One of the main reasons people buy different saunas from us, such as full-spectrum infrared saunas, is because they promote detoxification. And yet, many people don’t really know how to conceive detoxification or how to optimise it
In my sauna detox protocol I, therefore, explain how you can maximise your detoxification processes by four simple steps. I consider these four steps the most important in maximising detoxification during a sauna session, even though alternative methods do exist that I deem less important.
Before digging into these steps though, I first want to say something about the human body’s ability to detoxify through the skin. Remember that infrared saunas increase sweating, and, sweating is one of the main alleged mechanisms for detox - I’ll explore that concept first:
Detoxification Through The Skin 101: How You Detox Using An Infrared Sauna
If you read many authoritative online newspapers, you’ll get away with the impression that detoxification is a fully automatised process that you cannot influence in any way.
The Wall Street Journal claims, for instance, that while infrared saunas are a great source of stress relief, it’s a myth that somehow detoxification through the skin increases with a sauna session (1).
Next up, National Geographic states that humans don’t eliminate toxins through the skin in any major way (2). While the article does suggest that eliminating toxins through the skin happens, the quantities are “so low that they’re essentially meaningless”.
Other thoroughly-grounded scientific opinions exist though:
A systematic review from 2012 - which integrates many individual studies in medicine - concludes that the human skin is certainly a major contributor to the detoxification process (3). What’s more, for some types of toxins such as heavy metals, the skin is the primary detoxification means.
Many other toxins might be preferably excreted through a combination of many different organs such as the liver, kidneys, digestive system, and more, but that’s not true for all of them. Therefore, the statements of the Wall Street Journal and National Geographic are incorrect at the very least.
The reason for this incorrect conclusion is probably because the writers of these articles aren’t immersed in the scientific research on sweating physiology, sauna studies, and other topics on a daily basis.
And, many of these toxins can have huge effects on your health, especially with chronic exposure. Mercury, cadmium, lead, and arsenic affect everything ranging from brain function, metabolism, hormonal function, basic energy production, organ health, and much more (4; 5).
Heavy metals and other toxins matter to your health. Having higher levels of these heavy metals in your body translates into a higher risk for conditions such as Alzheimer’s, heart and blood vessel problems, diabetes, autoimmune disease, different types of cancers, and more.
If you and I thus assume that sweating does increase the detoxification rate and that sweating is positively a primary detoxification pathway for at least some toxins, then a sauna protocol to maximise this process is highly recommended. Therefore, let me introduce the first step of this sauna detox protocol to you: