Relaxing in a warm, invigorating sauna is a wonderful addition to your health and fitness routine.
But, if you lack the space or budget to add a sauna room to your home, do not fret!
You can still use a sauna daily to enjoy the many health benefits of this practice.
Portable saunas are an excellent option for anyone looking to improve their wellness and gain the advantages of heat therapy and sweat bathing.
Below, we explore the various types and benefits of portable saunas, an economical and functional alternative to traditional, full-sized saunas for your home use.
What is a Portable Sauna?
While saunas have long been a fixture in gyms and spas, more people today are choosing to use a sauna at home or on the go to enjoy its many health benefits regularly.
Because traditional saunas take up a lot of space and can be expensive, many are searching for more affordable and portable alternatives that will allow them to enjoy a sauna anytime, anywhere without the high price tag.
Portable saunas were created for this purpose.
These small, lightweight systems allow you to expose your body to the healing heat of a sauna without having to build a special room in your house.
Most portable saunas will enable you to sit upright in a chair to enjoy your experience, but some newer models that use infrared technology require you to lie down under a special blanket or dome.
Portable saunas consist of a fabric or foldable shell and a heat source.
While these work somewhat differently from traditional saunas, which are large, heat-filled rooms, they can still be quite useful and offer your health the same benefits as the conventional experience.
Portable saunas can be made from wooden or metal frames and covered in a variety of materials.
Depending on the type of sauna, it will come with either an infrared or a steam heater, and many include a portable chair or mat where you sit or lie down during your treatment.
Portable Sauna Types
Nearly all portable saunas fall into two categories- traditional and far-infrared.
Both types are energy efficient and effective at delivering the many health advantages of a sauna treatment.
Below, we describe both in more detail.
Traditional Portable Sauna
Traditional portable saunas use heat and steam to warm up an enclosed space.
A portable sauna of this type consists of a fabric-covered shell.
You sit on a chair and zip up the enclosure, leaving your head and hands sticking through holes in the covering.
A steam generator is then turned on, and you sit in heated, moist air while your body enjoys the benefits of this experience.
Infrared Portable Sauna
Whereas a traditional sauna uses radiant heat to warm the air, which then warms the body, a sauna that uses far-infrared rays (FIR) heats the body directly using unique wavelengths of light.
A far infrared sauna does not generate the same high ambient temperatures because far infrared rays penetrate your body and heat you from within.
Infrared rays are a type of invisible light, and it is this light that gives the sun its warmth.
These wavelengths can penetrate deeper into your body than traditional heat, and far-infrared rays are the longest type of this light, offering some specific health benefits because it can penetrate much more deeply into the body.
An FIR sauna consists of an infrared light source and some type of covering.
FIR saunas can look similar to a steam sauna, but many have different configurations.
Newer models consist of a mat or blanket that is used while you are lying down.
Some include a dome that is placed over you while you lie on a special mat, as well.
There are several types of FIR portable saunas, so you can find one that suits your lifestyle and matches how you prefer to use the device.
Portable Sauna Benefits
While they may not offer the exact same experience as a traditional sauna, portable saunas still cause you to sweat and give you the same impressive health benefits as the larger, more expensive rooms.
Regular use of a portable sauna can improve your health and treat several different medical conditions, and we have outlines the research-proven benefits of this treatment below.
Improves Detoxification
For removing toxins, heavy metals, and other wastes from your system, you cannot beat a sauna.
Saunas are used primarily to cause the body to sweat, and this excretory process is the leading way that your body rids itself of pollutants and toxins.
Sweating is more effective than other excretion methods at removing heavy metals, such as lead and mercury, which are common pollutants in our environment today (1, 2).
Researchers have found that when you sweat, you eliminate many harmful compounds from your system, including BPA, PCBs, fluoride, and DDT, to name just a few (3).
Most of us go out of our way not to sweat these days, so a regular sauna session is a perfect way to eliminate these toxins from your system and enjoy improved health because of it.
Enhances Mitochondrial Health and Cellular Energy
The mitochondria of your cells are what produce the energy your cells need to perform their necessary functions.
When mitochondria become damaged or depleted, your cells cannot function well, and you become vulnerable to disease and injury.
Mitochondrial dysfunction is the leading cause of chronic illness, so caring for these critical organelles is a vital part of your healthcare routine (4).
Placing your body under heat stress, such as through sauna use, stimulate the production of new mitochondria as well as the strengthening of existing organelles.
Heat stress also encourages the repair and recycling of damaged mitochondria (5).
Combined, these processes help to keep your cells healthier and stronger by ensuring they have the energy they need.
Increases Longevity and Fights the Effects of Aging
When you expose your body to the heat or warming FIR of a portable sauna you activate heat shock proteins or HSPs within your body.
The aging process is a slow progression of molecular damage that reduces your cells’ ability to fight disease and injury.
HSPs combat this process in several ways.
First, they repair damaged cells while also promoting the recycling of damaged cell parts.
By increasing antioxidant capacity and production, HSPs also help to prevent future damage (6, 7).
Longitudinal data shows that those who use a sauna regularly are more likely to live longer and suffer less from age-related diseases and conditions.
And increased use is associated with longer life (8).
Heat stress also activates a specific gene known as FOXO3, which releasee proteins of the same name associated with longevity (9).
FOXO3 affects DNA repair, cellular death, stress resistance, immune system function, and many other processes that are connected to aging and affect your ability to live longer.
Reduces Hypertension
Those who use a sauna regularly can reduce their high blood pressure by as much as 50 percent (10).
Even intermittent sauna use has a positive effect on elevated blood pressure, which just one session every other week showing positive outcomes (11).
Lowering blood pressure is an essential factor in maintaining good cardiovascular health and reducing your risk of heart disease.
Lowers Risk for Cardiovascular Disease and Heart Problems
Sauna or sweat bathing, as it is sometimes called, is associated with a lowered risk for cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, and sudden cardiac death, even when you factor in other, conventional risk factors.
In a study in 2015, 20 years of data was examined, and it was determined that regular use of a sauna can lower your risk of death by heart events by as much as fifty percent (12).
Use of a sauna can provide heart benefits that exceed those of exercise alone (19), and when combined with exercise can significantly improve your overall heart health.
The use of infrared saunas has also been studied and determined to similarly affect cardiovascular fitness in these positive ways (13).
Boosts Neurological Performance and Health
When you enjoy the therapeutic warmth of a sauna, you are also increasing your body’s production of BDNF or brain-derived neurotrophic factor.
This compound is linked to the creation of new brain cells while also boosting the health of existing neurons (14).
BDNF also helps to promote neuroplasticity, which helps you to remember and learn (15).
Sauna use is also linked to the production of certain hormones (16) that play a role in your attention and focus in addition to promoting nerve regeneration and myelin sheath growth (17).
All these factors combine to improve your brain’s performance and increase its health over time.
Helps Prevent Neurodegeneration
Dementia and other forms of neurodegeneration are the result of misfolded proteins in the brain that become tangled and create a type of plaque that interferes with normal brain function.
By raising your levels of HSPs and FOXO3 proteins, sauna use may help to prevent this misfolding and tangling that can result in dementia (18, 19).
Research on regular sauna use in Finland has provided substantial evidence that regular sessions in a sauna can reduce the risk for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease by 22 and 20 percent respectively (20).
Among sauna bathers who experienced between four and seven sessions a month, there was a 66 and 65 percent respective reduction in these risks.
Helps Treat Fibromyalgia and Other Forms of Pain
For those who suffer from chronic pain, regular sauna use can significantly improve their symptoms.
In particular, those with fibromyalgia who have chronic pain notice a reduction in their pain when they combine exercise with sauna use (21).
Those with chronic tension headaches also report less pain when using a sauna regularly (22).
Sauna use has been combined successfully with other complementary and alternative treatments to reduce pain and help treat chronic conditions (23).
When sauna use is excluded from these different forms of therapy, the reduction in pain is not as positive, indicating that the sauna was the critical therapy that helped to improve patient outcomes.
Infrared saunas are effective at treating fibromyalgia (24) and could be used to handle other forms of chronic pain, as well.
Improves Inflammation
Keeping levels of inflammation in the body low is critical to your long-term health.
Chronic inflammation plays a role in nearly every major disease, and it can not only delay healing but also negatively impact your health and cause new conditions.
HSPs act as an anti-inflammatory protein, which leads researchers to believe that regular sauna use could help fight chronic inflammation (25, 26).
Infrared saunas have been studied for their effects on inflammation, and researchers discovered that daily use resulted in lower indicators for oxidative stress in the body, which is a leading cause of inflammation (27).
Other proteins associated with inflammation are also lowered during heat therapy.
For those with joint pain, autoimmune disorders, and inflammatory bowel disease, daily sauna use could help improve your symptoms or eliminate your condition.
Improves Weight and Fat Loss
By boosting your fat lass and helping curb your appetite, sauna use can help you lose weight faster.
Compared to those who just exercised, combining infrared sauna use with activity improved weight loss by 1.8 times and boosted fat loss by 4.6 times (28).
The higher your levels of HSPs, the more likely you are to have lower BMI, improved insulin tolerance, and less fat accumulation in your muscles (29).
Sauna use also helps to modulate the production of hormones associated with hunger, helping those who are overweight to curb their appetite and resist overeating (30).
The effects of saunas use on the body is similar to that of moderate exercise, boosting cellular metabolism and oxygen consumption (31).
Boosts Oxygenation of Cells
By increasing your red blood cell count, saunas can help improve the oxygen level of your muscles and other cells and tissues.
When your cells have more oxygen, they have more energy, which can boost their performance.
When you sweat a lot, your body produces more plasma to increase your blood volume, which then triggers the production of red blood cells to maintain the right concentration in your plasma.
This increase in red blood cells improves your endurance, helps with physical and mental performance, and can improve your athletic performance, as well (32, 33).
Enhances Muscle Growth
Spending time in a sauna can also help to improve your muscle growth while limiting muscle breakdown.
The HSPs that are released during heat stress repair damaged tissues and prevent oxidative stress damage, which contributes to muscle degeneration (34, 35).
When you expose your body to the heat of a sauna, you trigger the release of growth hormones that can help improve muscle tone and strength (36).
This process also increases levels of proteins in the blood that are responsible for protein synthesis.
Sauna use is also associated with improved insulin sensitivity, which causes enhanced absorption of amino acids into the muscle tissue, which helps them to grow stronger, as well (37).
Sauna use can, therefore, increase muscle mass and help resists breakdown to promote overall improved strength and endurance (38).
Improves Endurance and Physical Performance
Those who use a sauna regularly could also notice an increase in their physical endurance, especially if they are athletes.
Hyperthermic conditioning, like sitting in a sauna, conditions the body to thrive in high temperatures, which are common during physical activity (39).
By boosting blood flow to the heart and muscles, sauna use can also help improve your muscle fatigue and provide you with more energy during physical activity (40).
Some studies have suggested that sauna use improve physical performance by training the body to work more efficiently at high temperatures (41).
In trials with distance runners, athletes improved their time to exhaustion by 32 percent with 30-minute sauna sessions after each workout (42).
Improves Recovery After Exercise
If improved muscle strength and added performance and endurance were not enough, then what about shorter and less painful recovery after your workout?
Sauna sessions help to reduce post-workout soreness (43) while also improving the time it takes for muscles to repair and recover fully (44).
Because of the expression of HSPs during sauna use, this practice conditions your body to heal tissues more quickly and repair damage done during strenuous activity (45).
Using a sauna after your workout could help improve your recovery time and help reduce inflammation and pain, allowing you to get back to working out faster.
Enhances Mood and Improves Depression
For those who suffer from depression, using a sauna can help.
Several studies have linked raised body temperature through sauna use or other thermal therapies to improvements in depression symptoms.
Heat stress on the brain could help to make your neural pathways more resilient to stress, helping you to cope better with daily influences that can worsen depression (46).
Additionally, sauna use promotes a release of beta-endorphins, which are hormones that regulate mood and help you cope with stress (47).
Sarum use among those with depression can help to condition the brain to respond better to stressors, and it also promotes relaxation, which can enhance your outlook, as well (48).
Heat stress also encourages the growth of more endorphin receptors, which means you can enjoy everyday activities more by increasing your sensitivity to this powerful feel-good compound (49).
This use of infrared saunas to help treat depression has also been shown to be successful (50).
Boosts Skin Health
By boosting the function of blood vessels and enhance blood supply, sauna use can help bring more nutrients to your skin, which can improve its overall health (51).
The heat stress experienced during sauna use can promote the production of fibroblasts, which are cells in your connective tissue which produce fibers and collagen, both of which keep your skin tight and younger-looking (52).
Heat stress also boosts the antioxidant response in your body, which can help fight the signs of aging (53).
By promoting sweating and the detoxification of pores, sauna use also helps keep your skin healthy and clear (54).
Improves Your Immune System Function
Exposure to high temperatures has a positive effect on your immune system, improving your ability to fight disease (55).
For example, those who use a sauna regularly are much less likely to suffer from colds and other common illnesses (56).
Because the high temperatures of the sauna can kill germs that lie on the skin’s surface, regular use can also help those who suffer from skin infections (57).
While sauna use should not be used instead of other forms of treatment, it can enhance your ability to fight off an infection or improve the effectiveness of other therapies.
Could Help Fight Cancer
The cells of your body can adapt to hot temperatures, but certain types of cells, such as cancer cells, cannot.
When exposed to extreme heat, such as from a sauna, cancer cells die, leaving the surrounding healthy tissue intact.
This phenomenon has been observed in several cancer types (58).
The FOXO3 gene and its proteins also play a role in the suppression of tumors.
Raising your levels of these proteins could help your body combat these types of invaders (59).
Additionally, some forms of cancer treatment, such as radiation, are improved when combined with heat.
The addition of sauna use to conventional chemotherapy, for example, can enhance the effects and help you better fight the disease (60).
In clinical trials, the addition of hyperthermic therapy to radiation and chemotherapy improved tumor control, response rates, and overall survival by as much as 50 percent (61).
Improves Lung Function and Treats Respiratory Illnesses
Those who use a sauna regularly are much less likely to suffer from respiratory illnesses.
Those who use a sauna several times per week can see up to 41 percent improvement in the incidence of respiratory problems, and those who used is just a few times can still see up to a 27 percent improvement (62).
Saunas help your lungs by decreasing congestion and improve the overall capacity and volume of your lungs (63).
Those with chronic respiratory conditions such as asthma or chronic bronchitis report more natural breathing and fewer symptoms when they use a sauna regularly (64).
Sauna use even helps those with obstructive lung disease (65).
The hot sauna air stimulates the repair and recycling of damaged lung tissue while reducing the inflammation that can often lead to airway problems.
Improves Chronic Fatigue Symptoms
Chronic fatigue syndrome is a complex and sometimes confusing disorder that results in a wide range of symptoms.
CFS, as it is sometimes known, can cause severe impairment and interfere with your ability to live your life if left untreated.
Infrared sauna use has been shown to provide some relief for the symptoms of CFS, including depression, mental fog, insomnia, fatigue, and other complaints (66).
Those with CFS who use a sauna regularly report more energy and a higher activity level, and many people can return to normal activities when using this therapy regularly (67).
One of the benefits of sauna use is improved blood flow to the brain, which could help with CFS symptoms (68).
By helping to reduce inflammation and depression, sauna use naturally targets some of the more difficult and chronic symptoms of this disease (69).
Treats Diabetes and Promotes Insulin Sensitivity
Another critical benefit of sauna use is its ability to help those with Type 2 diabetes manage their disease.
Both HSPs and FOXO3 proteins are linked to improved glucose metabolism and insulin sensitivity, which can make it easier for people with diabetes to control their blood sugar levels (70, 71).
Several animal studies have documented the proven effects, showing increased insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance after hyperthermic treatments (72).
Sauna use mimics many of the benefits your body receives from increased physical activity, and for those who are unable to work out due to physical limitations, sauna use could be used to get some of the same benefits and responses (73).
Can Help Treat Autoimmune Diseases
Several chronic conditions, including diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, are the result of autoimmune malfunction within the body.
But sauna use can help to treat these by producing more HPS, which naturally regulate the immune system.
HSP help to suppress the overactivity that results in these types of autoimmune disorders (74, 75).
Infrared saunas have been shown to help with Sjogren’s syndrome, a specific autoimmune disease (76).
Patients with rheumatoid arthritis also enjoy improvements in their symptoms when they use a sauna regularly.
Since sauna use promotes anti-inflammatory protein production, it is not a surprise that this practice helps with these types of conditions (77).
Final Thoughts
A portable sauna is a perfect way to add the health benefits of heat therapy to your lifestyle, no matter the size of your home or your budget.
Portable saunas provide the same health benefits as full-sized sauna rooms without sacrificing valuable square footage in your home.
There are many different kinds of portable saunas, including ones that use steam and infrared rays to heat your body.
And whether you choose one in which you sit or lie down, portable saunas offer a relaxing experience that enhances your health and well-being.