How Infrared Saunas Can Help You Lose Weight

Infrared saunas have many health benefits associated with relaxing muscles, improving the cardiovascular system and relieving stress but they also have the serious bonus of helping people to lose weight.  People are often sceptical about this because they know that the initial weight loss people have recorded after a session in an infrared sauna is down to losing water rather than fat.  However, longer term weight loss benefits do exist even if the claim that infrared saunas ‘melt away fat’ isn’t really accurate.

Raises Heartrate and Burns Calories

Saunas make you sweat. That’s not news to anyone but the penetrating effect of infrared saunas mean they don’t heat up the air around you and don’t have to get as uncomfortably warm as a normal sauna but still make you sweat just as much if not more.  Your body reacts to this by increasing your heartrate and, essentially, behaving internally like it does when you exercise.  This burns more calories than you would normally burn when just sitting for half an hour and improves your cardiovascular system in a similar way to how moderate exercise does.

Quicker Exercise Recovery

Burning extra calories is great but it’s not a substitute for actual exercise.  Fortunately, using an infrared sauna can actually help you exercise more regularly and more effectively by speeding up recovery times after exercise and even helping injuries to heal more quickly.  They do this by relaxing muscles to allow blood to flow more easily to every part of the muscles and joints.  This encourages healing and flushes out toxins stored in the muscles.  Regular exercisers find that their muscles are less sore after using the infrared sauna and other aches and pains are soothed away.  People with musculoskeletal problems often get relief from using an infrared sauna so are more free to move and exercise.

Motivation to Exercise

Another major barrier to exercise is feeling stressed, anxious, depressed or just lacking in energy. Using an infrared sauna regularly can help you relax deeply to fight stress and boost your energy levels.  Our sauna at The Float Spa has a Bluetooth connection so you can listen to your own music while you relax and a coloured light for soothing light therapy too.  The warmth of the sauna relaxes your muscles and the peace of sitting in the nice warm sauna alone helps to calm the mind.  Regular users of the sauna report feeling deeply relaxed immediately after a 30 minute session but then energised and clear headed as they go about the rest of their day.

Although we don’t recommend that someone wanting to lose weight simply uses our infrared sauna regularly to do so, we do recommend using it as part of a programme of healthy eating and exercise to help get the best results faster.  It’s also really good for your skin so is a great addition to your regime if you’re trying to look your best for a special event.  If you’d like to speak to one of our team about our infrared sauna or to book a session, call 01273 933 680 and we’d be glad to help.