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Transcript
- 04:31 Why do we need to detoxify?
- 07:15 Benefits of an infrared sauna
- 09:15 Kill Parasites
- 14:59 Different types of infrared saunas
- 20:46 Sauna Frequency
- 22:55 Tips for using the sauna
- 30:11 Cautions
- 33:32 Breast implants
- 35:38 Set up a sauna at home
- 39:33 Recommended sauna brands
Wendy Myers: Welcome to the Live To 110 podcast. I’m your host Wendy Myers.
Today I’m interviewing Nikki Moses of MosesNutrition.com. She is a Nutritional Balancing Practitioner in the Los Angeles area in Glendale.
She happens to know a ton about infrared saunas. So, today we are going to go in depth about infrared saunas. So if you’ve been curious about what they are and how they can improve your health, this is the show that you’ve been waiting for.
Sweating is one of the best ways and really some of the only ways to get out many chemicals and heavy metals that are present in our bodies today. Industrial dumping and polluting have resulted in us harboring 700 chemicals on average in our bodies. Babies today are born with about 70 chemicals on average in their bodies.
So common sense tells us that this cannot be good for us and will likely lead to health issues and disease. Advances in technology have allowed us to take detox one step further with the advent of infrared saunas. They penetrate far deeper than the regular sauna, thus, providing deeper detoxification. So today we are going to talk about which kinds are best and how they differ from a typical Finnish or Swedish dry heat sauna that you find at your gym or spa.
But first I have to do my little disclaimer. Please keep in mind the Live to 110 podcast is not intended to diagnose treat or cure any disease or health condition. This podcast is solely informational in nature and is not a substitute for medical advice. Please consult your health care practitioner before attempting any treatment you hear on this show.
Our guest, Nikki Moses of Mosesnutrition.com, is a Nutritional Balancing Practitioner. And Nutritional Balancing Science is a healing and detoxification program that uses several methods to detox heavy metals and chemicals that are making us sick.
She has been working with clients for many years helping them to overcome their health conditions. And one of the many methods that she employs are infrared saunas, which she is going to expound on today on the show.
Wendy Myers: Hello, Nikki.
Nikki Moses: Hi, Wendy.
Wendy Myers: Thanks for agreeing to be in the show again. This is round number three.
Nikki Moses: My pleasure, I love it.
Wendy Myers: Why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself and how you came to be a Nutritional Balancing Practitioner?
Nikki Moses: Well, I got into this through my own health journey, which I think is a very common story for health practitioners. I had a lot of health issues as a baby. It got worse as I got older. So my journey began searching for something that would help me and the medical system really didn’t have any solutions for me. So I wound up looking in nutritional realms.
I actually did travel around. I met with some amazing practitioners. I tried all sorts of techniques. And I finally found Dr. Wilson who is the Premiere Specialist on Nutritional Balancing. It’s really his science.
He had worked with a doctor named Dr. Paul Eck who had spent decades researching hair analysis in terms of how the mineral levels in hair relate to what’s going on in the body and what to do to correct the balance of the body so it can start really healing itself. So Dr. Wilson had teamed up with Dr. Eck for probably about the last 14 years of research they did together. And when Dr. Eck passed, Dr. Wilson continued the research.
So I found him. I got fortunate enough to become one of his practitioners. He took me on directly and started training me. And he actually gave me a lot of his own clients. And so I learned very quickly and with quite a load of clients. I still work with him quite closely to this day.
His protocol is what corrected my body. I was full of infections. I was really a mess. I couldn’t really function well at all. I had to pretty much retire from any career I’ve been trying to do. That’s how bad my health got.
So it turned me around. I of course wanted to help share this with others. So I did fully train in this protocol. And now I do deliver that as well to clients all over the world.
Wendy Myers: Oh, great. So basically why don’t you tell the listeners why we need to detoxify? I mean why do we need to use an infrared sauna and what will happen if we don’t?
Nikki Moses: Well, here’s the thing. We’re all full of toxic substances. If you are listening to this, I’m guessing you already are aware of that fact. But most people don’t realize just how toxic we are. They are quite surprised.
Once you get into this process, you really see how much is there in the body. As you mentioned in the previous section here, we’re born with this stuff. We have accumulated it.
It’s everywhere in our environment. It’s in the air. It’s in the food, water, body products, household products, medications. It’s pretty impossible to avoid it. Even the beds we sleep on are filled with fire retardants and other chemicals, unless you work hard to find one that isn’t.
So we get overloaded from these. Our system is overloaded. It’s not designed to process that many toxins.
Now if you’re extremely healthy and nourishing yourself very well and getting the right nutrients, which is what Nutritional Balancing is all about, the body can start to get a handle on this and start pushing this stuff out. But most people are not in that situation. They’re collecting toxins.
I often tell my clients, you are built with toxins. And you don’t really know it until the situation becomes severe enough that you start getting symptoms and diseases. But that process has been going on usually since birth, and eventually it overloads enough where you start to get some type of sign of it.
So this toxic load is a very big factor and you put on top of that the fact that our bodies are generating toxins just as part of the normal biochemical functions in our systems. And those toxins need to be released as well. When you are overloaded, that doesn’t happen well. The body is so overloaded with external toxins, it can’t even get rid of the internally generated toxins. So then you get even more toxic. And the whole thing spirals out of control.
You need every way you can that’s gentle and safe to help the body move these stuff out. And the saunas have been a fantastic way to do that. They’ve existed for a thousand of years in various forms. They have a very long safety record, we can say.
It is an important use of the skin as a detoxification organ because the skin is our largest organ. It is designed to push toxins out. We do that through sweating and various other processes. The body will just send toxins to the skin to come out. So it’s a valuable way to remove toxins from the body. It’s so easy to encourage that by using saunas.
Wendy Myers: In all my research and experience, and I know in yours as well, one of the best ways to detox is with an infrared sauna. So what are some of the benefits of using an infrared sauna?
Nikki Moses: With the infrared sauna, it might be good to talk about a little bit about – we’ll get into that maybe a little bit later.
There are different types of saunas. You have traditional saunas, which is the type you have at the gym. And then there are different kinds of infrared saunas.
There’s the near infrared sauna, which is what we mostly are going to be talking about today. It’s using lights. They’re red infrared bulbs or heat lamps. And you arrange them in an enclosure so that they’re aimed at you and it heats you up and you sweat.
There are steam saunas. There are different kinds of saunas. Far infrared saunas became more popular I would say maybe about 10 years ago. They’re still popular today. Generally when you are dealing with infrared saunas, like when you mentioned, the heat penetrates the body a little bit more deeply.
With saunas, especially with the infrared, using the light saunas that we are going to be talking about, there are three main aspects of benefits. You have heat. You have the benefits of heating the body. You have sweating and the action of sweating. And then with the light saunas that we’re talking about, the near infrared saunas, you also have some color therapy because that uses a red bulb.
So to address these three components here, we’ll start with heat. Heat has many benefits on the body when you heat the body. And it does increase blood flow to the area being heated. That’s why if you put a hot pad on your body for example, the skin turns red in the area that you are putting the hot pad. It’s drawing blood flow to the area.
So anytime you’re in that sauna, you’re facing those lights, you’re heating that side of the body and the blood moves to that side of the body, which increases circulation and gets the blood moving around the body. Blood can tend to stagnate in the body and when you are heating it, it will move towards the area of heat. And it also moves blood when you heat the body towards the skin in general to help expel that heat. So you get increase in circulation.
Why that’s important is the blood brings oxygen. It brings nutrients. It brings immune cells. If there are tissues with infection for example, you increase the blood flow. It helps bring more antibodies and other immune cells to the area.
And heat itself has other benefits in addition to circulation. And one component in circulation that’s also important that we don’t always think about is that when you get the circulation into those tissues, it can grab the toxins and debris that are in the area and pull that stuff out. The blood brings nutrients, but it also pulls things and debris and toxins out of the tissues. So that increases circulation. It’s a huge benefit.
But when you talk about heating the body, it does have other benefits. Generally for example, when you get sick, you might get a fever. A fever is the body’s natural defense mechanism. Heating the body assists with the functioning of the immune system. And it also disables many microorganisms. These little pathogens, they don’t tend to like heat.
For example Lyme cases, we have a lot of people with Lyme. And they do amazingly in these saunas. The Lyme does not react well to the sauna heat. Viruses can’t replicate for example at higher temperatures. So heating the body creates a huge benefit when dealing with infections.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I love that it’s helpful for parasites too because it’s really difficult to treat. There’s not a treatment for every parasite nor even a test for most parasites.
Nikki Moses: That’s right.
Wendy Myers: And sauna just cooks them.
Nikki Moses: It does. They don’t tolerate it well. So huge benefits. I’ve seen tremendous benefits with people with infections.
In fact, it’s so valuable. I have people come to me with some strange infections they’ve picked up overseas. I tell them, “You have to get one of these saunas. You have to start doing this. It’s so important.” So it’s very valuable in that way.
Then you have another more subtle component here, which is that the sauna heat generates what are called heat shock proteins in the body. These are little proteins that scavenge out trouble. They will kill off weak and damaged cells that need to be killed off. They will go after even cancer cells for example. Those heat shock proteins fight infections. They attach to toxins.
So they first discover them when heating the body. Scientists first found – that’s why they call them heat shock proteins. These little proteins are released. Other things that will release them too, but heat is one of the most effective means of doing this. So almost any condition can be benefited just from the release of those proteins while doing a sauna. That’s the heating component.
And of course you get muscle relaxation with heat. All kinds of benefits. Aches and pains tended to do better.
The heat also seems to help move the lymphatic system when you are doing a sauna. So it’s very good for pumping that lymphatic system and getting that to drain more properly.
But then you also have the components of sweating. And this is a component with any type of sauna. You want to sweat. That’s the idea. You want to activate you skin. You want to get those toxins moving out through your skin.
And one problem today is most people, their skin is all clogged up. They haven’t been sweating enough for years. They wear tight clothes. We get chemicals wrapped into our skin all the time. It shuts down. The skin stops acting as it should as one of your main eliminative organs. So when you start doing saunas, at first you’ll find it – Wendy you may have found this too – that you don’t sweat as much in the beginning.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. That’s what I did find.
Nikki Moses: Yeah because your body has to get used to it. It has to remember, “Oh, this is my job. This is what I’m supposed to do.” As you do the saunas, you sweat more and more. And that carries through your whole life, not just while you are in the sauna. Your skin is now activated and it starts functioning properly.
It unclogs. It wakes up and it remembers what it’s supposed to be doing. So that’s a huge benefit of saunas, not just the time you are sweating in the sauna, but in other, the rest of your hours of your day as well. So that’s a huge benefit.
And sweating as you mentioned, toxins are released through the sweat. For example, they tested sweat after sauna and they found mercury in it. So we know that that comes out through the sweat.
There are various toxins that are more readily in some ways released through sweating than through any other means of the body. So you take advantage of that one while doing the sauna as well.
Wendy Myers: And namely phthalates. Phthalates are typically the most – there’s the most of it in our body compared to other toxins and whatnot. And those come out of the sweat.
Nikki Moses: Right, that’s true. When you’re talking about an overloaded body, you need to do anything you can to help get the stuff out. So doing that and sweating more and activating your sweat glands again, letting them learn that that is what they’re supposed to do, it has huge benefits.
Then you have the color therapy, which when you’re using the lamp saunas – this isn’t true about other saunas. When you’re using the lamp saunas, you get a little bit of red, orange and yellow color from that bulb. And it helps to activate various limited organs, the liver, the lower part of the body, the intestines.
So that’s another benefit when we’re talking about the near infrared saunas, not applying to the others. So I mean we’re just almost touching the surface of that description, but generally that covers the basis here of what kind of benefits you get from doing the saunas.
Wendy Myers: And what are the near infrared saunas? I know there are bulbs, but is there – can people buy those?
I know for me, I bought one from you as a little three-bulb contraption that you can just hang in your little sauna. I hang it in my shower. It’s totally portable. And I just take a little space heater in there. But what types can people use?
Nikki Moses: There are all kinds of different saunas. You have the typical sauna for example at the gym that you might go into. Those run anywhere from 150 degrees up to 200 degrees. You walk in and you feel like you can’t breathe. We are talking about the dry saunas, the ones where they have the wood benches.
And usually there’s a heating element in there that’s heating the air. And that’s why they have to heat it and they get so hot. It’s a different type of heat. It’s called conduction heat. What that does is it heats what’s next to it.
It’s the kind of heat we use on a stove top where if you have an electric stove, where it heats the spiraled element there. And then you put your pan on top of that. The heat then moves to the pan. Once the pan is hot enough, the heat then moves to the water. That’s conduction heat.
And those saunas have to run at very high temperatures. So they are somewhat uncomfortable to be in. And the unit heats the air, which then contacts your skin, which heats the skin, which then penetrates deeper and solely heats into the body.
So those are traditional saunas. They’re fine to use. You are going to find that you can’t stand very long. You might feel more exhausted when using them. Those are the saunas that have been around for decades or longer. So that’s that type of sauna.
Then you have of course steam saunas. I don’t recommend steam saunas very much. If you have a long condition of bronchial situation where the steam helps with that, then of course it could be a benefit. But the moisture in there is not sticking to you skin. It doesn’t really promote sweating very much.
And unless that water is purified, who knows what you’re bathing in in there? There could be chlorine in that steam, all kinds of things.
Those saunas tend to build up mildew and other infectious bacteria and things like that. So then they have to be cleaned with bleach. So you’re getting all kinds of stuff in there.
And then you have the far infrared saunas. As I mentioned, those have been around and popular for a long time. They use a ceramics or carbon heating elements. They don’t use lights. And those tend to focus more on the far infrared spectrum. And those are very beneficial.
The problem is that they use a lot of power. So I for example got one of these about eight years ago before I knew about using lights for saunas. And I had to have an electrician out to come give me a dedicated circuit on my power. I have a special plug that could handle the power to operate this thing. So that right there is a downside in and of itself.
Wendy Myers: Is that the gigantic sauna that you have displayed on your office?
Nikki Moses: Yes. That’s my big sauna. My nice big wood sauna. It’s very pretty. For that reason, I like it. But yes, it draws way too much power.
And when you are sitting in there, you get a lot of the EMS, electromagnetic fields. The more power you’re using, the more exposure you get to that, which is the downside.
So with near infrared saunas, you have the bulbs. And there are 750 watt light bulbs. You set up three or four of them. They can just run off a regular extension cord into a regular plug. They do not use nearly as much power. They do focus more on the near infrared spectrum.
I think it might be helpful for listeners to understand infrared. So I might explain that just briefly here. I explained the conduction heat is the type used in regular saunas or like on your stove.
Infrared is radiant heat. It works differently. It’s the kind of heat that you experience when you stand out in the sun on a warm day, but maybe not a very hot day. You can go out and it can be nice out. But if you stay in the sun, you get very warm.
That’s the infrared spectrum of light from the sun. It’s not the UV where you get a sun burn. It’s the infrared part which just creates heat. And that’s what we’re using in any type of infrared sauna, whether you use a far infrared or you use a near infrared. You’re getting those types of rays.
So what happens is it comes off the light bulb or if you’re using a far infrared sauna, it’s coming off one of the ceramic or different types of heating elements they use. And it travels through the air and it doesn’t heat the air very much. Boy, when it heats your body it starts heating your body. And those rays penetrate anywhere up to three inches.
So you get a completely different sauna experience where the gym saunas are 150 degrees to 200 degree Fahrenheit. You run an infrared sauna, it’s anywhere between 110 to maybe 130 degrees. Big difference.
Wendy Myers: I think that’s important for people that are really ill or the elderly. They can’t stay in that long and they need that lower temperature.
Nikki Moses: Exactly. Yeah, you really do. It makes it so much more pleasant. I hate the traditional saunas. I really feel like I can’t breathe in there. And I can stay in an infrared sauna for an hour, very comfortably.
So it’s a very big difference in your experience of saunas. And many people want to talk about doing saunas. They envisioned the type of sauna at the gym and they may be not so into that because it’s uncomfortable. It’s totally different when you’re using infrared.
So the air does heat up a little bit. You need that. You do need that component. It’s ideal to get it up to probably to 110 to 115 degrees as far as the ambient temperature in whatever sauna enclosure you are using, but the lights are really what’s important in heating the body and having that heat penetrate. You really start to sweat and yet you are comfortable because the ambient temperature isn’t so high.
Wendy Myers: So how long and how often do you need to do a sauna to get the benefit?
Nikki Moses: Well, anytime you do a sauna, you are benefiting. When you do sauna, you’re heating the body. You’re increasing circulation. You’re sweating hopefully. Especially as you do them more, you sweat more. You get the heat shock proteins. So anytime you do a sauna, there is benefit.
Now of course the more you do them, the more benefits you accumulate. For example, when you’re first starting to sweat, the body actually can release more sodium potassium in this way. These are important minerals that your body actually needs to retain.
As it learns that it’s going to be sweating regularly, it releases less of those into the sweat. So the more you are doing saunas, the more efficient you use of that sweating. You release less of the good stuff and you start releasing more of the toxic stuff. So the more you do them, the better.
And it takes years to get all these toxins out of the body, years. Probably not even – it can’t be done in five years. This is the reality of our situation today no matter how you go about doing it.
We see a lot of ads and web pages promoting a two week cleanse. And we think we can drink some lemon juice with cayenne pepper for two weeks and get all the toxins out. But I know Wendy you have the same experience. This just isn’t the way it is.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, it’s laughable. Detox in a box, 10 days.
Nikki Moses: Exactly. There could be some benefits, but these toxins are very deeply embedded and there are a lot of them. So doing saunas, figure if you are going to invest in having one, use it for a few years or longer.
Generally, it’s nice if you can hop in their everyday even if it’s just 20 minutes and you’ll find you actually enjoy that time. And remember you can do things while you’re in the sauna. If you are so busy that you need to use that time, that’s okay. You can text message or do read a book or you could do some work while you are in there.
Wendy Myers: Listen to Live To 110 podcast?
Nikki Moses: That’s right. You can do that too. Yup. So it’s not wasted time of your day if you are that busy. Don’t think of it that way.
But generally you want to use them every day if you can. Let’s say you can do it once a week or three times a week. That’s helpful too. But plan on doing it for a few years at least.
Wendy Myers: And so can you give us some tips for sauna use? What are some little dos and don’ts for using the sauna?
Nikki Moses: All right, generally you want to start slowly. And the more infirm you are, the more ill, you definitely want to start even slower. You can try starting for even five minutes in the sauna.
I’m going to be talking here mostly about near infrared saunas, which is the kind that use the bulbs because that is generally what we recommend. It’s the most efficient and the least expensive to operate and least expensive to set up.
So what you want to do is you want to make sure you’re hydrated. That’s very important because your body will not sweat very readily if you are not hydrated. So you do want to drink water on a regular basis. About three quarts a day or three liters a day of high quality water for most adults is the right amount of water to drink.
So you will just want to drink that on a regular basis. You are talking about things like spring water or simple carbon or ceramic filtered water. Those two are usually best. You want to drink those on a regular basis.
You could drink some water before you get in. Try to get a glass or two of water down before your sauna. You can bring water in with you although a lot of people don’t find they need to drink while in the sauna. You definitely can. And you can hydrate a little bit afterwards.
Don’t guzzle water and try to force it down. Your body will guide you a little bit here in how much you need to drink. But that is helpful. You do want to be hydrated.
I have found that for some people that have trouble sweating or heating up, they’re drinking warm water. You heat it up or you make a tea, like a chamomile tea while you are in the sauna or just before. It actually speeds up the heating up of the body process. And it might help you sweat sooner. So that’s one component of it.
You do want to be eating healthy foods. This is important. You want to be eating lots of cooked vegetables. You do need your healthy proteins. Some people benefit actually from simple grains depending on the way their body is metabolizing.
So you do want healthy foods, about 12 ounces a day of vegetable juice, carrot and other vegetable juices. Not fruit, but those vegetable juices are very helpful in replenishing the body. So you do need want to keep that in mind. You want to nourish yourself well while doing saunas.
The body sometimes won’t release toxins until it has the right nutrients. Some of these toxins are used as spare parts in the body. They’re literally filling a hole. And when you get the right nutrient mineral, it releases that. And you do loose some important nutrients to your sweat. So you do need to eat properly. Keep that in mind when doing saunas.
So there’s that component although we don’t really need special foods. Really kelp is one of the things that’s a good thing to add as long as you don’t have Graves’ disease or hyperthyroid or some type of iodine sensitivity. Usually you can add up to 4000 mg of kelp per day to supply some good minerals.
But when you are going into the sauna, usually you want to do it when you’re relaxed. So first thing in the morning is a great time to do it. I like waking up to a sauna.
And you can also do it late at night. Not late at night, but at night before bed. That’s another good time when you are most relaxed because the body sweats more easily when it’s relaxed.
But you can really do a sauna any time of day, ideally just not right after a large meal. That’s usually not a good time to do sauna.
Doing it without clothes on is important because of the way this type of sauna works. You don’t want the lights to hit your clothes and heat your clothes. You can wear a bathing suit, but you do want as much skin exposure while you are in the sauna. It also helps when you are sweating to have the skin exposed.
Most people like to sit on a towel and maybe have a towel in there with them to wipe off the sweat as they’re sweating. And the towel under you will catch it. It will drip off of you. You are doing it right. Right, Wendy?
Wendy Myers: Oh, yeah.
Nikki Moses: Yeah, it drips off of you. So having a towel on you is handy. And when you are doing the sauna, like I said, start slowly. You can work up to maybe 20 minutes at a time.
I know Dr. Wilson doesn’t recommend staying in the sauna longer than 20 minutes, unless you’re on a full Nutritional Balancing program, because it can be very intense and you need the other proper support for your body to deal with everything that is going to be occurring while you’re in the sauna. There are a lot of changes going on in your body.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. And you’re also sweating out a lot of minerals and you have to be on a re-mineralizing program like Nutritional Balancing to replace those minerals that you are losing or it can actually be counterproductive.
Nikki Moses: It can, especially if you’re doing the really long saunas. Like I said, 20 minutes in the sauna, you’re fine. Some people of course, there are a lot of people out there doing infrared saunas that aren’t on the program.
And you just want to be safe about it though. So it is generally best to maybe do it for 20 minutes. If you want to do longer than that, make sure you are on a good program that is nourishing you well because you will detoxify. You’ll have what we call healing reactions where the body is cleansing something or fighting off an infection or doing some change and you can get symptoms from that. So that’s why you want to eat well, be hydrated. Take care of yourself in other ways so that your body can properly do these things without it being too uncomfortable for you.
So work your way up slowly to about 20 minutes. Now people under protocol, the Nutritional Balancing program, depending on your test results and the patterns you’re in, you can tolerate more than that. And that’s something to work with your practitioner and finding out how long to stay in the sauna and how often to do it during the day.
Now there are times when it’s wonderful to do a sauna frequently and for short bursts. For example, when you are dealing with infection. Let’s say you catch a cold or flu. Heating the body, as I mentioned earlier, is one of the ways that the immune system actually overcomes those infections. So you can go into a sauna for 10 or 15 minutes up to six times a day while you are dealing with infection.
During infection, you don’t really want to do really long saunas. It’s too much stress on the body. But you want to do short saunas and frequently. It actually helps move you through that infection faster.
When you’re done with the sauna, it’s good to rest. So you want to lay down for about 10 minutes afterwards, even 15 minutes. You’ll feel your body will continue to sweat a little bit. It will readjust. It will cool off during that time.
It’s normal to feel a little bit faint at times when doing the saunas, when heating the body. You have to be careful not to let it get too much there. It’s an important thing that you keep an eye on it. If you feeling to faint, get out of the sauna right away and lay down. Cool yourself off.
But generally that’s what you do. You hop in. You may want to preheat the sauna before you get in so it’s warm enough that in the 20 minutes you’re in there, you do work up a nice sweat. And then when you are done, resting afterwards is a good idea.
Wendy Myers: Now what about showering? Should you do shower right after? I always run to the shower like, “I have to rinse off the toxins.”
Nikki Moses: I generally find toweling off gets most of the stuff off your skin.
Wendy Myers: Okay.
Nikki Moses: Some people really want to shower quickly first before they rest. But remember rest is important afterwards. So you don’t want to do your long shampoo and conditioning, your long shower before resting. So if that’s that the kind of shower you are going to be taking, I recommend generally toweling off, resting for about 10 minutes and then taking your shower.
Wendy Myers: Okay. And so are there any cautions with using a near infrared sauna? What are the contraindications for sauna use? Meaning are there any people that should not be using a sauna, like children and the elderly and whatnot?
Nikki Moses: Yeah. I mean generally we have to say this because this is true. If you have a particular health condition and you are concerned about whether or not a sauna is going to be helpful for you, you can consult your doctor. It doesn’t hurt to do that. If you have a health practitioner you can talk to them about it.
But generally most people benefit from saunas. We don’t recommend it for pregnant women. Not enough testing has been done to see how it affects the baby. And usually children under five years old really don’t need to do these saunas. We don’t really have children under five do the saunas.
If you have active skin cancer, we generally do not recommend doing saunas for active skin cancer. Although it has been found that when people have other forms of cancer, the saunas are very beneficial.
Another issue is if you’re very frail, very weak, you do want to make sure you are supervised at least until you know how to handle the saunas. Children also, any children five and up, they can use the sauna.
Make sure the lights are aimed at their torso when they’re in there because they’re smaller. You may have to adjust the height of the lights. Usually it’s a three or four light unit in these saunas. And you want it aimed at your torso. You don’t want it aimed at your head. You don’t want to overheat the brain.
Now they do sell little sauna units, which are – they’re far infrared. When you’re enclosed in it, your head’s sticking out. Have you seen those, Wendy?
Wendy Myers: Yes.
Nikki Moses: I don’t recommend that. You want to do a full sauna experience, right? Don’t be afraid to have your head in there.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I want to detox my brain and my facial skin.
Nikki Moses: Yeah, the whole body should be in the sauna. So that’s really how it’s best to do it. But it is best not to have the lights aimed right at your head. It can make your brain a little too hot if you do that for too long.
So with children, you’re going to want to adjust it down to where it’s hitting their torso. You want to supervise them obviously if your child isn’t old enough to be there unsupervised.
You don’t want to splash water on those bulbs. Careful not to touch the bulbs because they do get very hot. I find for safety purposes, it’s best to get a sauna unit that has a screen or a fine mesh over those bulbs just in case one of the bulbs happens to break, which is extraordinarily rare. But it has happened if there is a faulty bulb.
So if you have a mesh screen in front of it, it catches all that. There is nothing to worry about there. But you do want to generally have that kind of protection on it.
If you’re frail, if you’re weak, again start slowly, see how you respond, work up slowly on it. And do get supervision if you’re weak enough that it would call for that.
Wendy Myers: What about rosacea? Is rosacea okay in the sauna?
Nikki Moses: No. Heat tends to flare up rosacea. You can try it, but heat does tend to flare up rosacea. Most of other skin conditions are just fine. But yes, rosacea is one of those that might be flared up. Rosacea generally, heat flares it up.
So saunas may not be great for rosacea in the short term. Now long term effects, it’s hard to say. If you can unclog the skin, heal the liver and heal the rest of the body to a degree, rosacea may improve overtime.
Wendy Myers: And what is your opinion on breast implants?
Nikki Moses: As far as being used in the sauna?
Wendy Myers: Yeah.
Nikki Moses: That’s a good question.
Wendy Myers: That’s a big question that I’m personally curious about because I have breast implants that I stupidly got when I was 19 years old and really retarded as a teenager. And so for me, everything I’ve read says don’t use a sauna if you have breast implants.
But I’ve been using them for a couple of years. I don’t seem to have any problems with them. I think that many physicians, just as a default, automatically say, “Better be safe than sorry. Don’t use one. Perhaps they can deteriorate or heat up too much in the sauna.”
But I haven’t had any problems. So that’s just a personal choice. Do you have an opinion on that at all?
Nikki Moses: I do. Your doctors have to do defensive medicine. They have to be on the cautious side, so lawsuits and things like that.
You’re not heating your body that much when you’re in the sauna. If you were, you would die. It would be some major event. So I can’t imagine that the breast implant material is that sensitive that heating to a degree that the cells of your body can tolerate would degrade that material.
But it’s a little difficult to say. That would be an area of research that will actually be interesting if someone would do that, seeing at what temperature those materials start to breakdown.
If you’re concerned about it, what I suggest women do is just wear something wrapped around their breast. Wear a bathing suit or something. It does block some of that heat from directly heating the breast tissue.
In some women, the breasts are more sensitive. If you’re facing the sauna lights, your breasts are closer to the lights. Sometimes women do find they like to cover a little bit just any way regardless of breast implants just to keep that part getting too hot, at least while facing the lights.
When you turn around your backs to the lights, that heat is not really penetrating the breast tissue very much. So in that case, you really don’t need to worry about it.
Wendy Myers: And so do you need to go to a spa that has an infrared sauna or can you set up a sauna in your home?
Nikki Moses: You can set it up in your home. And honestly that’s the most cost-effective thing to do. If you imagine how much you pay every time you go to use the gym or some spa where you’re having to pay every time you go in their sauna, it’s better to set it up at home.
The other problem is you want to be relaxed. You want to have to get dressed. Go in your car, drive over there. Do the sauna. It’s a lot of work. And you’re usually not catching it first thing in the morning or right before bed if you’re doing it that way.
So it’s very easy to set up one of these at your house. If they’re handy, the instructions are on Dr. Wilson’s website, DrLWilson.com, on how to build your own. Then you do have to be a little bit knowledgeable in electrical wiring to do this.
But there are a lot of people now making these sauna light units. I actually do have one as Wendy mentioned that I have man-made for my clients. A lot of practitioners are starting to manufacture these now. And the cost could range usually around maybe $250 upwards for the light units.
Now that’s the heating element. The unit of lights and you do need an enclosure. You need to build up the ambient temperature in the space. You can’t just sit in the middle of the room and aim three lights and expect your body to have full sauna experience. So you do want to try to have an enclosure.
So some people hang it in their bathroom. If they have a very small bathroom, they can do that or a bathtub. So you hang it or prop it up on one end of the bathtub and you close the shower curtains and you sit in there. Generally, I think Wendy you mentioned you run a space heater with yours.
Wendy Myers: I do because I like it a little bit hotter, so I have a little space heater. I just throw the sheets over the rod because most people, they have a rod and it doesn’t go all the way to the ceiling, so the heat escapes.
I just threw a sheet over. I have a dedicated bathroom to that. And just seal off all the little gaps where the heat could escape and I’m good to go.
Nikki Moses: Yeah. That’s right. Generally it’s easy to use. Usually if you’re not doing it in a very small space, you want to run a space heater. You do need to bring that temperature up.
So you prep the space. You turn on the lights. You run the little heater for a little while before you get in so it’s warm enough that you do sweat.
And you could even get a little temperature gauge in there. They’re inexpensive from the hardware store, a thermometer. You can see what temperature you’re getting to.
And some people tell me, “I’m not sweating.” I say, “Well, check the temperature, the room temperature.” Wherever they’re doing it. Maybe it’s only getting up to 100, 105. Some people do need warmer than that to sweat.
That’s where you want to make sure you’re insulating the area properly. As Wendy mentioned, when you’re in the shower or bathtub, you got usually that gap above the shower curtain. Heat is going to escape through that gap.
So it’s very easy to rig up something. Basically what you want is to lower the ceiling height or at least fill that gap. But lowering the ceiling height is even more effective.
So you can hang another shower curtain on the inside wall of the shower. Run it parallel to the current shower curtain, but on the inside wall. And put another shower curtain on there and then drape it over.
I hope that makes sense. But you basically create a new roof line there, the ceiling height by hanging two shower rods, running lengthwise down that about the width of the bathtub apart. So you can lower the ceiling height. You can lay mats down under you in the bathtub or the bathroom or the closet.
For example, a lot of people use a small closet for this. So really all you have to do is create a space where you can get the temperature up and you can sit in front of those lights. So it’s very inexpensive to set up.
Wendy Myers: So what if someone wants to just buy the full-on seater saunas set up in their home. What brands of saunas do you recommend?
Nikki Moses: I haven’t purchased enough of those or had clients purchase enough to have a brand that stands out as being the one to use. Most of them are good.
On Dr. Wilson’s website, DrLWilson.com, he does have a list of sauna manufacturers. These people have been doing it a while. Most are really good. They’ve been involved in their product overtime.
And so you can just look around for near infrared saunas. I generally find you do want an enclosure. They have some for sale where you sit in the middle of the room and they have these stands that you aim multiple lights at you.
That light can be fairly intense. I don’t recommend using for example seven bulbs in your sauna. There are some that could do that. I think that can be a little too intense. I’ve had clients report to me that it was too intense.
So generally maybe four or maybe five is good. And you’re just looking for an enclosure generally made of good materials. It can be fabric. A lot of these guys have canvas covers. Some of them make nice wood saunas.
Now there is another option and that is if you have a near – I’m sorry, a far infrared sauna if you already have a far infrared sauna. Or you can buy them inexpensively. I mean Costco even sells them. Or you can find a used one.
So you got wood enclosure. It usually comes with a nice door on it. Then you modify by adding the light units. That is another option. If you have one already or you want to get where you have an inexpensive way to acquire that, that gives you the insulating wood enclosure. Then you put the infrared lights unit.
Again, sources who sell those are also on Dr. Wilson’s website. You can ask your health practitioner. If you’re listening to this and you’re already on Nutritional Balancing Program, you might want to ask your health practitioner how best to acquire one of these lighting units and they’ll help you.
But there are more and more people selling these. They’re all over the place now. And most of them do a pretty good job of it. Like I said, make sure that whatever one you buy has some type of protective screen over the front of that bulb. It keeps you from accidentally bumping into it. Just in case the bulb breaks for some reason, it protects you in that way.
Wendy Myers: Nikki, thank you so much for being on the show. That was incredibly informative. I only hope that all the listeners out there get the message and jump in their sauna. Go out and get one and try it out.
Nikki Moses: Yeah. They could try it at a gym. Not a gym, but there are places that have far infrared saunas. It’s not the near, but it’s a similar enough experience that you can always try it too.
You’ll see the difference. It’s amazing. I definitely recommend them for anybody. It’s just a nice thing to have in your home.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. That’s what I did. I went to a spa or a place that’s near my house. I went there for really a year. I went there two or three times a week for a year before I finally broke down and just bought the near infrared lamp contraption and just do it in my home already. I realized it’s something I’m going to do for the rest of my life.
You have to if you plan on being healthy. At least that’s my opinion. I think it’s an absolute must in our increasingly toxic world. And it’s really only going to get worse, so it’s time for you listeners to make one or get your own little sweat shop and put it in your home.
Nikki Moses: That’s right. Yup. That’s easy to do. It really is and it’s very inexpensive. And everybody can use it, the whole family.
Wendy Myers: Oh, yeah. So Nikki, can you tell the listeners a little more about you and where they can find you?
Nikki Moses: Well, my website is MosesNutrition.com. That has contact information for me. It has more about my protocol and what I do. So you can e-mail me from that site and my phone number of course is there as well.
So that’s usually the best way to find me. It’s to be in my website.
Wendy Myers: And you sell near infrared lamp contraption also, don’t you?
Nikki Moses: I do. Yes, I do currently sell that. I know this podcast might be out there for quite sometime. So it’s best to check my website for current details on that.
I’m in the process of trying to develop also an enclosure. All I have is the light units. So that has to be set up in a shower or a closet or some other space like that. So eventually I hope to have an actual enclosure that can go with it.
Wendy Myers: Okay, great. So listeners, contact Nikki. Your sister makes them, I understand. So just contact Nikki if you’re interested in purchasing one of those.
Nikki Moses: Yes.
Wendy Myers: If any of you listeners are interested in learning more about infrared saunas, you can visit DrLWilson.com. He has a ton of info on there about sauna therapy.
And I have a blog post appropriately entitled Infrared Saunas where you can find lots of info on the different kinds of infrared saunas and also a list of places in LA that you can go to. And try to search for one in your area. I’m also currently writing a blog post about near infrared lamp sauna therapy. So keep your eyes peeled for that post.
If you want to learn more about health, you can follow me on Facebook and Twitter @IWillLiveTo110. I am also on YouTube at WendyLiveTo110 and on Instagram and Pinterest @LiveTo110.
And if you want to learn more about weight loss or the modern Paleo diet, my version of Paleo, go to live myersdetox.com and sign up for my free 33-page Live to 110 by Weighing Less E-guide©. And you also get my 14-part e-mail series about the modern Paleo diet, which are all about how to live a long healthy disease-free life.
So go check out our websites. Cate was not here with us today. She couldn’t be here. But you can find her at Fitness-Broad.com and me, Wendy at myersdetox.com .
If you like what you’ve heard on the show today, please give the Live To 110 podcast a nice review and rating in iTunes. I would really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening to the Live To 110 podcast.
