Infrared saunas

October 13, 2007 

FIR saunas are not heated by conventional stoves that heat the air. Rather, they heat your skin by far infrared light, much like the sun does. As much as 80% of the light emitted by the sun, is far infrared light.

Infrared saunas often are sold as a module - wooden box with FIR heaters inside. It can also be a custom built sauna with FIR heaters. Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_sauna) says „In essence, the sauna box creates the atmosphere of the sauna while the heaters create the actual sauna effect. "

The infrared sauna is a completely different experience from regular saunas. The temperature setting is much lower, but you still sweat as much or more than in a normal sauna. For that reason, drink plenty of fluids before and during the infrared sauna.

The infrared light is not visible to human eyes and when heating you,  they are unique in a way that they do not actually heat the air between you and the heater. Even if you are in the temperature of 40-50 degrees Celsius, the cold water glass in your hand will not heat up.

My first infrared sauna experience was in the late 90's in my late teen years. Back then it was a completely new thing and the first few IR saunas had come to the country. Considering ourselves to be true sauna fans, I and my mates had to try it.

So one day we called the place up, booked a time and off we went. We were instructed to drink something beforehand and so we did. When we arrived, we were served a large glass of lemonade. The first glimpse of the sauna was disappointing. It looked like an oversized closet. "This is not right," I thought. The temperature was set around 50 degrees, which of course we thought was pittyful. How wrong we were!

The timer was set to something like half an hour. Being the young jocks we were, we would not allow ourselves to come out before we heard the dreaded "DING!", ominously like the microwave sound. Ok, I might have made that up. But in any case, we pretty soon found that we had not nearly drank enough. We had a second large glass of water with ice and slices of lemon floating in it. After half of our time, we ended up drinking it in three "zips" flat. That brought some relief again.

An IR sauna really does dehydrate you as well as they say (good thing they wrapped the seats, footrests and backrests in towels) and what's even cooler, water in a glass really does stay ice cold. 

The next time I went to an infrared sauna was some five-six years later have been to them a few times after that as well - mainly in spas or water recreation centers. I don't nearly enjoy it as much as a real Finnish sauna, but it is an interesting sensation nevertheless.