Acne Magazine

We just recently purchased an infrared sauna, and by recently I mean literally 4 days ago.  Since purchasing and setting the sauna up, we have used it every single night.  It’s primary purpose is for relaxation and muscle and joint pain relief, since both of us suffer from back and neck pain, and have desk jobs that just make it worse during the day. 

However, after extensive reading on infrared saunas, I discovered that many people said nightly or frequent sauna bathing helped their skin problems clear up immensely, one of those skin conditions being our favorite friend, acne.  I have talked before about how I felt that using a regular sauna at my work gym once in a while seemed to really give my skin a nice, soft glow and even helped it to clear up a few years ago. 

Well, this sauna we purchased is not the normal type of sauna, which uses steam heat or regular heat to heat the body.  By regular heat, I mean a heat that heats the air around your body, and therefore may become a little uncomfortable on the eyes and the skin, whereas an infared sauna uses infared heat, which heats the body directly and penetrated the skin and tissue more deeply. 

This deeper penetration supposedly makes the infrared heat sauna a better source of muscle and joint pain soothing, since it can better reach the source of the problem and therapeutically heat it, thereby reducing swelling and pain.

Also, infrared heat helps to stimulate the circulation and is supposed to increase the metabolic rate.  The increase in circulation should be good for the skin because it stimulates healing and promotes a better circulation of impurities out of the skin.  The sweat that is produced by the infrared heat is supposed to contain impurities and toxins, and that is another reason they are supposed to be good for both detoxification and increasing the stimulation of the circulation and healing process.

I am already noticing a softer feel to my skin, and it appears very healthy and well colored after the sauna bathing.  We bathe for about a half hour, sometimes a bit longer, and we make sure we stay in until we break a  pretty good sweat.  More on this to come as I experience the sauna’s hopefully good effects on my skin!