Thursday, July 19, 2007

tips home sauna

Home Sauna

Tips on building a portable home steam sauna and information on health benefits of infrared saunas over conventional home saunas.
A home sauna delivers the comforts and health benefits of a full-fledged sauna facility. In today’s stress-filled life, a home sauna is a real boon. The medical community has long since acknowledged the therapeutic benefits of exposing oneself to controlled humidity at temperatures of 80 °C or above. Saunas induce sweating, which causes a decrease in the body’s toxic load and thereby promotes better health. Of course, the same precautions one must exercise in full-scale saunas apply to home saunas, too. Overuse can result in heat prostration or the even more serious hyperthermia.

Sauna facilities were previously only available in settings such as college or university physical education complexes, public sports centers and gyms. With the modern home sauna, we are no longer limited to such establishments. Today, we can derive the benefits of saunas in terms of weight loss, cardiovascular health, treatment of many skin disorders and beauty needs, immune system boosting and as adjunctive therapy to treatment of to a number of other disorders. The use of saunas also increases the metabolic rate, which helps eliminate toxic waste products through the skin because of the sweating effect. This is significant, since the skin can be responsible for eliminating 30% of waste form the body.

Infrared home saunas are the latest advance in this field. They employ infrared rays emitted by infrared heaters to build up the required warmth. This technology is far superior to traditional sauna formats. The latter use heated steam, which can have adverse effects if used improperly. Infrared home saunas, however, create a sauna environment within a wooden box or even an open space while the heaters create the actual heating effect. This provides heat directly to the skin, eliminating the need to heat the surrounding air as well. In fact, the generated heat is very similar to that produced by the sun.

Home saunas of any type are immensely beneficial, eliminating toxins from the body and bringing about deep relaxation. However, infrared home saunas have several advantages over the conventional full-sized varieties. In addition to delivering all the associated benefits, they are also compact and portable. Infrared home saunas are also superior to the traditional sauna format because of the added safety factor. In addition, the heat generated in an infrared home sauna has the capacity to penetrate more than 1.5 inches into the body. This has a healing effect on under-stimulated tissues. It also has immense therapeutic value in serious disorders such as arthritis, as well as in tissue injuries. In fact, many advocates of the infrared sauna system claim that it is the only genuine means of eliminating artificial toxins from the human body.

They employ far-infrared radiant (FIR) heat, which is completely safe. The only comparable source of radiant energy is the sun, whose rays can have detrimental effects because excessive doses of sunlight damage the skin. That is not the case with infrared saunas, however. Monitoring devices control the heat and level of radiation very precisely. There are also lower chances of bacterial infections, which can happen in traditional steam-based saunas. Other problems that can occur in normal steam saunas include overheating and resultant breathing difficulties.