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an infrared sauna
When Steve Dreyer used to exercise at a local fitness facility, he didn’t always have the time to spend 30 minutes away from work and home to sit in the sauna, even though he’d always enjoyed it. But when the pandemic hit and gyms closed their doors, he considered the benefits of having a sauna at home.
During last year’s stay-at-home orders, Dreyer moved his workouts to the basement of his Kirkwood residence, and in November he upgraded his home gym with a sauna.
“If I get up a little bit earlier, it’s really not going to cut into anybody’s schedule,” says Dreyer, reporting that he’s in the sauna by 5 a.m. on most workdays. “If I don’t use it for a day, I feel like I’ve missed out on something.”
He says he even used the sauna when rotator cuff surgery in January made it impossible for him to work out. He’s convinced that his time in the sauna helped him sleep better and heal faster from the procedure.
“When I couldn’t move my shoulder, I would sit in there just to get a sweat going,” he says.
Dreyer bought his two-seater unit, in which light from the far-infrared range of the spectrum is used to create heat, at a local Costco. The sauna, which occupies about 6 square feet of space, was delivered to his home. Dreyer assembled it with a hand from his son and an electrician friend, who also helped install the required dedicated electrical outlet.
Size, easy install, and price—units from Costco start around $1,300 before taxes—have made home saunas more accessible. Specialty retailers such as St. Louis–based Aspen Spas have seen an uptick in sales to homeowners who either don’t want to take on assembly and installation or want to customize a unit, with Bluetooth, for example. Buyers have taken advantage of low interest rates in the past year to “enhance their homes and quality of life,” says Sam Bania, co-owner of Aspen. The company has sold saunas for more than 20 years, but sales have nearly doubled since the start of the pandemic. Aspen is on pace to sell close to 50 saunas this year, he reports.
Photography by KeithFLS / iStock / Getty Images Plus
“The second reason we’re seeing an increase in sauna sales is simply because people in the Midwest are recognizing the value of saunas from a health standpoint,” Bania says.
Far-infrared saunas, which produce a dry heat of 100 to 150 degrees Fahrenheit, allow the body’s core temperature to increase gradually, boosting heart rate and the volume of blood flowing through the body, says cardiologist Lauren Munsch Dal Farra, founder, and CEO of PALM Health, a medical clinic and wellness club in Ladue. PALM shut down its saunas in mid-March last year but reopened them this year for solo use, or use by members of the same household, on March 1. Since then, they’ve been almost fully booked.
The higher temperatures of traditional saunas, on the other hand, cause the body to start working hard to cool itself as soon as a user steps in, Dal Farra explains. As a result, the user’s core temperature doesn’t have the chance to increase as it does in a far-infrared sauna.
“You don’t get some of the same cardiovascular benefits as you do with an infrared sauna,” she says.
Infrared saunas are also better for users who can’t tolerate the higher heat and humidity of traditional saunas, in which heat, not light, is used to warm the air and which often feature hot rocks that users can pour water over to create steam. Traditional saunas have been a part of life in Nordic countries—including Finland, where the word “sauna” originated—for centuries.
Eric Blatchford of St. Louis Wellness Center encourages prospective buyers to try out a sauna before purchasing one. To that end, the center offers 20-minute sessions with the far-infrared sauna.
Home saunas aren’t feasible for everyone and, like any piece of fitness equipment, can fall into disuse, says Blatchford, “but it’s definitely one of those things that the more you use it, the more you’ll enjoy it.”
