Have you ever noticed the heat on your skin from the sun when you’re outside. Maybe at the beach you noticed when a cloud moved on to let the sun shine down freely and the heat felt so good to you at that point.
The sun is the ultimate infrared heater. When you are outside, you can feel infrared energy in the form of thermal radiation that is beaming onto the planet providing warmth to your body. Thermal radiation describes heat that can be transmitted through electromagnetic waves over long distances. Earth receives the sun’s thermal radiation from a distance of 93 million miles away.
This form of radiant heat, is always transmitted from a source, such as the sun, or an infrared heater. The transmission takes place through waves of light known as electromagnetic radiation.
Just like that from the sun, the heat that is absorbed by the body inside of an infrared sauna has a very distinct feel to it. I like to tell people that the inside of an infrared sauna feels like a mid-summer day at noon in Las Vegas! The absorbed radiation is what warms the human subject and gives the body such a good feeling of warmth. When I walk into a HOTWORX sauna I always get this feeling immediately.
Infrared Heat is radiated from the source to the subject. The subject either reflects the radiation, re-radiates it or absorbs it. The absorbed radiation is what warms the subject. In the case of IR saunas, the warming of the human subject through absorption is what is most important.
Here’s some of the science behind that IR feeling of warmth…
“At the beginning of the twentieth century, the discovery that energy is quantized led to the revelation that light is not only a wave, but can also be described as a collection of particles known as photons. Photons carry discrete amounts of energy called quanta. This energy can be transferred to atoms and molecules when photons are absorbed.”¹
According to Debra Rose Wilson, “Infrared heat [saunas] can provide waves of a type of heat and light that can penetrate deeper into the body, and can heal deep tissue.”²
This process of transferring energy when photons are absorbed is part of what is happening during a session in an infrared sauna. Heat is transferred from the infrared heaters to the human subject. In fact, this heat that is carried by the waves of infrared energy can penetrate up to 1.5 inches into the skin. This absorption of thermal radiation has many well documented benefits that I have covered extensively in previous blog posts.
The point to be understood from this blog post, however, is the high quality of the heat that can be experienced inside of an infrared sauna. Inside of the patented HOTWORX infrared workout sauna, the infrared energy is felt in the form of heat! The far infrared radiant heat and small amounts of medium wavelength infrared allows customers to experience deep infrared energy and heat penetration while they workout.
““These saunas use infrared panels instead of conventional heat to easily penetrate human tissue, heating up your body before heating up the air,” explains physical therapist, Vivian Eisenstadt, MAPT, CPT, MASP.”³
If you haven’t experienced the heat of an infrared sauna, I invite you to join in and see what you are missing. If you want to take your workout to another level, I invite you to turn up the heat and experience a training session in a HOTWORX infrared sauna!
