Want to lose weight? Improve blood circulation? Strengthen your cardiovascular system? Detox? Heal a wound? Eliminate aches and pains? Strengthen your immunity? Because far infrared therapy does all of this and more.
What Is Far Infrared Therapy?
Far-Infrared Therapy involves the use of Far-Infrared Rays (FIR), from far-infrared bulbs. The bulbs produce invisible waves of energy that penetrate the surface of the skin. Although the mechanisms for healing are somewhat complicated, the net effect is that by elevating the body’s surface temperature and penetrating deep into the body, significant healing takes place.
This really isn’t anything new. Heat therapy has been around for thousands of years, dating back to ancient civilizations such as the Finns, the Romans, the ancient Chinese, the American Indians, and even Egyptians back as far as 5,000 years ago.
The most obvious heat therapy comes from the sun. In fact, I recommend to all of my patients that they get sunlight on their skin during the part of the year when sulfated vitamin D3 is available. (Link to vitamin D articles) It is the only way to get the sulfated version of vitamin D3 and all of the benefits that come with that. But it only requires a very short stint in the sun with as much skin exposed as possible to reap amazing benefits. In other words, you only want to pink your skin, you don’t want to stay out long enough to tan or burn it.
Far-Infrared Rays, on the other hand, are the invisible rays of natural sunlight that have the longest wavelength and the added benefit of not damaging the skin or the body with prolonged exposure. The health benefits of FIR are numerous.
Benefits of Far-Infrared Technology
For many decades, scientific evidence has found that heat can maintain and enhance the wellness of the human body. Scientists have researched different ways how to develop more effective forms of thermal heat therapy that target specific areas and enable deep heat penetration. But science has had a shaky history.
Indeed, some forms of heat therapy can be hazardous, uncomfortable, unhygienic, inefficient, and ineffective. For example, most saunas create exposed to extremely high temperatures causing heat stress. For many people, this can have detrimental effects on health, especially for people with heart challenges or for those needing to sustain normal blood pressure.
Other shaky approaches that are uncomfortable as well as unreliable are compression and heat wraps. The heat is easily lost, the temperature does not remain constant, and maintaining a thermal compression or wrap can be problematic and inconvenient.
It may have been for these reasons that research and development in the 60s focused on far infrared therapy, especially in Japan and Germany. This is where we first saw far infrared therapy introduced and it literally revolutionized treatment by introducing a natural, safe, and highly effective way to approach thermal treatment.
Today, heat therapy is used internationally by medical professionals for the relief of sports injuries, detox, and even in hospital nurseries to warm newborns. I have used it to recover from a torn rotator cuff and to substantially improve knee replacement surgery outcomes in myself, family members, and friends. It is also marvelous for weight management and detox. Two things many of my patients are interested in learning more about.
Stay tuned for my next article, and find out what the research is saying about far infrared therapy, and why you should be thinking about investing in a far infrared lamp yourself 🙂
