You may consider a home sauna to be a luxury, an item that offers pleasure and comfort but is ultimately inessential to your well-being. The results of years of research, however, may just convince you of what sauna enthusiasts have believed for centuries - that sauna use offers tremendous health benefits that simply cannot be denied.

A main objective of any sauna bath is to make you sweat, and sweating is a natural, necessary function of the human body. It's one way the body can rid itself of extra heat and water and eliminate harmful toxins that have built up inside it over time. As Dr. Sherry A. Rogers writes in her book, Detoxify or Die, "The bottom line is that sweat is the only proven method for getting the most dangerous toxins out of the body." In their studies of far infrared saunas, Japanese researchers have concluded that perspiration induced by infrared sauna use contains as much as 300% more toxins than sweat expelled during exercise. Included among these toxins are aluminum, cadmium, lead and mercury.

The health benefits of sauna bathing go beyond assisting detoxification, however. As your body increases sweat production to cool itself during a hot sauna bath, your heart increases blood circulation. Heart rate, cardiac output and metabolic rate increase, while diastolic blood pressure drops, helping to improve overall cardiovascular fitness.

Sauna use may also contribute to healthy weight loss. A letter published in a 1981 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association claimed that "a moderately conditioned person can easily 'sweat off' 500 grams in a sauna, consuming nearly 300 calories - the equivalent of running two to three miles. A heat-conditioned person can easily sweat off 600 to 800 calories with no adverse effects. While the weight of the water lost can be regained by rehydration with water, the calories consumed will not be."

Most indisputable are the claims that regular sauna use helps relieves stress and promotes relaxation. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that spending just a few minutes in a hot sauna bath reduces anxiety levels, soothes nerves and warms tight muscles. Not only has sauna use been shown to encourage deeper, most restful sleep, infrared sauna therapy has been effective for relieving pain associated with arthritis, backache, bursitis, fibromyalgia, headache, sprains, strains and other muscular-skeletal ailments.

"I am convinced that the far infrared sauna is something that everyone should do to restore health," writes Dr. Rogers. In a society struggling with toxic build-up, heart disease, stress and anxiety disorders, and weight problems, it seems the home sauna has indeed become much less of a luxury and much more of a necessity for healthy living.

About the author:

Pertti Olavi Jalasjaa is the author of "The Art of Sauna Building," an acclaimed reference book on sauna construction. He is also the general manager of Great Saunas, which has been manufacturing and selling high-quality saunas to sauna enthusiasts around the world since 1974. Visit Great Saunas online at www.greatsaunas.com.