LIKE yourself, possibly, I have, in my time, sat semi-naked on hot wooden benches in tiny, dry hot rooms which smell of eucalyptus, in the hope of sweating out toxins without the faff of getting out of breath during strenuous exercise. With perfect strangers.
And I often thought, if I were a rich man, I could have one of these rooms in my enormous house and sit in my sauna with selected friends and get effortlessly detoxed and glowing.
Not being of that income bracket, but absolutely chokka with city living toxins, I leapt at the chance to try out the at home sauna of all at home saunas, which is the HigerDose Infrared Sauna blanket, which is, by all accounts, the very best sauna blanket on the market.
And it gets super-hot, which is how I like it, particularly in winter, when the central heating sometimes takes a last-minute holiday to the Seychelles, leaving me frozen and miserable.
HigherDose Infrared Sauna Blanket
The blanket is a Velcro yourself in, full body coverage (apart from the head) enormous, heavy thing, which brings to mind weighted blankets, and a thing that is so nice, you don’t want to leave it, aka bed. The “potential” benefits they have to say for legal reasons, are ACTUAL benefits.
If you are enveloped, cheese toastie like, in a device that reaches a heat so high, if you wish, you wonder if you might melt a bit, and lie in the thing zipped up like a camper in a sleeping bag, without the danger of marauding wild life.
A 35-minute session, with something spa-like for a soundtrack (I picked Morcheeba) left me feeling all kinds of wonderfully hot, relaxed, and pain-free. I have a specific pain, to do with lower back injury, and I must declare loudly that the infrared heat worked all sorts of magic that painkillers could not. I can’t emphasize this enough. If you are in pain, get and get inside it – every day.
HigherDose Infrared Sauna Blanket
The other potential benefits are anti-anxiety, as the heat promotes a lowering of the stress hormone cortisol, sleep improvement (I can testify for that one) and an increase in blood flow and circulation. This last one I can also confirm because I emerge reluctantly from the envelope of warmth, all glowing and dewy.
I must add that for various reasons, the manufacturers can not claim all the things that the blanket says it does, except it does do all those things. Really! It lessens pain to the point of improving mobility in sore joints, in my experience. It absolutely makes you feel good and the opposite of stressed.
HigherDose Infrared Sauna Blanket
I highly suspect it reduces inflammation, which causes pain in over-worked muscles. I slink out of the blanket, reluctantly, and realise I feel as if I have spent the day in a spa, or with a very good physiotherapist.
Also, very importantly, if you get so blissed out during a session that you actually fall asleep, which has happened, the blanket times out so you don’t wind up all Rice Krispies.
It’s kind of perfect. Whatever is wrong with you, this will probably fix it or at least improve it. My only problem is getting out of the thing. Not physically, as you just have to rip the Velcro seal open. It’s more psychological.
Bathed in heat and good vibes, it’s hard to motivate oneself out of it and into the cold outside. But when you do so, it’s with the glow. The feel-good lasts all day, in my experience.
by Michele Kirsch
The Infrared Sauna blanket retails at £539