The search for the causes of various kinds of cancer goes on.  However, progress has been made, and the culprits appear to include toxins that accumulate in the body’s cells and cause changes at the cellular level.  These changes can be the beginnings of cancerous tumors.

We can’t avoid toxins.  The environment is full of them.  We breathe them, eat them and absorb them in other ways.  Our best defense against toxins is to remove them: to detoxify ourselves regularly.

Altering our diet can be an excellent way to detoxify.  Certain foods have a detoxifying effect, and watching our diet to avoid putting unwanted chemicals into our body can be quite helpful.  However, toxins will continue to accumulate over time, and we need a way to purge them in higher quantities.

Saunas have long been considered important in "purifying" the body and spirit.  For centuries, people have used saunas for this purpose.  But around 40 years ago, saunas made a giant leap forward in Japan with the introduction of the far infrared version and infrared sauna detoxification started to achieve prominence. 

A far infrared sauna operates in a fundamentally different way.  Traditional saunas, heated by wood, gas or oil, heat the air to very high temperature — 180 degrees Fahrenheit or more — to warm the body to an appropriate level to achieve detoxification.  Far infrared saunas do the same work, better, at much lower air temperatures.

Removing heavy metals and other harmful chemicals from the body’s cells requires that the toxins be released from fat cells into the lymphatic fluid, which carries the toxins to the surface of the skin via sweat.  In traditional saunas, the sweat generated by the high heat contains about 3 percent toxins.  Sweat generated by the warming from far infrared radiation contains about 20 percent toxins.  So far infrared saunas are far more effective at detoxification.

Detoxification using a far infrared sauna is very safe.  Infrared radiation from infrared sauna heaters is the same as infrared radiation from the sun.  It is not ultraviolet radiation, which can cause burning and cell damage.  Infrared radiation, in contrast, is perfectly safe.  Yet it is able to liquefy far more subcutaneous fat than heat from a traditional sauna and therefore release more toxins.  In the process, it has the added benefit of increased sauna weight loss.

Infrared sauna benefits go far beyond detoxification, as important as the process is to helping us stay healthy and preventing serious illness, such as cancer.  These saunas are also extremely effective at treating certain skin conditions, alleviating pain from arthritis and even rheumatoid arthritis, improving heart health, increasing circulation and helping with conditions such as yeast infections.

If it is true that accumulated toxins contribute to the development of cancer, and this does appear to be the case, then far infrared saunas have a place in prevention and, perhaps, in treatment of the disease.  More research is needed, of course, but the prospects look good.