Adding a low emf infrared sauna into your home is a great way to add relaxation, pain relief, healthcare, and many other health benefits within your daily health regimen. Moreover, there are various sauna advantages for athletes as well, and it isn’t just for post-workout muscle recovery.

Medical professionals believe that increasing the body’s temperature in short periods of time in a 2 person infrared sauna, can amplify improvements to an athlete’s performance. These shorts periods of extreme heat which are followed by a cooling-off period is known as “hyperthermic conditioning.” It has many positive effects on the body, for instance, increase endurance to the growth of new brain cells.

Many studies have been conducted, especially on how a low emf infrared sauna can provide muscle pain relief, endurance and athletic performance enhancement in athletes.

How Infrared Saunas Promote Muscle Pain Relief And Recovery In Injured Athletes

From time to time, an athlete might experience muscle injury and experience pain, discomfort and immobilization. When this happens, the muscles start to weaken over time.

Utilizing an infrared sauna benefits athletes with this type of muscle ailment by using hyperthermic conditioning, since it slows down muscle degeneration. This entire body heat treatment strengthens muscle regrowth and lowers the chances of muscle atrophy.

As any doctor will inform you, during an injury you are likely immobile, but the good news is that you don’t have to be mobile to sit in a low emf infrared sauna a couple of times a week to increase your heat shock protein (HSP) levels.

The gentle warm temperatures of an infrared sauna, which are followed with periodic cooling times help to relax muscles, nerves and blood vessels. Sauna use is good for athletes, particularly after a demanding workout since it relieves sore muscles. It can also help to relieve arthritis, asthma, physical and mental fatigue, and it can even eliminate toxins from the body.

How Can Infrared Sauna Use Increase Athlete’s Endurance Level And Longevity? 

All athletes want is increased endurance because a good level of endurance provides a clear measurement for many aspects of general health, including the heart.

When you expose your body to hyperthermic conditioning or in a nutshell “ acclimating the body to heat independent of aerobic physical activity via sauna use,” it can enhance endurance since it encourages changes in the body that make it less difficult to perform athletically when the body temperature is elevated.

When the body is exposed to sensible amounts of heat stress, it will slowly acclimate to the heat, triggering many beneficial shifts to happen in the body. These alterations come with increased blood flow and plasma volume to the muscles and heart, which strengthens endurance and increases muscle mass.

A research study revealed that participants who sat in an infrared sauna for thirty minutes, twice a week for three weeks immediately after exercising boosted the amount of time it took to jog until physical exhaustion kicked in by 30 percent.

Other infrared sauna benefits for athletes include:

• Improvement in general cardiovascular health.
• Increased sweat rate as a reaction to increased thermoregulatory control.
• Increased blood flow to skeletal muscle and other connective tissues.
• A boost in the efficiency of oxygen transport to muscles.

Further research concluded that an athlete can use an infrared sauna to promote their heat shock proteins and increase muscle growth.

Doctors explain that exposure to heat has been proven to increase the lifespan in flies and worms of up to fifteen percent, which is a benefit that is credited to HSPs. One specific gene (HSP70) has also been linked to increased longevity, which signifies overall anti-aging benefits.

How Do Infrared Saunas Improve The Overall performance In Athletes?

After a completed workout, or sitting all day at your desk, a lot of people like to relax in the gentle heat of an infrared sauna. Besides infrared saunas being an awesome device for total relaxation, there is evidence that suggests that regular sauna use provides an athlete with many health benefits, including enhancement of muscular endurance and shortening recovery time after exercise.

As mentioned before, one of the many useful changes that happen when sitting in an infrared sauna is the release of heat shock proteins.

Researchers conducted an experiment with rats using heat treatment which generated a release of heat shock proteins. Shockingly, the rats were able to regrow more muscle mass.

In the early 1990s, Finnish researchers found out that using a sauna can improve the amount of human growth hormone (HGH) produced by the body. This is important since HGH plays an important part in the body’s growth and repair of tissue, such as promoting protein synthesis in the muscle itself. Therefore, the regular use of an infrared sauna has extensive beneficial effects on life expectancy, exercise performance, and post-exercise recovery.

How To Use An Infrared Sauna To Boost Workouts?

Try to use your infrared sauna for seven consecutive days for optimum results. The first day, you might only be able to tolerate five to ten minutes, but by the seventh day, you can sit in your infrared sauna without any issues at all.

Women may react better to a “heat primer” when trying to acclimate to a sauna because their hormonal cycles provide them different thermoregulatory thresholds. So, women might want to attempt the sauna for five to ten minutes, then leave the sauna for five minutes, then go back inside for the rest of the sauna session to complete the 30-minute mark.

Since the resting heart rate will be high during your time sitting inside a sauna (around 140 bpm), try to have less intense workouts that week. Arrange a recovery or endurance week to prevent overtraining. Aim for sauna sessions that are within 30 minutes of completing a workout. Try to avoid drinking during these 30 minutes ( protein recovery drink is an exception), but no other fluid, since some dehydration is vital to adapting to this technique. If you feel too hot, you can pour water around your neck instead.

After your sauna session, you should slowly rehydrate yourself over the course of two to three hours. Avoid gulping down large amounts of fluid after sauna bathing since this will just cancel out the heat stress response to the kidneys. If you are showering after a sauna session, make it a warm one, or wait at least ten minutes if you want to have a cold shower. This sudden change in temperature can make you very lightheaded.