Sauna's Incredible Health Benefits + HigherDOSE Infrared Blanket Review

00:00 welcome to the honest Channel I'm Claire Johnston a journalist on a mission to learn how to age well look and feel good for longer and share those findings with you and today I'm going to explore the restorative power of heat therapy and why I've started using this infrared sauna blanket to help me take advantage of its many benefits and a reminder before we get into the detail that you'll find more advice and expert opinion around how to age well on my website honest. Scott and you can keep up with the latest on this Channel by hitting subscribe along with the notification Bell so what does heat therapy do how does it do it and what does a science show let's find [Music] out so I've always enjoyed using a sauna if I'm in a hotel or a gym with a spa but I hadn't been fully aware of its benefits and I do follow some of the leading lights in the field of Aging well and among them is physician and functional medicine specialist Dr Mark Heyman and it was in Reading this book

01:00 forever young that I was persuaded to start using heat therapy in the book Dr Heyman highlights Finland as the country that leads the way with sauna use with most fins using a sauna at least once a week and he flagged a study which monitored mortality and heart health in more than 2,000 male finished SAA users over a 20-year period it found those who used a SAA two to three times a week had a 24% lower risk of death and those who used it 4 to seven times had a 40% lower risk of dying over the period of the study than those who went for one session a week spending 20 minutes in the sauna compared with 10 minutes also significantly reduced the risk of heart failure sauna therapy four to seven times a week was also found to reduce the risk of dementia and Alzheimer's by 66% compared with those who use the sauna once a week so these are pretty eye openening numbers the question is how does heat therapy improve our health

02:00 now there's always been talk of sweating out toxins when we're in a very hot bath or sauna but that idea isn't hugely well supported by science but in a scientific review paper published in 2018 by scientists in Melbourne Australia which explored 40 clinical studies with nearly 4,000 participants the conclusion was that whole body heat therapy through sauna bathing can induce what they described as profound physiological effects and it's seems that by raising our core temperature we activate our therm regulating pathways through the hypothalamus in the brain which controls our hormone system and it leads to an increase in our heart rate causes our blood vessels to dilate and sends our sweat glands into action and this has multiple physical benefits similar to exercise including improving cardiovascular fitness and function lowering blood pressure and also helping us regulate blood sugar levels by increasing insulin sensitiv ity the heat

03:00 warms up our muscles and Joints helping reduce inflammation and aiding Muscle Recovery because according to the Arthritis Foundation when you warm up a sore joint or tired muscle your blood vessels get bigger allowing more blood oxygen and nutrients to be delivered to the injured tissues but sauna therapy also does something really really clever in that it causes us to release heat shock proteins now we know that damaged proteins speed up the aging process and so we want to do as much much as we can to repair them and help make Replacements and heat shot proteins can help the body do exactly that and prevent a buildup of damaged proteins that accelerate aging symptoms and instead activate repair to slow down the aging process heat also increases the production of endorphins which improve our mood and support better sleep and it can help support the immune system too and these are just some of the benefits so I did look briefly at the idea of getting a traditional sauna installed and somewhere like our garage but cost

04:00 and space quickly rolled that out traditional sonas would also be pretty expensive to heat but I was offered an infrared sauna blanket for review from Wellness Tool Company higher dose and it struck me as being a really good compromise that would help me get the benefits while being cheaper to run and a bit more convenient too because I can just fold it up and put it away when I'm done higher do are based in the US and also shipped to Canada and most of Europe and their infrared blanket is one of the best sellers on the market it is a significant investment so for UK customers it's priced at 839 in the US it's $699 the good news is I have a 15% discount code which will include alongside a product Link in the description so that does reduce the cost quite significantly I also check with them regarding Customs problems and charges and they have UK distribution so that shouldn't be an issue here but they did say if for any reason Customs

05:00 charges a fee elsewhere then higher dose will make sure it's paid back if you let them know the sauna blankets themselves are made of high grade and waterresistant polyurethene on both the interior and exterior and higher dose are at pains to say it's gone through stringent testing to ensure it's non-toxic it has a temperature range of 68 to 158° fah and you can alter the heat using a controller so it's automatically programmed to shut off after an hour but you can switch off man ually at any point the idea is you let it heat up for around 10 minutes before climbing in and with eight temperature settings I usually heat up to around 7 and then I switch it up to 8 for just 5 minutes or so until I break into a sweat and then I turn it back down again I lay like that for around 15 minutes before switching off the blanket entirely and laying for a final 5 minutes higher do do recommend when you first start using it to keep temperatures to the mid-range around four to five and then ease up

06:00 gradually and they say only to use the top temperature if you're not sweating at a lower temperature which is what was happening for me but once I start sweating I can turn the heat down again and I'll still continue to sweat and as far as the experience of using it goes this is basically like climbing into a big waterproof sleeping bag that's very warm and cozy and it may be psychological but I've had a bit of stiffness in my knees in recent months and that is feeling a lot better at the moment so I'm hoping that it may very well be helping unlike a traditional sauna where you strip down before you get into it for an infrared sauna blanket you want to be covered ideally wearing a long sleeve cotton shirt and joggers or something like that and socks too the blanket can get hot so by clothing you protect your skin and also absorb the sweat I got the toweling blanket to go inside it as well which keeps me covered and is really handy for cleaning but I do still go in clothed and once you've climbed in you just zip up and relax and use the controller to

07:00 adjust the heat depending on how you feel so something like a steam sauna could heat up to 180° fah but infrared blankets use lower temperatures because they're using electromagnetic radiation to directly warm your body so traditional sonas heat the air first which then Heats you while infrared light penetrates and heats the body and that does mean you can lie there for longer periods of time because it feels more comfortable than a hot sauna it's also worth noting that onas are not recommended for people who are pregnant and you should take medical advice before using them if you have a medical condition including heart problems and it's not usually recommended for children either who can't yet regulate their heat as well as adults so in terms of safety and frequency of use with an infrared sauna at the moment I'm just using my blanket twice weekly for 20 minutes because as with so many of the new technologies discussed on this channel there isn't longterm research around fre quency and duration with

08:00 infrared therapy to guarantee safety considering we're talking about electromagnetic radiation although it is very low-level non-ionizing radiation generally thought to be safe for humans higher dose say their blankets use very low electromagnetic fields known as emfs higher frequency emfs which include X-rays and gamma rays are in the ionizing radiation part of the electromagnetic spectrum and could damage DNA or sales directly but that's not believed to be the case with low EMF so a sauna blanket like the higher dose one would be considered safe by most experts but it's still my intention to use it just a couple of times a week over winter for 20 minutes at a time five of those minutes with the power switched off and I'll likely take a break when the weather improves Again The Independent Newspaper voted the higher dose blanket as their Top Choice of infrared sauna blankets for 2023 but the cheaper my High blanket also got a

09:00 mention there so there are lower cost options available you do pay for the quality with higher dose because you want to make sure these blankets firstly are fire safe and this one also includes a charcoal clay and Crystal layer now I don't have hard science to share with you around those added elements but higher dose say they have included the crystals to fight off free radicals and other layers to support detoxification what I can say is it's wellmade and it doesn't overheat if the costs are prohibitive or you don't like the idea of using an infrared sauna you can also try hot baths for heat therapy or just seek out a gym with a traditional saut that you can use regularly now real biohackers recommend taking a cold shower or cold pool plunge immediately after using the saut because just as heat brings benefits so does subjecting your body to cold but I've not been able to go there just yet a Scottish winter is cryotherapy enough finally I should say it's also really

10:00 important to rehydrate after sweating but that kind of goes without saying that's it from me I'll do an update once I've used it for a few months to let you know how I'm finding it and if I'm noticing any major benefits to my joints in particular do let me know if you use heat therapy and how you find it and for now thank you for watching and I'll see you next time

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