Heal With Red Light And Sauna

Brian Richards

Thank you for having me, Terry. I am Brian Richards. I am the founder and CEO of Sauna Space. I had my own health problems a decade ago now in adrenal fatigue and insomnia and other mood-related issues and skin-related issues that led me on the path of self-healing and finding my own solution. And I discovered the electric light bath, the original electrically powered sauna. It is using an incandescent light bulb that I built my own and essentially healed my own problems. And that inspired the formation of my company Sauna Space. And I have spent the last ten years really pouring my heart and soul and a lot of love and some tears probably too into this one concept of making the world’s most effective, most perfect sauna experience. And along the way I have had to research a lot and learn about the science of light therapy, the science of sauna, and heat therapy, and that is brought me to where I am today. I have a company of 40 employees and we handcraft our products our sauna therapy products in Columbia, Missouri, in the United States. And I now speak a lot about the science of light and heat therapy from this particular perspective of the fire light and the history of our relationship with the fire and with the sun and why we love light, why we love the heat.

Terry Wahls, MD

Okay. I love this. I love my sauna. People watch me in Instagram, they see that I spent a lot of time in my sauna. Let us talk about this magic word photobiomodulation.

Brian Richards

Yes. Photobiomodulation, very fancy word. It means light-controlling biology. It refers to originally the use of, well, it is a technical term that it is nature’s basis is our exposure with sunlight particularly red light that we see and near-infrared wavelengths that we do not see and that is 700 to 1000 nanometer wavelengths. This narrow band of light from the sun’s spectrum triggers light therapy responses in our mitochondria and results in a lot of beneficial effects for the body. Photobiomodulation is defined as the use of red and near-infrared light to heal damaged and degenerate cells and to re-optimize healthy cells and that is every cell of the body. And what is really interesting is when we look at the sun 70% of it is near-infrared light in terms of photons absorbed. Even though we talk a lot about ultraviolet light, promoting vitamin D production, and we are visual creatures and we talk a lot about the visible light from the sun the majority of what we absorb is in the near-infrared band. It is in this band that is stimulating mitochondrial response and doing other things as well, it promotes cellular melatonin production. 94% of the body’s melatonin, the body’s number one antioxidant is produced through the exposure of our cells to near-infrared light which we can get from.

Terry Wahls, MD

Hang on. The near-infrared light that our melatonin needs.

Brian Richards

Yeah. Melatonin used to be thought it was mostly produced in the pineal gland and then released through the blood to the body. But now we understand actually newer research indicates that 94% of the body’s melatonin is produced cellularly right next to the mitochondria where all the oxidative stress occurs and we have all the free radicals being produced. When near-infrared light hits the cells there it promotes cellular melatonin production which is basically a built-in antioxidant system to heal the oxidative stress from mitochondrial work in cellular respiration all day long and we get that normally from the sun. And if we do not get near-infrared light we do not have this daily refilling of the cellular antioxidant reserves. That is an effect in addition to the aforementioned mitochondrial response. And this is, again, in every cell of the body. With light therapy using primarily near-infrared light, we can heal tissue, re-optimize tissue and organ and cellular function and boost our immune function or antioxidant reserves and heal oxidative stress, the aging of the cell, and many other things as well. Photobiomodulation has been really well-researched. There are over 7000 studies in the literature now. And there is various art of manmade light technologies to produce near-infrared light and to produce red light to stimulate these healing systems. But what we use is the incandescent bulb in sauna space which is the same type of light as the sun which is a near-infrared focused light source, again, the sun is mostly near-infrared in terms of what we absorb, and the incandescent lamp mimics that spectrum in producing mostly near-infrared light. You see a lot of red light therapy out there but near-infrared light is what goes in deep. If we want to do photobiomodulation to our brain, only near-infrared light penetrates bone tissue, so we are better off using near-infrared light to do this therapy. Yeah.

Terry Wahls, MD

Okay. A lot of people with multiple sclerosis and neuroimmune issues are heat sensitive. And I was for a long time too that if I ran a fever I could not function, it feels really hot I could not function. And if they tried doing a hot tub, or hot shower, or a hot bath they are much more symptomatic. How could they still get access to the benefits of photobiomodulation?

Brian Richards

Well, what is interesting about our sauna technology using the electric light bulb is we are using near-infrared light to heat the body. At the same time that we are heating the body for a heat shock effect and a sauna effect for the benefits of sauna therapy, we are also photobiomodulating the body at same time. And in the way we heat the body is near-infrared light, just like the sun does, you are heating the body from within, it is called radiant heating. When we use light to heat the body using near-infrared light, just like the sun, we can heat the body up with the light itself and not with the air. So we do not need the air to be hot. In a sauna space on and on an electric light sauna the air is much lower and more gentle. And the addition of stacking on the light therapy onto the sauna therapy really makes it a lot more soothing and gentle and enjoyable. And we see that with our customers and those in your community, of course, The Wahls Warrior, elsewhere we see people being able to build up access to sauna therapy by using this more gentle approach and also using less bulbs and shorter durations of building up a tolerance to a longer sauna session.

Terry Wahls, MD

In my clinical practice, everyone who is listening, we use a lot of near-infrared light if people are concerned have them get just a single bulb unit and then let them know you sit as far away from it as you need to and you start with as brief a session as you need. Because if you get symptomatic, if you have more pain or sensory disturbance then you did too big of a session for too long. And you just very slowly gradually get closer to the light, you have a longer session and you do it at a pace that feels comfortable. And we certainly have people come in with one bulb, they gradually get closer, longer duration, then they can get to two bulbs at a time, then they can get to three bulbs, then they can get to four bulbs, then they can enjoy a more regular sauna. I do not want anyone in my clinical practice to do saunas sessions so long they become asymptomatic.

Brian Richards

Yeah. And that is also just general, with sauna users is we want to do only as much as our body can handle because we do have healing reactions and detox reactions where we experience symptoms related to toxins. We are detoxing, so we want to take a slow methodical gentle approach. And yes, many people start out with just using the photon, the single light for many months, and then slowly using our sauna which also has multiple switches. You can start out with one and then add two, three, and four, and even more bulbs and increase duration and as long as it takes even if it takes many months.

Terry Wahls, MD

Correct. And I personally love my sauna. It is a lovely part of my routine. I go in and I read and I do my meditate, I will do some dry brushing. It is just very lovely. Now, why do not we talk about sweating? Should I get out before I sweat? Do I want to sweat? Do I want to sweat a lot, a little?

Brian Richards

Yeah. If we look at long-term population studies with saunas we see that the most impressive clinical benefits are a reduction in all-cause mortality and a reduction of the risk of dementia. People are increasing their health span, the years during which they are healthy they are increasing that, and then reducing the risk of dementia. And that comes if we look at the sauna studies from sweating out one ounce of water and raising core temperature three degrees Fahrenheit on average in each sauna session, and then ideally doing that one to three times a week. When the whole body sweats we know that we have raised the core temperature by three degrees in all the cells of the body, we have activated these heat shock protein responses that are doing a detox and they are restoring and re-optimizing protein function and fixing the body systems and that is what we would qualify as an effective sauna session. You can weigh yourself before and after a sauna session and the amount of weight loss is equivalent to how much you sweat out or you can measure your body temperature increase with the thermometer. But that is the goal. Having said that particularly with the autoimmune community, we want to be slow and gentle. And even if we do not have a strong sweat response the first time or the first many times that is okay. But certainly, it is definitely to validate, whether have we gotten a good sauna session, and whether are we on track to achieve that longevity all-cause mortality, and dementia goals, then we definitely want to sweat out profusely in a sauna session.

Terry Wahls, MD

Now again,  to those listening, I know some of us have difficulty with our autonomic nervous system and you may know that you do not sweat as readily, but I still would think you would have benefited from the red light therapy in that with persistent use, I predict that you would be experiencing better function of your autonomic nervous system. And I had patients tell me that they have again begun to observe that they sweat more readily. And again, I would anticipate that this would be variable from person to person. How does a sauna help neurodegeneration? What do you think?

Brian Richards

Well, there are sauna studies that were in saunas been used for chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia and for amelioration of symptoms. But also there is spinal cord injury studies where you see improved like motor function with the test groups that do sauna. When you heat up the nerve cell, for example, you produce something called a brain-derived neurotrophic factor, it is kind of like Miracle-Gro for your nerve cells, you are helping the cells rebuild themselves. And also with the sauna you are conditioning the body to improve its immune response, it is called immune modulation. Literally with a sauna you are inducing a fever state. It is what your body does when it has an infection here and the reason it is doing that is because when we heat up the cell we produce heat shock proteins that help cleanse the cell of toxins and pollutants and also help fix proteins by folding proteins and moving them around. We see improvement in cellular function with the sauna but also in terms of immune function as well in the body.

Terry Wahls, MD

Yeah. Again, as I was listening, I was thinking like, “Oh, my goodness, I do not tolerate heat.” The single bulb units you can keep farther away so you are getting the red light and you just start with a small dose that you can comfortably tolerate without any sense of worsening of your symptoms and take your time to make these kinds of changes.

Brian Richards

Yeah. And I should also note that our single light, the photon therapy light is not just used for the reasons stated for the spot therapy and the red light and the light therapy and the symptom relief, it is also used as a fire light. It is used to cancel out blue light stress and flickering stress from overhead LED lighting and indoor blue light. And it is a great way to have clean healthy circadian rhythm-approved lighting after dark but it is literally a fireplace. When we are indoors we are missing that 70%. Photons absorb near-infrared spectrum that our bodies love it, that is a big part of why the sun makes us feel so happy. And we can introduce that into our indoor environment and make the indoors kind of like the outdoors. People use it just as like a fireplace, next to them all day long for technology fatigue and screen fatigue and for enjoyment.

Terry Wahls, MD

Thank you for reminding me of this. I have designed my light. I have full spectrum lights earlier in the day, a little warmer spectrum in the afternoon, and then in the evening we turn off those lights and we just have near-infrared and red light and we have this beautiful warm glow in the evening and I have only red light bulbs that I read by at night and a red light bulb in my bedroom and my bathroom. And the rest of my family once we did that, we are like, this is just a much more pleasurable light environment. When people come over and hang out with us they watch the transition of how we light our home in the afternoon and then in the evening, they are like, wow, this is really nice.

Brian Richards

Yeah. People can not put their finger on it in the beginning but if we get used to this all these blue light sources but they really are stressful, it is particularly after dark on our bodies. Yeah, once you kind of shift to more of a red light in the evening and near-infrared light, firelight, fireplace light, and then you go into a place where there is that harsh blue light spectrum you really can feel how irritating it is and even working all day long in that is very irritating. Yeah, it is something that the light environment is very important, we are beams of light, and we eat light. We are converting photons from the sun into electrons and energy and healing in our bodies. And we are very much affected by light. And all this blue light from artificial lighting, it is called junk light it is damaging to us, we really need to balance it out with red and near-infrared spectrum.

Terry Wahls, MD

Absolutely. And I think for millions of years we are in the sunlight 24 seven then we became vitamin D deficient, developed rickets and we take vitamin D supplements that is very good for rickets. And the supplement studies that use high-dose vitamin D have been disappointing. And I am not surprised because I think vitamin D is also a reflection of how much sunlight we get. And I guess I take a vitamin D supplement but I am also very tended to get myself outside every day and I am now very tended to make sure I am getting myself plenty of red light and near-infrared light as well and my sleep is so much better now that I pay attention to that. What do you think your sleep problems, insomnia, very common for people with MS and neuroimmune issues, is this a strategy to help improve our sleep?

Brian Richards

Our customers definitely report that. That was also my initial success at the beginning was I used the electric light sauna that I built the bricolage version right before bed. We know that cold therapy and actually sauna therapy improved sleep, there is something to do with the temperature change in the body and that is just the heat of the sauna getting in there and raising your temperature and having a nice sweat session. But additionally, there is something with the near-infrared light to the photodiode modulation, it has a calming effect on the nervous system. And the light itself directly increases blood flow and tissue oxygenation. You can use it on the back of the head for a little bit for lymphatic drainage and for general relaxation. There is also this concept called agnihotra, this is an ancient Ayurvedic tradition of basically casting the blessed ghee into the sacred fire at sunrise and sunset and the waves of the spectrum of the sun, the light of the sun hits the fire and the ghee and casts healing wavelengths onto the people around the fire. The scientific basis for that is in gazing into the sunrise and the sunset. 

And when we gaze into the sunset, we are programming our brain to relax after all this blue light that was high energy visible light during the day and a lot the ultraviolet light that kind of wore us out and to prepare us for sleep. And ancestral humans had no light source after dark except the fireplace, so they were going to bed early. And if we think about that, wow, if we want to have better sleep we pay attention to cutting out all the blue light, as you mentioned. And there are ways to have replacement light sources in your home, you are only red and near-infrared, and then, yeah, also using the photon and other near-infrared light sources, particularly this though because it is so enjoyable to mimic gazing into the sunset, this is the act of actually programming the brain to get ready for bed.

Terry Wahls, MD

Well, I have two ways I like to get ready for bed. One has a nice bath and one is a sauna. And I really like the ice baths. And then Mani said, I do not like those cold legs, could you go back to just doing the sauna before bed? I had rather snuggle up to you with warm legs than with those ice legs you have. I do more saunas at night and I will do cold showers and cold plunges earlier in the day. You say, happy wife, happy life. I am sure you have had the same thing.

Brian Richards

Yeah. We have got to keep our loved ones happy for sure. We have to balance.

Terry Wahls, MD

Absolutely. What would you say is the one thing you want people to most learn or take away from this wonderful conversation we have had?

Brian Richards

That everyone benefits from sauna and from near-infrared light. And sauna space is providing a way to try this out and really the most safe, gentle way that exists out there in terms of sauna technologies. And if you are going to do sauna and light therapy, why have two different devices when you can do them together? That is our approach is a more intelligent, more smart, and fun way to do sauna, do light therapy. And of course, our products are handmade in the US. And we offer everyone free shipping and a 100-day money-back guarantee. We just want you to try this out and see if sauna space is for you whether it is our full-body sauna products or Faraday sauna or even our photon therapy light is providing so much fun, value, and comfort to people all day long not just for spot therapy.

Terry Wahls, MD

Yeah. I love my red light. I love sauna. It is definitely a big part of my healing ritual.

Brian Richards

Me too.

Terry Wahls, MD

Brian, where do people find you?

Brian Richards

All of our products on sauna.space, that is our website, sauna.space. You can read more about in our learn section about the spectrum of light in the sun and the thermal light bulb that we have created, produces. And there is a lot of customer stories on there, you can search in our customer reviews by keywords. For people with autoimmune or other particular issues, you can hear other people’s stories. And of course, we have a lot of content on Instagram and YouTube at sauna.space is our handle everywhere.

Terry Wahls, MD

Hang on. I want to be sure, it is at SaunaSpace?

Brian Richards

Yeah. On YouTube it is SaunaSpace. On Instagram, it is @SaunaSpace, the same thing on Twitter and Facebook, and TikTok. And yeah, we have in-house customer support for Monday through Friday, you can chat with us, you can actually call us up. Our products come with lifetime customer success support. We are here to support you along your healing journey all the way to the end.

Terry Wahls, MD

120 years. I am planning. We will be having these conversations for about another 60 years, my friend.

Brian Richards

Yeah, I believe you too. You are on such a healing path, Terry. Wow.

Terry Wahls, MD

Alright. Brian, thank you. What a pleasure.

Brian Richards

Thank you for having me.