Unlock The Power Of Near Infrared Light

Introduction and Brian Richards Bio 0:00

Again, thank you for joining us for the MS and Neuroimmune Summit. I'm here with my very good friend, Brian Richards. Now, Brian and I have known each other for many years. in. Let me, start with his bio. He is an internationally known expert in sauna therapy, light science, electromagnetic field science. Now, in 2008, Brian transformed his his own health by creating his own incandescent electric light bath. We're going to hear a lot more about that during this interview. In 2013, he founded SaunaSpace, his company based in Missouri.

handcrafts innovative saunas and targeted therapy devices that harness nature's most potent spectrum of light. For, for heat in light therapy. Thousands of customers have now transform their lives with the SaunaSpace experience. In 2024, he brings a refreshing approach to natural living biohacking the natural health transformation. Now, Brian, did I miss anything? He covered all the important faces. Thank you. Thank you. Terry. I'm grateful to be here. What I think is really helpful for people is to hear, some personal transformation stories, upfront.

And I know you have your own personal journey that I think can inspire people about what's possible using light inside of therapy. Yeah. The body's, The body's an energy system, and it's a tool. It says it's unlimited healing power. You know, it's divinely created, and it just needs to be used in the way it's designed to be used. And for me, at the end of my college career, I had, a lot of, like, low energy. I had acne on my body. I didn't sleep well at insomnia,

Personal Health Transformation Through Sauna 1:58

and I kind of had, I was kind of moody. You kind of had a sort of a negative attitude towards things, and I felt like this is not my highest and best self, but there was something going on. So my my mother's actually a general practitioner physician. She's always practiced functional, integrative approach to health. She was, you know, prescribing vitamins in the 80s in Montana. She's always been on the on the vanguard of things. Little did I know back then how how amazing. what she was doing was.

And anyway, she said, you know what, Brian? You're probably just toxic. You probably just need to detox, and you should get yourself a sauna. So I was skeptical, of course, of my what my mom was saying. And I did some research online, discovered all the amazing benefits of sauna, as a practice to extend healthspan and helping with all things. Basically. And I discovered my, at the end, this concept of the electric light baths, which is the world's first electric sauna, invented in one over 100 years ago.

And I'm kind of a builder, a tinkerer, a person. So I was like, I'll build my own. And I decided to take my health into my own hands. I didn't want to take, you know, these different drugs. I thought that there must be a root cause issue to fix my energy system. And so I built my own electric light bath and used it before bed. And I slept well. And so that was really exciting for me and allowed me to continue to use it for many, many months, after which all of these problems I had went away and, you know, skin and and stuff like that was better.

But also I noticed that I, my mind was clearer. So my, my nervous system was working better, like recall decision making, ability to operate under stress and be really productive and really improve qualitatively. And and my mood to like something that is priceless. You know, people pay a lot of money for that, to just feel happy and feel good and feel positive. And so I was intrigued by this because I wasn't going out and doing a lot of stuff. Terry, I was just sitting in this, the sauna I was just being just sitting there and not really doing a lot.

And yet there's this there's a really incredible, like corrective influence it was having on me. And, and I was kind of blown away by it. And there was no I was like, well, where is the electric light path? So that was the inspiration for the formation of my company that was, you know, over a decade ago. But it it put me on the path of, sort of one by one, helping to take care of people, to empower, helping empower people to just remember that, they can be their best selves and they have this unlimited healing tool, but, it's just a matter of like, activating those systems and recognizing those things and getting the things out of us that aren't us if we're trying to be our highest and best selves, Terry, and we have these foreign poisons, foreign things inside of us that aren't us, it presents an obstacle to to doing that.

And then once we sort of remove these things that don't belong, we just want to optimize function, which is another way of saying we're we're helping the body. Remember, this is how it's supposed to work. This is this is the proper way of working. And so now I've had so many custom, you know, thousands of customers and so many amazing stories of recovery from things that are, you know, in the chronic and the chronic illness categories that are things that are there's not, you know, there's there's remediation that's going on in terms of allopathic care, but we're seeing real recoveries where people are addressing holistically purifying their body and re optimizing cell function and using these these two combined approaches, this light therapy and heat therapy together.

So let's talk about light therapy. So again for most of you who are listening, you're probably, listening and watching this either on your phone or on your computer. So you I bet you're indoors, and I'm betting you're spending most of your waking hours indoors as opposed to outdoors. So let's let's talk about the indoor light in the outdoor light and why you think, your, your invention, the, electric light bath is so healing. So the, the body is a energy system, and we're beings of light. We consume light just like plants do, and not just for comfort, but actually for nourishment and energy.

Light Therapy, Indoor Light, and Blue Light Protection 6:39

And what's the light we have in nature? It's the sun. And what do we get from the sun? The sun is an incandescent, full spectrum light source, but most of the power is in a very narrow band of light. That's called near infrared light. And this is actually light we don't see. So over 70% of the power of the sun that we absorb is near infrared. And so it's this invisible, band of light from the sun that is the majority of our light stimulus that we've had. you know, that we experience biologically when we're outdoors.

And this light does so many things to us. You know, it can, you know, when you're summer, you're not as hungry because you're getting lots of sunlight. It actually fuels your cells with energy directly. But then it also does all these other amazing things like, cell regeneration and and reducing inflammation and correcting how, the, the DNA works. So there's anti-aging effects and basically light therapy is the use of red and near-infrared light to heal damaged cells and optimize function of healthy cells and our in nature, getting lots of sunlight every day.

We got all of this. It also stimulates melatonin production. 94% of the body's melatonin is made by near-infrared light hitting the cell. So the sun is refilling our antioxidant reserves. It's structuring the water in our body. It's it's probably the number one nutrient we have in nature. Now when we go indoors, we we lose all of that and we go into the indoor light, which is nowadays it's all LED and and fluorescent lights and our screens that I'm talking to you from. And all of this light is not just a different type of light.

So it's not incandescent light, it's fluorescent light, but it's it's all about the, the wavelength, of the indoor light, which is blue. So all of the light that we have indoors is, is only blue. So the indoor light doesn't have any of the near-infrared. That's has all this healing properties to the cells and to the body. It actually has a stressful effect on the body. Blue light is also called high energy visible light. So the blue light is the portion of the sun that's damaging. And indoors we've removed all of the healthy near-infrared and red, and we've increased dramatically the amount of blue light that we get.

And in addition to it, the shape or the nature of the indoor light. The LED light is a flickering light. It's a light that turns on and off many times a second. So it's like a strobe light effect on our bodies. And it's very stressful. So when we're indoors, we're under this high stress light that's literally stressing our nervous system and telling us it's, you know, you know, getting us to kind of freak out. And we're missing the, the healthy, nourishing number one nutrient that we would normally get outdoors every day. So, we have no more of the good and we have a lot more of this, the stressful effect.

And now nowadays, the average American gets like seven minutes of sunlight a day. And so it's, you know, it's a no, it's it's a real it's a huge free benefit that we have the, cannot be overstated. You know, people that nowadays are taking so many supplements to, to add in nutrients into, a diet. Maybe that's not quite optimal. And yet here is this, this, and, and limited resource we have that fuels and sustains us in a way that, that, that no food ever will. And it's light. So we're we're indoors.

no, Chris, many of us, we have to work indoors because, you know, I'm one of them. I'm a knowledge workers. I have to do a lot of work indoors. What can I I'm sure many of you who are listening, have indoor jobs. What can they do to protect themselves in. Yeah. The, you can use sort of passive ways of protection. Are are like wearing blue light blockers and using screen filters on my computer screens to reduce the amount of blue light emitted. But what I would what I do and what I consider to be like an active, an active thing that you can do is to introduce near-infrared light into the indoor space.

And so our, our, the, the, the bulb that we custom make is a is a custom designed bulb that emits what we call the fire light spectrum. So it's that spectrum of red and near-infrared that we got from the sun in the full spectrum, sort of natural shape and form of that light, with all of the wavelengths together in the natural power distribution. We recreate that with this bulb that we use indoors. And how do we protect ourselves from the harmful, blue light? Brian? Yeah. Indoors, you can wear blue blockers and use green filters to reduce the blue emitted by these LEDs on the screens.

And with the blue blockers, you know, you're protecting your eyes, but you have light receptors in your whole body. So how much more effective way of protecting ourselves is to introduce near-infrared and red light, the missing spectrum indoors. And so with our products like our portable light, the, the the bulb that we, have specially designed emits what we call the fire light spectrum. So it's the natural distribution of red and near-infrared that we got from the sun. We can get from the electric incandescent light bulb, especially the special one that we've developed and, and bring that spectrum indoors.

And when we do that, there's some interesting things that happen. So one thing is the measurable amount of blue light. decreases to almost, almost zero. So when you have like the portable therapy light, I don't know if you can see it. Yep. We see it there. Yep. I have mine on as well. So when you have it in the space it's canceling out the the blue light. You can measure from the overhead of LEDs and from the screen. And it cancels out the measurable flickering effect of these LED light sources.

Heat Intolerance, Gentle Sauna Use, and Photobiomodulation 13:01

So it makes the light environment itself more aligned with human biology. And that results in being really helpful for technology fatigue and screen fatigue. You know, you work at the computer a lot and you kind of get worn out. Or if you're under that hospital type of lighting, you know, it can be stressful and and wearisome. So this really, cancels out all that effect. And it makes the it very much feels like sitting next to the fireplace or the bonfire. And so it, it has this interesting protective effect.

So it's a really, effective like, bio hack that you can have for your home where you can't change these LEDs. You know, we're kind of stuck with all of them. And as a knowledge worker, you know, you have to work at the computer a lot. Yeah. Yeah, we we certainly have to do that. and I certainly find that I enjoy having my, single bulb, shining on me very, very helpful. But know particularly during the winter, you know, during the summer, I'm probably outside walking more, so I'm a little less stressed, but I certainly like keeping my red light on.

Now, you know, another big question that, I get asked a lot is, well, I don't tolerate heat at all because of my multiple sclerosis, that I'm very heat sensitive. if it's a hot day, I just, don't do well. I don't do well in a hot bath. A hot shower, a sauna. but could I still use the the the device that you're talking about when I'm heat intolerant? Yeah. The portable light is very gentle. So you can have it just farther away from you, and it's effect is reduced and it's, you know, it's power is reduced.

So it's it's kind of just have it close for comfort. But when you're using it close on the body, it's used for a limited duration. And people find that the this type of heat is a lot more comfortable because it's heat coming from light, it's radiant light, and we're adding in the light therapy effects, the photo bio modulation effects. So the experience, whether it's with our portable light or in our sauna, is a much more sort of gentle, energizing and rejuvenating experience. And also with our sauna, because we're using light to heat the body, we don't need the air to be super hot like a regular sauna, and we don't need to pre-heat the sauna.

So our saunas air temperature is much gentler. It's like between 100 and and 120 degrees or something like that. And yet the goal of sauna, which is to raise core temperature three degrees and sweat out some water, or, you know, you know, sweat out a pound of water that's achieved, much faster. So in like half an hour. But the air is not like stifling hot. And I would also add that, yes, there's an aversion maybe in the, in this community to hot, you know, because of some people have symptoms that are, you know, the, you know, it's too hot or too cold and there's, there's issues in the body with thermoregulation.

It well, it turns out that sauna actually helps the body correct that. So it seems maybe intimidating at first, but as you ease into sauna and do sauna, you the research indicates that you can correct those systems in the body. So it's all about like, how do I get into it in a safe fashion? And so with our product, and you, the use of radiant light to heat the body, it's a much gentler approach. And you can use with our product. There's several switches. So you can start out in the sauna using 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 bulbs.

Yeah. And you can slowly build up. So it's we even have customers, you know, like in your community, in the walls warrior community who started out just using the portable light. The Singapore. You know, the single bulb light for, for some time, you know, maybe even many months of time before they were able to graduate and shift their homeostasis and be able to tolerate, you know, a limited sauna session. You know, and again, everyone who's listening, I want you to know that you could just use a single bulb as far away as is comfortable for you with as brief a time as this, comfortable and gradually at a pace that that does not induce symptoms.

Bring the light a little bit closer, have the sessions be a little bit longer. And that's worked very, very well for, patients that are clinical practice. And it's worked very well for others in, our tribe, you used a really big word we're going to come back to, because that may people may not have heard that photo. Bio modulation. So let's unpack that a little bit more. What is that? Yeah. Well, we're just trying to sound smart, right? It's it it means light controlling biology. So. So we we the with light therapy, we have photons from the sun or from, an incandescent bulb or an LED, you know, light therapy product.

And the photons enter the body and they're converted into electrons. And so the the light wave is converted into like matter in the body. And there's, connection between the two. So that's a fancy way of, it's a fancy word for light therapy, but it typically refers to, again, it's not all the wavelengths of the sun. It's the use of red in the infrared. So it's it's really red in infrared that are doing this for the most part in the body. The body does have blue light receptors for other purposes.

But in terms of healing and pain reduction and regenerating function. And in the cells, it's all about the red and and particularly the near-infrared. You know, most people are seeing more and more of these red light therapy products out there, and they're all great. But with the sun's red light therapy is mostly near-infrared. I remember I said before that the sun is 70% of the power we absorb is near-infrared in the unseen band of light. That's next to red. And that's because near-infrared penetrates the deepest.

So the body has like different wavelengths, penetrate tissue, differently depending on which wavelength they are. the deepest penetrating wavelengths are actually in the near for a. So if we want to do photo bio modulation, light therapy to say our brains and our nervous system that's encased in bone only near infrared wavelengths reach that. So it's very important if we're wanting to like deal with, especially if we have problems in the brain or problems in the nervous system

Pain, Neuropathy, Sweating, Sleep, and Mood Benefits 19:48

that we're using. light source that has a lot of near infrared to be able to access and provide that that stimulus to these deep tissues. Only near-infrared light penetrates bone tissue. okay. So a lot of people, you know, are coming here, because they also have pain. So, you know, common problems from us, anxiety, depression, insomnia and pain. Why don't you talk a little bit about pain a little bit more about insomnia. Yeah. Pain is that's one of the, probably the number one use of light therapy, whether it be red or near-infrared, is the reduction in inflammation effects.

And the increased blood flow and increased oxygen to the tissues usually provides immediate pain relief. okay. Excellent. so if somebody, somebody was listening who had, diabetic neuropathy or some of the neuropathies after having taken, a, cancer chemotherapy or some other type of therapy, toxins, you know, heavy metal poisoning, etc.. with your light therapy, your sun would be helpful for those types of neuropathies as well. Yeah, yeah. So so light therapy reduces, neuropathy, you know, it ameliorates neuropathy and neuropathy, symptoms that people have.

And then there's definitely there's definitely a toxin issue there. And it's the toxins are causing some of the problems. So the importance of using a sauna and like passively raising the core temperature and having a strong sweat response to detoxify the cells and to get them eliminate them out of the body effectively is, I think, essential. It's not enough to just use light therapy and optimize cell function. If you still have these these toxins in these poisons in the body. So the sauna, the our approach to sauna and combining heat light therapy, I think it addresses in a very holistic way the sort of the disharmony in the internal environment that is leading to the problems that the people have.

Now, again, everyone is listening. You may have observed that you don't sweat quite as readily. over the many years that you've had your, multiple sclerosis or other autoimmune condition. and, Brian, can you comment, does the, ability to sweat improve over time? Yeah, absolutely. Does. You know, and there we have a lot of customers who, are coming in with thyroid issues and things like Hashimoto's and other things like that. And they have low resting body temperature, much lower than 98.6 Fahrenheit.

And they don't sweat. Well, they say, yeah, I go and I work out and I don't sweat. Well, when you when you use sauna, it conditions, it tempers the body and reactivates and, sort of corrects the body's sweat response as part of the what's called the body's thermoregulation, how the body regulates heat. And so what what we see with our customers. Definitely. And you see in general in the sauna research is there's a correcting effect of that over time. So over time, your resting body temperature goes up, your ability to sweat is faster, your sweat response is faster, and your ability to tolerate heat improves too.

You know, that you get really, you can handle heat stress a lot more. And that means not just in the sauna, but like when it's hot out. Yeah, it's more resilient to that. That heat. And, I think that's like because our autonomic nervous system is repairing itself. So we're probably, doing a much better job of regulating our blood pressure, our heart rate, the blood flow to our extremities. So, a lot of, helpful things are happening. So we talked about pain, sleep. How does the sauna, the near infrared light help us with sleep?

Yeah. So it's actually both things, you know, sauna. The it having a dramatic temperature change in the body is associated with better quality sleep. So if you use a sauna, actually a cold spots to. But sauna for many people, I think is more enjoyable. But, the, the research indicates that, yeah. If you, if you, if you get a big temperature swing in the body, it improves sleep both immediately and over time. So sauna has been shown to improve the quality of sleep. But also people are getting a lot of benefits in using light therapy to improve sleep.

And I think that has to do with relaxing the nervous system. The nervous system should be in the rest and digest state that their parasympathetic state. When you go to sleep for like the best quality sleep and and and the the near-infrared light has a really unique calming effect, you know, both to the mood and to like the actual physiological nervous system and getting it down and getting it relaxed. You know, I want everyone to know that, I certainly like ice baths. like, doing an ice bath and evening.

My spouse, however, did not like me coming to bed with, after my ice bath. And so she voted me in. So, like, honey, you got to do that in the morning and then do the sauna in the evening. And so you get to have these conversations with your spouse to be sure that you're working out. what is also agreeable to your spouse? Yeah. But definitely, a lot of our customers, you know, report, improved sleep. And that was actually my story as well. So, like, for me, it was very immediate, the improvement.

I had an ability to fall asleep and waking up refreshed. You know, we have had, another person I interviewed, Dr. Ramsey who talked about, his adding sauna in the evening and how that also improved his sleep as well. and so, absolutely, I agree you could do, a cold ice bath in the evening that will improve your sleep, but your spouse may not like it. you could do a sauna in the evening, will improve your sleep. And your spouse will probably be happy to snuggle with the warm body as opposed to an iced body.

At least that has been, the experience, in our household. Let's talk about mood. does sauna have an impact on either anxiety or depression? Yeah, there's some interesting, more, large population research going on in sauna for the use of, for depression. but we we do see that definitely anecdotally, like when you, when you cleanse, when you detox the brain, you know, and you remove toxins from the nervous system, it it works better. And when it works better, it feels better. So it's like it's really that simple.

But there's also a definitely a component with the the near for line. I love going back and forth because where we're talking about the synergy of bringing these two things together, the the light and the heat that were designed to get at the same time, light therapy absolutely is being shown to help, improve your neuropsychiatric symptoms, whether it's anxiety or depression or being, like, irritable or impatient, you know, being sort of like moody, it it it causes it in the cellular level. It causes the nerve cells to release serotonin, dopamine.

Where to Learn More and Closing Remarks 27:48

So it has a little bit of an immediate effect. But there's also a, you know, when you regenerate, when you, when you promoting regeneration in the nerve cells and then you're kind of coaching them to work better together and talk to each other better, and then the whole system is working better. You definitely feel that as well. So people are we see that in the research. And people also report that our custom report that the, light therapy to be really beneficial, especially what you mentioned before in the winter, you know, we don't feel as good if you feel more sad, you know, we're indoors more.

And that's directly related to not getting enough near for light from the sun. You know, that we would normally get every day, you know. And I imagine the other part of the problem is when we go out in the summer, we get more light. We have more of our skin exposed to the light. In the winter, I may still be going out doing some walks. perhaps doing a little, skiing. But I'm sure in the northern hemisphere we're covered up. And so there's not as much, skin exposure. Right? This is just been so phenomenal.

can you tell us where we could find you to learn more? Yeah. So our our products are handmade in the US. We're based in Missouri, and you can find us on our websites sauna.space. We have in-house customer care. You can email, call or chat with us, on the weekdays. Just all that information is on the website, sauna.space. And there's a really cool, learning center there where you can learn about you know, our spectrum and this difference of light therapy together. And also on Instagram. @saunaspace I have a lot of great content on there where I do deep dives into a lot of science and, and geeky stuff.

this is wonderful, Brian. It's always a privilege and a joy to chat with you. and, I love I love sauna, I love my sauna, I did, asana this morning, know, and I probably take a sauna, 6 to 8 times a week because I often get, Two sauna's in a day you're just looking amazing Terry, that I've been following you for a long time. And every time I see you, you you seem to look younger, so something's working. Thank you Brian. You're welcome. Thank you for having me.