the same researchers backs these earlier results up (6). Here, spending two to three times per week in a sauna reduced pneumonia risk by 31% compared to one session or fewer per week. Also, by getting four sauna sessions per week in or more, risk was reduced with 44% in total.
One more study by the same research group shows huge decreases in the overall risk of getting respiratory diseases as well (7). Hence, spending more time inside a sauna is an amazing preventive tool for lowering your pneumonia risk. Literally, the more hours each week you spend in a sauna, the lower your pneumonia risk becomes.
Of course, if you decided to use a sauna more often, make sure to build up slowly and ensure you're always feeling well during and after your sessions. If you don't feel well, slow down.
Next up, let's look at some specific benefits of infrared light:
