Infrared saunas are something else

As a fan of saunas and steam rooms generally, I’d always kind of wanted one for use at home. Now that we have the space on our pool deck, I finally (ahem) took the plunge and bought one from SalusHeat (though our model is in cedar).

A bunch of people had told me that infrared saunas confer certain therapeutic medical benefits, but it all struck me as a typical Internet wellness marketing scam. In particular, most of what I read was about near infrared (the light closer to the visible spectrum), but—being a cheapskate—most of the saunas in my price range (including the one we bought) emit far infrared, which penetrates the body more deeply.

Anyway, now that we have had it for a couple days, I have two major takeaways:

1. A max temp of 65ºC seemed really low compared to traditional saunas, but it turns out you're basically being microwaved, so even if the air temp isn't 95º, you'll sweat and feel as if it is

2. Holy cow is this effective treating deep muscle pain and soreness. Between lifting weights and riding roller coasters, I occassionally find myself with pretty severe neck and back soreness, and nothing I try really helps much. 40 minutes in this thing punctuated by a couple cold plunges into my pool? Total game changer

Anyway, if you're sauna curious, I figured I'd feed Google something about these infrared ones because they appear to not be marketing bullshit. It may separately be the case that I'm gonna be absolutely riddled with cancer from whatever EMF this thing is emitting, but at least I won't be sore!