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Transcript
- 02:49 About Brian Richards
- 06:17 Near Infrared Lamp Saunas
- 09:19 Construction of SaunaSpace Saunas
- 16:46 Benefits of Sauna Therapy
- 21:31 Finnish Study about the Benefits of Infrared Saunas
- 23:40 Living Healthy in a Toxic Modern World
- 27:02 Detoxification
- 31:10 Weight Loss
- 37:17 Benefits of Light Therapy and Cellular Healing
- 43:18 How Long Do You Need to do a Sauna Session?
- 44:47 Detox Symptoms
- 54:57 Sauna Models
Wendy Myers: Hello. Welcome to the Live To 110 Podcast. My name is Wendy Myers. You can find me on myersdetox.com.
Today, we have Brian Richards on the podcast. He is the maker of SaunaSpace or Pocket Saunas. I had the stock on the Myers Detox Store. I think they are the best near infrared saunas available.
We’re going to be talking about the difference between near and far infrared saunas and the many benefits of near infrared sauna over and above the far infrared sauna. A lot of people are confused by this. And we’re going to talk about how the near infrared saunas can help you live longer, can help you lose weight, reduce cellulite. So, so many benefits of near infrared sauna, you’ll be blown away.
Please keep in mind that this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health condition and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult your health care practitioner before engaging in any treatment that we suggest today on the show.
They’ve got poplar saunas. There are pine saunas, three-bulb and four-bulb saunas and lots of accessories for the saunas. It’s the sauna that I use. I use it almost every day, probably about four to five days a week, seven days a week at a really good week when I really feel motivated. I cannot recommend these saunas enough. That’s why I carried them in the Live To 110 Store. They are Wendy-approved.
You also need to mineralize your body. When you’re using a sauna, you do lose some minerals. You’re sweating, getting rid of a lot of sodium and other very important minerals.
So I think it’s very important while you’re in a sauna and after sauna use to drink some water with Anderson’s Mineral Drops. These drops contain about 84 trace minerals including magnesium and sodium and potassium.
I put the Anderson’s Mineral Drops in my water. I’m drinking right now. It’s something I recommend to all of my clients. I think it’s a wonderful way to re-mineralize your body after a sauna and because of our very nutrient-deficient soil supply.
Our food is grown on very nutrient-deficient soil. It’s incredibly important to re-mineralize your body and using Anderson’s Trace Mineral Drops is one of the great ways to do that.
Our guest today is Brian Richards. Brian studied chemistry at Montana State University. He discovered sauna use when he started using one to heal his own health issues and turn his health around.
He was dismayed that there were not more near infrared sauna lamps available. There were no products available at the time, nothing that was quality or really that was machine-built so to speak and very high quality.
So at the time, there was only – you only had the options of building it yourself or you had to buy an expensive far infrared sauna. Or you had to use a Swedish or Finnish, the whole dry hot or wet hot saunas that are available. These are not merely as effective.
He set about building his own machines. He built his factory from the ground up. And thus, SaunaSpace Saunas were born.
Well Brian, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Brian Richards: Thanks for having me, Wendy.
Wendy Myers: Why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and how you got started manufacturing saunas?
Brian Richards: I built my own near infrared lamp sauna maybe seven years ago now as a recommendation, as part of a healing program that eventually – I had such a positive experience from that it got me thinking about saunas in general.
I ended up building my own near infrared lamp sauna back then because there wasn’t really anybody you could buy it from in terms of a professional consumer grade product. Again, I had such a great experience in combination with other influences.
I was also asked by Dr. Wilson at some point to start making them and I have some background and handy work type of stuff. And I started making a very frequent [inaudible 00:04:43] version out of my house. That got me thinking about the product itself. There is no consumer-grade product. There is nothing that’s classy and easy to use and that’s really functional and elegant.
I started a product development process that again started in my house. And many years later now, it’s here at the shop. Eventually, it became SaunaSpace and the Pocket Sauna. We have in our shop, four full-time employees and some really cool production infrastructure. We’re making the whole thing right here in Missouri in the USA.
That’s basically how I got started. It was just mind-blowing to me how powerful the sauna therapy was for some of the health issues I had. I’m still going into all of them, but I did have some skin issues. I had some mind racing issues and some insomnia issues. There was a noticeable improvement in the complaints I had very quickly, within weeks of doing frequent near infrared lamp sauna therapy.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I hear that from every client that starts using a near infrared sauna that they have so many improvements. I mean they have detox symptoms as well naturally when you get rid of heavy metals and chemicals from your body and they’re exiting the body.
But every person that has started using near infrared sauna, they get completely addicted to it because they feel so good after using them.
Brian Richards: Yeah, it’s something that’s specific to near infrared lamp. There are a few special aspects of near infrared lamp saunas.
Why did I build a near infrared lamp sauna and not just a wet sauna?
People are worried about EMS nowadays. The infrared lamp saunas are by the nature of the technology very low EMS. But mostly, it’s about this near infrared light. It has these unique cellular healing and wound healing properties that are via direct stimulation of the light. It’s just not the heating effect.
We actually have these photo receptors, these cellular receptors in many cells of our body that directly absorb near infrared light in only near infrareds. So they’ve evolved to absorb specific wavelengths in near infrared light. And upon absorption promotes these really amazing cellular healing mechanisms of processing the cells.
I can go on and on, but that’s a benefit that people call in general as these photo therapeutic benefits of near infrared lamp sauna therapy. And you only get that from near infrared light.
You don’t get that from mid- or the far infrared sauna that’s the typical sauna product on the market. What most people think as an infrared sauna is actually a far infrared sauna.
Then it also has problems. They tend to be high EMS in their typical construction. But mostly, it doesn’t provide near infrared. So you’re getting the same effect they’re getting in a wet sauna. It’s not as efficient of a sauna, number one, and ultimately not as effective because of all of these factors.
But again, the near infrared light is a special – and it’s the therapeutic band of the sunlight and yet at the same time, it’s really safe because the near infrared lamp doesn’t produce any ionized radiation. So you don’t have to worry about the UV aspects of sunlight. It becomes problematic when you have high doses of it.
So it’s a very safe sauna product in terms of the light and the usage, especially the typical usage which is a rotation in front of the lamps for a set period of time. It is really special. That’s why I got into it.
I realized this is it. This is the sauna. But most of the saunas out there are really unaffordable. Let’s be honest. They’re a few thousand dollars. For many people, that’s a great investment and that’s valid for them and they’re able to invest in it. But a lot of people can’t. So if you don’t have the ability to build it yourself, there’s just no option.
So I stepped into this and I decided, “Well, let’s see if we can make something work that’s quality build and it looks good and it’s functional and easy to set up. And it does what it’s supposed to and it still needs to be around $1000 or less.”
We actually offer our most modest Pocket Sauna configuration as under $700.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, it’s amazing. The quality is so beautiful. The construction is gorgeous. You said that you have laser cutters in your manufacturing facility to manufacture the saunas.
Brian Richards: Yeah. We have in particular this very special robotic milling machine that allows us to make a really unique design that’s 100% wood. It doesn’t involve any plywood or any hardware. It has hardware but it’s bolted together.
There are no nails or screws. It’s a very solid work-free design. It really lasts a lifetime if they take care of it, if they use it indoors.
And that’s been the focus of all that. How do we keep plastic out of the sauna? How do we only use untreated natural materials?
Our frames and our light panels are all solid untreated wood. Particular poplar is what most people buy. We offer that particularly because it’s a hypoallergenic wood.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, a lot of saunas can use toxic materials that can off-gas and defeat the whole purpose of using a sauna, which is to detox.
Talking about data, a lot of the saunas, especially ones coming from China can have glues and woods that are not ideal for sauna use.
Brian Richards: Yeah. We have this issue of off-gassing. When you heat a material, it off-gasses little molecules, little micro particles of whatever it’s made of.
If you’re talking about natural materials like wood and cotton, it’s out-gassing wood oils. That’s the smell you smell when you smell a wood. Those are natural chemicals and they’re normally not really offensive to most people.
But if you talk about plastics, it’s a totally different world. You have all these different petrochemicals in plastics that do out-gas upon being exposed to heat. A lot of them are well-known problematic.
At the very least, most petro chemicals are estrogenic. They function, they mimic estrogen, and they act like estrogen in the body. It’s basically a big hormone dose that everybody’s getting from all these exposures, all these plastics all around.
Coming back to sauna construction in general, you don’t want to use petrochemical products that are both treatments and finishes and paints and such, but also plywood and glues and petrochemical glues and so forth.
Most of these saunas are the far infrared type of sauna coming from mostly China. They very typically have urea and formaldehyde in the glues. They’re not using non-toxic glues. They have plywood too. Plywood is just basically full of glue.
So you have these non-ideal materials. And why are they using that? Because it’s cheap. You could build a wood box on and…
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I get e-mails from China every single day.
Brian Richards: When you look at some of the products, for example, on Amazon.com, you think – for me personally, I know what it takes to build something of quality that’s lasting, that’s heirloom quality.
It’s pretty unbelievable what they’re offering. But then you started looking at it, “Okay. It’s not solid wood. It’s plywood. It’s junk.”
Beyond that, they have people look at some of the most affordable sauna products on Amazon or these sauna suits. They’re really interesting on the face of them.
But when you start to look at them, you realize this is a trash bag that you’re enclosing around your body and then you’re heating it up and you’re exposing yourself to all the petrochemicals that are inherently in that plastic.
And it’s far infrared, but I guess it has an appeal to people because there’s such a low price for it. Really you’re getting what you pay for in that sense.
What we offer, what SaunaSpace offers is the most effective type of sauna with the photo therapeutic benefits of near infrared light, which everybody’s coming to now.
People are buying our light panels. They’re using it to convert their traditional saunas and their far infrared saunas to the near infrared advantage.
You get all that and you get the reliability and the worry-free experience of American build quality and American manufacturing and American customer support.
For example, we offer 45 day money-back guarantee. That’s a really long time to trial the product. We stand behind that because very few people actually return it. People just get in and they really love it. It’s effective. It’s elegant.
Also, I should say I guess we’re talking a lot about the design, not just the construction quality but the usability of it.
People are physically inferior that are not necessarily strong have no problem setting this up. Really almost everyone can set up on their own without any tools in about 10 minutes or less. It really is easy to set up.
The whole sauna is only about 40 pounds, fully assembled. The stool adds a little more, but each component is light weight manageable. So that makes it both affordable to ship, but also it brings a modern convenience to the sauna products. You can take it with you if you move apartments.
If you have to remodel your room, you can break it down and not stuck with this 300 pound box that you have to pay for white-glove treatment in the beginning just to get it installed in your house where you need a friend and an hour of your time. This is something that you don’t need.
But I have customers who are traveling salesmen and they bring their Pocket Sauna with them and set up in their hotel room for six days while they’re on a business trip. It really has a convenience to it that people don’t normally associate with the saunas.
Wendy Myers: I love the Pocket Sauna. I actually looked on your website a couple of years ago when I was researching saunas a bit.
I love that you can just fit in the corner so you can use it if you have a small apartment, if you have a small space.
Brian Richards: Yeah. I mean it’s a little bit bigger than those plastics on a suit they sell on Amazon.
But it also has this really wonderful thing that’s way inside because it is this enclosed sauna space. That’s part of why we call ourselves SaunaSpace because it is.
You have to have that atmosphere inside to be able to relax and dedicate to your therapy and to your healing experience. And there’s something really special about being enclosed in an area.
But we’ve also tried to optimize the volume as we say. So it’s a different trapezoidal shape to it where you can just tuck it in to the corner of your room.
Very much so, even people who have small apartments which everybody has in New York and some of the bigger cities. They’re buying our product and they’re using it very successfully in their small apartment. It just barely fits, but it does.
That is also a functional difference. Even if you can afford it, if you can’t it, then it’s not a product for you.
Wendy Myers: Let’s talk a little bit about the benefits of saunas. Why would somebody want to put themselves through this and sit in a sauna for 30 minutes a day?
Brian Richards: Sauna therapy is a very time-tested way to maintain your health really throughout your life. Technically, it’s called hyperthermic therapy.
So it’s heating therapy. You’re trying to promote increased blood flow to the tissues and relax the nervous system into a parasympathetic state
It gets yourself out of fight or flight, what’s called the sympathetic dominance so that your body begins to use its energy and its blood flow and shot it into use in organs of elimination in both of the cellular level and the tissue level so the body has a chance to rest and repair itself.
Sauna heat happens to promote that. If you expose yourself to heat and do hyperthermic therapy, you promote this relaxation and you have this healing. You go into this maintenance mode basically.
You have that with all forms of hyperthermic therapy including sitting on a hot pool and hot springs or also in a wet sauna.
The difference is as far as our sauna and far infrared lamp sauna when you understand near infrared lights, you get all these benefits of sauna therapy and hyperthermic therapy. But then you’re going to need additional phototherapeutic therapy benefits that are uniquely associated with near infrared light.
Beyond that, also people find that the near infrared lamp sauna experience is more tolerable. It’s a dry atmosphere. It’s not humid like a wet sauna.
And also the ambient air temperature is much lower. It’s only 110 to 120 degrees. So most people find that much more tolerable, especially people who are prone to fainting or have low blood pressure issues.
So again, it just makes it a more accessible product to more people. It gives more access to sauna therapy. That’s really what we were founded on. That’s what we’re all about.
We’re not just about offering the best price point. We’re about giving the product that people can use on their own. This is 2015. Everybody has their own phone, their own car, their own everything. They want to feel independent. They don’t want to have to rely on someone else to do things, especially for products or device that they have.
This is that. This is that. This is the sauna that you could have in your home, you could use in your home. You don’t have to go to a spa. And you don’t get anybody else to help you with it.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. What I love about this is that the temperature doesn’t have to be so hot. When I go into a regular sauna, it’s almost 200 degrees. I can only stay in it for about 15 minutes.
The far infrared saunas get very, very hot. But because they have a thermostat, the far infrared rays can turn off once it reaches a certain temperature so that at some point, you can have a few minutes where you’re not even getting the far infrared from what I understand.
And they are also very, very hot. But I like in the infrared, they’re not as hot in cancer patients. People that are very ill that desperately need to use a sauna are able to use it.
Brian Richards: Right, exactly. Especially for that population that has those physical infirmities, this is much more accessible way to engage in sauna therapy.
And it’s very easy to control it. It’s very easy to control the temperature. In our sauna, you can open the doors and the side loops that keep the door strapped to keep the door open.
You can use one cover instead of the dual layer cover if you’re very heat-sensitive and you’re being challenged initially acclimating yourself to the sauna therapy. This is something that’s known to be very typical with sauna therapy experience in general.
Some people who tend to be I guess more toxic are resistant to the sauna therapy. Their body doesn’t want to change. That’s a concept in Biochemistry called homeostasis where the body wants to stay wherever it is. It doesn’t want to change.
So when it’s in toxic state, you really have to work to promote change and detoxification. The sauna does that. The near infrared sauna does that absolutely.
But certainly for some people who have low blood pressure, people who have serious conditions like cancer or things of that nature, this is the best product for them. It’s the most tolerable sauna experience out there.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about the Journal of American Medical Association study. There is a Finnish study that’s really hot in the blogosphere right now. It talks about some of the benefits of infrared saunas.
Can you discuss that a little bit?
Brian Richards: Yeah. It just came out in JAMA. Everybody is talking about it. It’s a really interesting study. It’s a long-term, over 20 or more study on middle-aged Finnish males.And basically, the study concludes that the individuals who are engaging in frequent sauna therapy and particularly four or five days a week versus individuals who are not doing sauna therapy at all are living twice as long or in other words are having half the mortality rates of the folks that are not doing sauna therapy. And not just mortality, but also incidents of heart attack.
Basically, it’s a very obvious life extension tool. Regardless of what the exact cellular mechanism, the folks that were doing sauna therapy are living longer than the folks who aren’t.
In fact, between the folks that do sauna therapy two days a week and those that do six or seven days a week, they’re proportionally living longer. The more you use sauna each week, the longer you use sauna, typically the longer you’re going to live and the more healthy you’re going to be during your life.
I think that’s really powerful, really amazing. Sauna therapy again is an ancient technology. It’s an ancient approach to healing. But people still are very unaware of how powerful it is.
That’s great that that study came out and some of the mainstream media folks picked up on it because if more people knew how powerful sauna therapy was, what a great tool is to maintain your health, I think all of us will get a lot more healthy, living happier, healthier lives.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I do think it’s an essential component to living to 110. You have to detox heavy metals and chemicals from your body in order to be healthy.
I love that the saunas stimulate human growth hormone and heat shock proteins and all kinds of things that can stimulate your immune system and just increase your health in general.
That’s why I had people like yourself on the podcast and write some of the articles about the infrared saunas. They are so important and so key in our toxic modern world.
Brian Richards: Yeah. That’s the operative phrase, the toxic modern world. This is the modern age of petrochemicals. It is the fundamental difference I think in terms of our environment and the environmental stressors we’re exposed to here nowadays. That’s the fundamental difference between us and 100 years ago and all the human entire experience up to about 100 years ago.
All these petrochemicals that are around were never around. You hear about how many new thousands of petrochemicals are synthesized and brought into production each year.
Absolutely, it’s this massive hormonal and chemical influenced our lives. It stresses us out in so many ways. It’s in our food containers. It’s in our water. It’s in our medicines. Most of our conventional medical pharmaceutical drugs are petrochemicals. They’re made from petrochemical sources.
We live in a very toxic world. Unlike some of the Eastern cultures, here in America, I think we’ve lost a little bit the respect for taking care of yourself frequently, spending time and money and investing in your health, going to the spa each week or doing a sauna therapy each day, cooking your own food, all these ways that you can minimize your exposure to the toxins.
And the toxins that you have, you need to be able to detox somehow. Absolutely sauna therapy is – there is no better way than sauna therapy. And the best way, the most effective way is to have it in your house.
That’s very important. If you have to go somewhere and you can’t do it several times a week, it’s just not as effective. But if you have it in your house and you have that tools to heal and detox and have it available to you whenever you want, I think that’s a life-changing experience for a lot of people.
We’re a new company. We’re a small company, but certainly the feedback we had in our time here producing saunas has been just overwhelming. People just are so happy.
It’s not even our build quality and our really cool design and our functionality, but it’s the accessibility that it provides them. People get in there and they have it in their health and they’re doing sauna therapy everyday and they’re having this wonderful healing experience.
It’s just so heart-warming to hear that from people. We get calls. I get calls like that everything. I usually answer the phone in the morning. And we do. We get calls from people that are so incredibly thankful. And all we do is build saunas.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I know. It’s amazing, the health conditions that you can heal with saunas.
A lot of my clients have thyroid and adrenal issues. One of the reasons they do is because of heavy metals and toxins that are inside these glands that are interfering in their function. For instance, when people have adrenal fatigue, they have toxins and metals in their adrenal glands and in their body. The adrenal glands will rev up trying to push these metals out of the body. That will induce adrenal fatigue. I think it’s one of the major causes, major underlying causes of adrenal fatigue.
Additionally with the thyroid, people have fluoride and chlorine and bromide in their thyroid. That prevents uptake of iodine. You have to get these chemicals out of your body if you ever have any hopes of healing your thyroid.
So I think a lot of people are taking supplements and trying to sleep more to change their lifestyle and diet trying to improve their health. You have to add the detoxification component to your health regimen in order to heal and reverse disease.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
Brian Richards: Yeah, absolutely. There is an increased awareness in a healthy lifestyle. The people are recognizing the issue of the toxins and the toxicities that we have in modern life and our exposure to that.
But yeah, you hit on the head. People don’t appreciate that the second half of it. It’s not just ingesting and bringing in the nutrients and sleeping more.
It’s also getting rid of the junk you have in your body. You have a toxic load in your body that you’ve accumulated throughout your life including more of the time you’re in the room.
That’s very typical that the first born child is exposed to the most toxic load of the mother. The fetus actually acts as a heat sink for the toxins. It absorbs the toxins.
That’s why a lot of pregnant mothers – they have a few new exuberance during their pregnancy. These are examples of people who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis. And all the rheumatoid arthritis symptoms go away during the pregnancy. Then they come back afterwards.
That’s interesting. Yeah, I mean totally. We are totally overloaded with toxins and the detoxification aspect is crucial. It’s not just the toxic metals. It’s what you said that we’re in adrenal burnouts. That’s because we’re in sympathetic dominance.
You wake up in the morning. You’re relaxed maybe for a few minutes or a few moments and maybe even half an hour. You’re in what’s called a parasympathetic nervous state. So your body is relaxed. It’s not in the fight or flight state or sympathetic dominance.
Once you begin to interact with the modern day stressed person and somebody’s yelling about this and you’re late to work, your body goes into sympathetic dominance. For the modern lifestyle, typically people are in sympathetic dominance all day.
And we’re evolutionarily designed to get back into parasympathetic so your body can rest and heal and repair. Unfortunately, because people don’t engage in detoxification therapy so much like sauna therapy, their body doesn’t get a chance on a daily basis to relax nervously and they never detox significantly.
That’s such a huge thing. That goes back to us not – we spend so much money on gadgets and devices in America. We have disposable income and we invest very little often in our health.
And yet, our bodies need it. Our bodies need to relax everyday.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. That’s why stress kills because when people are in that fight or flight mode, that sympathetic dominance state, you can’t detox. That’s not the mode in which your body detoxes.
It just accumulates and accumulates. And it’s one of those underlying causes of why stress kills.
Brian Richards: Yeah. When you’re in sympathetic dominance, all of your blood flow and your energy goes to your muscles and your heart and your brain, not that it goes to healing or detoxification or anything else.
Brian Richards: It is unfortunate. But again, the sauna therapy is such an easy way to activate this relaxation and promote this cellular healing, not to mention a few other benefits, few things that people don’t traditionally associate with sauna therapy or things like weight loss.
Wendy Myers: I was just about to ask you about that. I know that’s not…
Brian Richards: It’s really interesting. Yeah.
The near infrared light actually helps promote the visible reduction of cellulite. The near infrared light is one of the mechanisms that activate the production of fibroblast proteins or basically fibroblast growth factors and also collagen production.
So you do near infrared lamp sauna therapy for a while and you’ll actually increase the collagen production in your body. That helps the body heal things like cellulite, visible cellulite.
Wendy Myers: That’s actually the reason I do saunas. I don’t do it for the detox. I just do it to reduce cellulite.
Brian Richards: I mean, why not benefit both in the way you feel and the way you look? It’s great for your skin. It’s great for the cellulite.
But also it’s interesting that we’re increasingly seen being effective for weight loss, promoting blood flow to the fat tissue, to the adipose tissues, especially the unwanted fats that the body has a hard time metabolizing.
And some of that is that body hides toxins, all these toxins. We’re talking about hiding it in the fats, an easy way to isolate it and keep it from disturbing the cells in the body. So the body doesn’t want to detox that or metabolize that fat because then it has to detox all those chemicals and all those toxins that are energy-intensive and stressful for the body to detox.
Interestingly, you can sit in a near infrared sauna and really inhabit effective passive weight loss. All the people are spending so much money going to the gym. They’re wanting to look great. But I think people are just trying to lose some weight, lose some unwanted weight. And yet, they’re not very successful because they’re in sympathetic dominance and their body is not metabolizing the excess fat. It’s metabolizing the more accessible energy.
At the same time, there’s this alternative, near infrared lamp sauna there where you can sit lazily in your sauna, relax and lose weight at the same time. So you’re detoxing. You’re healing in a very effective way and you’re addressing – you can lose weight overtime absolutely.
Wendy Myers: How many calories do you burn in a sauna during a 30 minute session?
Brian Richards: Wow, that’s a good question.
Wendy Myers: There are lots of estimates. I’ve seen 100 calories and 600 calories. I think 600 is a little farfetched.
Brian Richards: Yeah. I mean I think it definitely burns calories, but really the issue is not the burning of energy. It’s the metabolizing of the right types of energy in the body. And that’s the fat.
Again because of what I said before, for some reason, the body tries to avoid metabolizing fat for many people in many cases. And the near infrared light has its radiant style heating effect. It penetrates your body up to nine inches.
In fact, there’s a NASA study we have posted in our website. But it also is widely available. It shows that near infrared light penetrates human tissues up to 23 centimeters which is about nine inches.
It’s immediately going into you, heating you from the inside out. So it’s very efficient and immediate. And it’s promoting this heating and this increased blood flow to those deep-seated fats and toxins that are deep in your torso, in your body.
That’s very unique to the near infrared. You mentioned before how you can turn off this far infrared saunas after the temperature reaches a certain level.
It’s not just that. Even when you’re exposed to far infrared light, the far infrared light only penetrates your body a couple of inches. So really it’s more of a conductive style heating effect, the less efficient heating from the outside in.
The infrared light is bringing that blood flow to the deepest areas of your body. It’s the blood that is the liquid of life. It brings in the nutrients and it takes away the toxins. If there’s no blood flow, there’s no cellular healing.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. They even used infrared saunas – the winner of The Biggest Loser, she used an infrared sauna to lose weight in winning the show. I thought it was really, really interesting.
But I have a lot of clients that are working out five days a week. And they’re eating flawlessly. It’s amazing how good these women are eating, and they’re not losing weight. Their body is just not budging on releasing the fat.
I always tell them it’s because you have to detox your body. You have to start using an infrared sauna because your body is going to let go of this fat storage that’s holding all these toxic chemicals. Your body doesn’t have anywhere else to put it except in these fat soluble toxins.
I think for a lot of women that have stalled weight loss, infrared sauna is a great component to add to facilitate weight loss.
Brian Richards: Yeah, absolutely for that and for the detox and for the relaxation.
That’s what maybe people don’t appreciate enough nowadays. You don’t need to stress your body out more by going on a treadmill.
The best thing you can do for your health and for your weight and for your attitude and your mood and your quality of life is to relax, to relax in an infrared sauna and get away from stress.
Wendy Myers: Let’s talk a little bit about how the light therapy helps to benefit you?
And this low-level light therapy is one of the many benefits of infrared saunas, near infrared saunas that you can’t get with far infrared. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Brian Richards: Yeah. It’s full of therapy benefits that are only associated with near infrared light. And the validation of that is these photoreceptors or so called chromophores.
They are receptors on the cells and in many cells of the body, in fact a lot of cells in the body that directly absorb near infrared lights, typically or particularly between 600 and 900 or 1000 nanometers. So that’s the near infrared light. That’s not mid infrared. That’s not far infrared. That’s not any other light. It’s that very small range on the electromagnetic spectrum that has this unique cellular healing effect on the cells directly.
How more obvious can it be than the fact that your body is evolutionary designed to promote cellular healing when it’s exposed to near infrared light?
And you see that also – from another standpoint, you see that validated, what’s called atmospheric window or the atmospheric absorption spectrum.
If you look at a chart – you can look this up on Wikipedia – all the sunlight that the sun gives off, most of it doesn’t reach the earth. There are actually only a few parts of that spectrum that reach the earth, some of the radio waves, the higher radio waves, of course all the visible light. Then within the infrared band, it’s only the near infrared that has any significant penetration to the earth.
In fact, a very significant amount – don’t quote me on this. I think it’s like 30% or something, but a very significant portion of the sunlight that reaches the earth is near infrared. So that makes sense. Okay, we’ve been running around as humans being exposed to this near infrared light primarily for a very long time and we’ve evolved the benefit from it.
In the scientific world, they call the studies that use near infrared light treatment to promote cellular healing – it’s referred to as low level light therapy for some reason.
But they’ve done a lot of studies. They’ve studied all different wavelengths in light including far infrared, mid infrared and visible light and other ultraviolet and other wavelengths. They’ve shown after 40 years of studies that it’s only that 600 to 950 or 1000 nanometer band that is the magical band. That is the therapeutic band of the sunlight’s spectrum.
What’s really cool about it is that near infrared lamp saunas – the incandescent infrared heat lamp produces primarily near infrared light. It does so in – it’s a reflector lamp. So it’s not a laser beam that’s at all dangerous because it’s really high power. It very much simulates the therapeutic band of the sunlight’s spectrum. And yet, it doesn’t give you the UV.
So you’re not exposed to the ionizing radiation that is an ultraviolet. People I think understand well that it can be problematic and can be carcinogenic at very high doses. You get the healing aspect of the sunlight without any of the damaging effects of the other aspects of the sunlight.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Sorry, go ahead.
Brian Richards: I just wanted to wrap up or to conclude what we’re saying about the studies. It’s really interesting that some of the studies – they’re dense and they’re hard to read, but when you start reading them, some of them are mind-blowing.
There’s one for example that I can think of on top of my head where they blind rats with methanol which is also called as wood alcohol. They use repeated near infrared light exposure treatments and they reversed the blindness in the rats. So they’ve grown enough cellular healing in the eyes of the rats that the blindness is reversed. That’s incredible.
Not to mention that it really debunks – that’s a very powerful evidence for debugging this notion that near infrared light is damaging your eyes or it’s dangerous.
I think that’s a superficial way that far infrared sauna and also these traditional saunas – guys or proponents of traditional sauna are trying to scare people away from the near infrared lamp sauna. And in fact, they have it completely wronged. The near infrared light promotes cellular healing directly.
In so many aspects – in general, that aspect of cellular healing is shown in all these studies and various scenarios and other ones where they radiate mice with X-rays. We all know how damaging X-rays are. And they have very positive healing responses that occur with the near infrared light treatment.
It’s a very robust part of science that supports all these. We’re still trying to figure out exactly what all the cellular mechanisms and stuff are.
But when you look at this Finnish study, heat therapy has these life extension effects. And you look at these particular studies where the near infrared light is promoting cellular healing. I think it makes sense to bring the two together and do a near infrared lamp sauna therapy.
Wendy Myers: So to benefit, how long does someone need to use the sauna? How often during the week? How many days a week? How often per session?
Brian Richards: It’s recommended that you start slowly and steady. You don’t want to detox too much.
You mentioned healing reactions at the beginning. That is very much a concept that occurs in sauna therapy. You detox toxins. When you detox, you often experience the symptoms related to that toxin. So you don’t want to overload your organs of elimination by detoxing too fast.
It’s recommended to start with 20 minutes once a day. And then as you acclimate to the therapy a period of weeks and months, you can increase that duration really dramatically.
I personally do – when I do near infrared sauna, it’s about probably 45 or 50 minutes. And when you rotate in front of the lamps, you get this nice even heating effect across all the parts of your torso.
But there are absolutely people who are doing more than that. Some people are using it twice a day, for an hour a day. But usually, these are individuals who are well acclimated to the sauna therapy and they know what they’re doing.
It’s very individual. Some people are so sensitive and so toxic they can’t do it more than 5 or 10 minutes. And usually there are really going ho and they can increase their duration pretty quickly.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. I think there are some people that have this notion that they don’t feel well, that they should stop doing something because it’s not making them feel good.
But when you do a sauna, you do inside detox reactions. And these I think need to be very welcomed. These are the reasons that you’re doing the sauna. You’re doing the sauna to get rid of the hundreds of chemicals that are proven by research studies to be in our bodies to get rid of the dozens of heavy metals that everyone, without exception, has in their tissues.
So to think that you can use a sauna and it’s going to be all smiles – that’s not the case. You do have to deal with some detox symptoms.
Can you talk a little bit about what people can expect as far as detox symptoms and how they’re completely normal?
Brian Richards: Yeah. They are normal. That toxin, the heavy metal, the petrochemical, the pharmaceutical drug, they have effects on your body.
When your body metabolizes during detoxification, that’s stuck in your body and the cell in your body finally accesses it via sauna therapy and begins to metabolize and detox it. And whether metabolic pathway is required for that particular toxin, you necessarily experience those symptoms.
So practically speaking, when your body’s detoxing pharmaceutical residues at the base of your liver, you can experience flu-like symptoms. It has definitely been reported that people that have used hallucinogenic drugs in their life and at the point in which they begin to detox those drugs, they can actually experience hallucinogenic episodes.
Some people also – there’s a very emotional component of it. It’s interesting. This is related to the – this is a whole other discussion about the neurology of it and the brain science of it.
When you incorporate toxins, they’re almost associated with a certain memory and a certain experience. If that was traumatic for you, often the people detox that toxin will experience that trauma all over again to some degree.
Some people report that they just start crying all of a sudden for no apparent reason. And then it passes after a day or so and that was that painful episode, that traumatic episode that they experienced whilst incorporating that toxin.
So it’s a very visceral thing. It’s a very real thing, but it’s also – I think it’s a very redeeming experience. It’s the battlefield that you go through.
You can imagine. If those are the symptoms you experience when you’re detoxing, imagine what it’s doing in your body while it’s still in there. Those are all – that healing experience is in those bumps in the road. Those are all badges of honor and are well worth it.
Most people, even with those – in between those healing reactions, majority of the time when people are doing sauna therapy, they come out and they feel rejuvenated. They feel powered up. They feel relaxed.
The near infrared light actually has again this calming effect on the nervous system. And it gives you this zenith healing when you get out of near infrared lamp sauna. It’s really unique.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. Definitely, I don’t detox every time I’m in the sauna. When I first started using it, I felt having a lot of detox symptoms like headaches and nausea and fatigue and things like that.
It’s not a big deal. It’s nothing you can’t handle. But it’s not every single time that I have detox symptoms. Even today, when I’m using it, I still have some detox symptoms sometimes. But for the most part, I feel really, really good and relaxed after I use them.
Can you talk a little bit about how detoxing in infrared sauna and through your skin can take a lot of the burden off the liver?
I think today, everyone’s – many people’s livers are very overloaded with toxins, medications and drugs that the liver has to do so much work. And there are so many chemicals that it just doesn’t recognize. So it’s not able to detox.
And 30% of Americans have fatty liver disease because our livers are so congested. Can you talk a little bit how sweating out these toxins gives the liver a helping hand?
Brian Richards: Yeah. People don’t think necessarily about their skin as an organ, but it is the largest organ in the body. It is absolutely designed to be a powerful organ of detoxification.
You’re right. Humans are very resilient. Of all the creations on the earth, we have the greatest perseverance. We could take the most beating for the longest time.
But there is a point which it’s too much. And today, it is too much. There are so many toxins we’re exposed to. We’re not just designed to detox this toxic load that we’re exposed to everyday. So it builds up. And the body typically relies in its liver and the livers are overloaded and so are the kidneys.
Because we’re in sympathetic dominance – and typically people who have lower body temperature as well – all things that produce the natural sweat response, it means that we’re not really using our biggest organ of detoxification effectively or daily at all. So it’s totally shut down.
That’s what sauna therapy does. It activates the organs of elimination, but particularly the skin. It gives the liver and the kidneys a chance to rest. The sweating or the detoxification via the sweat is one of the most effective and quick ways to rid the body of toxins.
And then again, that goes back to us being able to relax. When I say relaxed, it’s not just a mental thing. It’s a physiological thing in your body. Your liver needs to relax. You just hit the nail in the head. The liver, everybody is so overloaded.
When you get a sauna, you get that liver and the kidneys a break. They are also working to detox during sauna therapy when you relax in the parasympathetic dominance. But yeah, you’re taking a load off your body in so many ways, not just the toxins, by giving you the chance to just rest.
It’s not just about getting rid of the toxins in the body. It’s also about repairing the damage the toxins caused in the cells, in the tissues. That’s all very energy-intensive. Yeah, also activating your body and activating your skin as a detoxification organ is the essence of sauna therapy.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I have had client after client tell me that after they started saunas, their skin gets really, really soft. That’s what my health feels. They’re really, really tough before and they got really, really soft. It’s really amazing how much it improves your skin as well.
Brian Richards: That’s interesting too. The inflictions of the skin are the most obvious signs of a real detoxicity.
If your skin looks bad, you definitely have some really detoxicities to such an extent that your body’s own – its own cellular healing and its own systems of healing are so broken down that it can even take care of basic toxin loads and basic factors that cause all the skin conditions like eczema, acne, psoriases, all these things that are not typically associated with the human body.
It’s totally a product of modern civilization and the modern toxic age. You just don’t see this in the stone age cultures that still exist in the world today, in the Amazon and such. It’s a very much modern thing. It’s too bad, but that’s what we have to deal with in modern life. Are we going to galvanize ourselves against this? Are we going to accept that we’re just not going to have healthy, enjoyable quality of life?
Are we going to say, “Yes, we’re going to fight against this and we’re going to do all means at our disposal?” The best thing ever or one of the best things ever I should say is near infrared lamp sauna therapy.
It’s so effective. In fact, that’s one of the first things people see improvement with. Typical in sauna therapy, it’s their skin. That’s cool. It’s more important to detox the deep-seated toxins. It’s more important that your vital organs to be working openly in general. But I think seeing that immediate or that quick boost to the skin’s health, the skin’s complexion, I think that’s inspiring to people and it helps them along.
Sauna therapy does take time. You need to be disciplined. You need to get your own at home. And you need to be using it on at least several times a week basis if not daily for the period of weeks and months. That’s when it becomes really effective.
Wendy Myers: When I first started sauna therapy, I just put off getting one in my home because of the expense and whatnot. So I decided to go to a spa. There are many, many spas. They only have the far infrared saunas. I’ve never seen a near infrared facility.
And I would go a couple of times a week, but it’s just not practical. It’s very expensive. It’s $30 to $50 per session if you go to somewhere else. And you can’t do it everyday when you need to. You need to do it I think at least five days a week.
So I just really recommend that people get one in their home. They will not regret it.
Wendy Myers: So Brian, can you talk a little bit about the different models that you have available at SaunaSpace?
Brian Richards: Yeah. They’re all part of our Pocket Sauna product line. It’s a light weight portable sauna that features stool for assembly, natural material construction, American build quality, a solid three year warranty, all these wonderful things.
But beyond that, we have a really wide range of different options that provide access to the wide range of individuals and situations possible.
Our most modest sauna is a three lamp light panel in pine with our standard plastic frame and our tool there on a canvass cover. It’s only $693 right now.
It’s always going to be like that. It’s under $700. You have a one-time purchase and you have access to a very pleasing infrared lamp sauna experience for the rest of your life if you take care of the product.
That configuration for example excludes the stool that we offer, which is optional because our light panels are just up and down the frame pole. So you can use any chair or stool you have at your home and adjust it to your height and your seat preference.
Not to mention that the reason we offer a lot of configurations is that our product is very much in development still. We’re constantly trying to improve it. The model that we have now is on an incredible part of development.
Our most modest offer is also our base model. It’s the first thing we offered. Now we offer a few different options.
For example, we have this poplar wood sauna frame and we also have poplar wood light panel options. We introduced the poplar wood because if you’re familiar with the sauna industry, it is the go-to wood. It’s a hypoallergenic wood. That means it is zero VOC rated. It is the ideal candidate for individuals who have chemical sensitivity issues. They’re not going to have that with poplar.
Beyond that, it’s a very stable wood. And our poplar in particular is sustainably harvested in North America. So it’s a very ecological wood as well.
So from the most modest offering, we have a variety of light panels and a couple of sauna frames and two sauna stools.
Wendy Myers: You have three bulb and four bulb units as well?
Brian Richards: Yeah. Also, we have three and four bulb. Again, the first model was a three-lamp near infrared light. But now, we do offer a four-lamp light panel that has a fourth lamp wire with separate switch.
It just has that convenience of functioning like the three-lamp light panel or having that fourth bulb, which is extra heat. It has more near infrared lights. It’s a little bit more aspect of sauna therapy and quicker for heating time. Because it has that convenience to know if it’s too hot or you don’t want to use it, you can turn it off.
So we offer our poplar frame now. And then originally when we are selling our first Pocket Sauna model, it didn’t include a stool. That was right when we got our robotic milling machine and we started getting our heads wrapped around it.
First, we have the light panel. And then we began prototyping the stool. It took about a month and a half and we came up with this really cool design.
It was actually a team effort absolutely. The entire SaunaSpace team was involved.
It’s a cool tool, the stool that…
Wendy Myers: Do you have one?
Brian Richards: I don’t know if I have one here in the office. No, I don’t think I have one ready. I think they’re all boxed out, but you could see them on our website.
There are two leg panels that click together like this. The two legs tuck up into the seat plate that has a 3D contour tops. So it’s really comfortable for your butt.
It has that old school heirloom quality furniture feel and assembly to it. It sets something in a few seconds.
Of course, we offered it initially in our pine. As we expanded, we began to make it in poplar. Nowadays, we still offer the entire range to give as much many people as possible access to near infrared lamp sauna therapy. But certainly, most people are behind what we call our hypoallergenic selection.
So it’s a poplar wood sauna frame, a poplar wood, four, three and a half light panel, a poplar wood stool. And our latest product is our new bamboo format.
It’s really cool. It really completes the sauna in a sense that it seals off the sauna space. It allows you to install a Pocket Sauna around a carpet for example on a really nice hardwood floor, whatever you have.
And you’re not going to have to worry about either the out-gassing from the flooring or damage your flooring because of your sweat.
Sauna sweat is odorous and it’s toxic. You definitely want to collect that in towels if you’re washing the towels. But the bamboo mat, it really just completes the experience. That’s actually unvarnished bamboo and a 100% rock cotton backing. It’s really difficult for us to just source this material, but we finally figured it out when we got it.
So now with the mat indeed, most people order that because that really is a turnkey product. You don’t need to buy anything else.
Wendy Myers: Wait. You have a stool right there.
Brian Richards: Hey. Look, there’s something there.
Wendy Myers: You have a stool right there.
Brian Richards: Here you go.
Wendy Myers: I can see that. It’s got that old school tongue and groove.
Brian Richards: Yeah, exactly. This is Tony, our production manager. I didn’t realize he was still here.
Yeah, it just clicks together basically, the top and the sides. And that’s it. There’s no hardware. There are no tools. It’s a really cool design. It’s really comfortable.
So yeah, we offer this wide range. But certainly most people buy the hypoallergenic selection because
it’s just everything all in one.
You order online with us and we process. And we ship that out the next day or so. You’ll have it in a couple of days around shipping. And you pull out of the box. In 10 minutes or less, the thing is set up and you’re flicking the lights and you’re trying to [inaudible 01:01:42] the sauna user’s time.
It’s just so quick and easy to use. And with the stool, you don’t even have to provide a chair. It’s really a turnkey with that.
Wendy Myers: Well, Brian. Thank you.
Brian Richards: Go ahead.
Wendy Myers: Thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it. I love your saunas. I love your products.
They’re one of the only brands that I carry in my store. I think it’s such a high quality sauna and I think that it’s something that everyone should get in their home for use.
Brian Richards: Yeah, it is. I mean it’s the most effective because it’s in your house. But it’s really nice to have it home. It’s hygienic. It’s your sauna. You’re not getting in a sauna that hundreds of other people are using. It’s clean. It’s dry. You get out of the sauna and you feel great. You take a shower in your own shower. And you have the near infrared light.
All of it, even our most – our highest in offering is less than $1200. That’s less than half or even a third of some of these very expensive farfetched traditional wet saunas.
I think it’s something that’s very accessible to people. That’s what we’re all about. We’re about balancing that quality, that user-experience with reality that things need to be affordable.
This is. This is the first sauna that has all these benefits and all these awesome user-friendly experience. And it really is at a consumer price point.
So yeah, check us out. SaunaSpace.com. Everything is on there. You can read about our story and what we offer. We’re based right here in Missouri. We’re a small team of guys. We really love what we do. We hope to see you. We hope you choose us.
Wendy Myers: Thank you so much, Brian. Again, I really appreciate you coming on the show.
Brian Richards: Thank you, Wendy. I appreciate the invitation.
Wendy Myers: And listeners, if you want to learn all about detoxification and how to live a long, healthy life, go to my website, myersdetox.com.
