Hey, I’m Johannes Kettelhodt, the founder and CEO of Clearlight Infrared® Saunas (1). In this blog post I will make a topic that’s scientifically really complicated more simple. That topic is the relationship between infrared saunas, detoxification, and the importance of measuring biomarkers.
With “biomakers” I mean markers of your biology that give you data about your health. You’re probably aware that measuring your blood pressure gives you insight into the risk of getting heart and blood vessel diseases (2; 3). And, if you’re an athlete, you probably know about VO2 max that is a predictor of your body’s ability to carry oxygen to the cells (4; 5).
What people don’t know is that the science on measuring biomarkers is developing extremely quickly. Your urine, blood, and other tissues carry treasures of data within them that supply clinicians about many domains of your overall health.
Today, I’ll mostly focus on detoxification. As it turns out, different biomarkers for measuring detoxification exist. These biomarkers then supply clinicians and health coaches with information on what you’re exposed to and what health strategies to implement to detoxify.
But before I cover that topic, I’ll first get you up to date about the basics of detoxification in the next section. I then explain why measuring biomarkers is important and how they can help you detox with Omnos. For you, improved detox means that you’ll be getting better results from every Clearlight Infrared Saunas® session (1).
Let’s start with the basics:
Detoxification Basics And Infrared Saunas
Let’s give you a crash course in detoxification. I’ll first debunk some false preconceptions that many people have.
Many prestigious online sources like the New York Times and the Atlantic claim that detoxification from infrared saunas is a myth (6; 7). That idea is categorically false. Different compounds in the categories of pesticides, heavy metals, phthalates and drugs are preferentially expelled through the skin by the human body (8-12).
For other toxins, your stools and urinary system are the main method of expelling toxins. Both these options are thus important. Nevertheless, the more you sweat, the more you will detoxify different toxins from your body.
Removing toxins from your body obviously reduces the total amount of toxins stored in your body. That’s amazing news, as the lower your overall toxic burden, the easier it gets for the body to detoxify present compounds (13)
As a result, by removing toxins stored in your body through the skin, the amount of toxins removed through the urinary system and your stools also improves. You end up with a win-win here.
Now onto the topic of infrared saunas:
Infrared saunas allow you to sweat profusely while giving you an extremely relaxing experience at the same time. The more you sweat, the more you toxins will be removed and the better your detoxification system becomes. Below I’ve added a few short guidelines on how to optimise your sauna sessions:
- Go gentle on yourself if you don’t have much experience with infrared saunas or if you’ve got a chronic health condition
- For a short sauna session, drink 1% of your bodyweight in water to replenish your stores. For a long session with lots of sweating, drink 2% of your bodyweight in water
- Shower with lukewarm water after your sauna session
- If you’re extremely tired after an infrared sauna session or have side effects such as headaches, do less
- If you tolerate infrared sauna sessions very well, you can start exercising before a session. Exercising 20-30 minutes before a session improves blood flow and activates the lympahtic system, further increasing detoxification.
Hopefully, I’ve convinded you that infrared saunas are a great tool for helping your body detox. If you'd like to learn more about how to optimise your infrared sauna sessions, just keep reading our blog. In the next section, I’ll explain how you can improve this detoxification process even further by measuring biomarkers: