If you have been feeling forgetful, unfocused, or mentally fatigued as you go about your life, chances are, you may be experiencing a phenomenon called ‘brain fog.’
While we’re all liable to experience varying degrees of brain fog on a more benign basis, long term effects can significantly impact your daily life in its build up, making it hard to concentrate and perform tasks efficiently, and affecting your capacity to output decision making skills and cognition in a fundamental way.
Thankfully, infrared saunas has the potential to help treat this condition, as they increase blood flow, promote detoxification, and improve mood – all of which have been proven to increase cognitive function in individuals.
This article will inform you about brain fog, and how the advantages of infrared sauna usage may help treat this condition and achieve mental clarity.
What is Brain Fog?
Also known as mental fog or mental fatigue, brain fog is a type of cognitive dysfunction often as an inability to foster concentration, and characterised by feelings of mental cloudiness or haziness.
While brain fog isn’t classified as a proper medical diagnosis, it is a real phenomenon. This cognitive dysfunction can manifest through confusion, forgetfulness, lack of focus, and mental fatigue in individuals.
For some, this can be quite a persistent annoyance, while others may feel that brain fog can be debilitating, and may significantly interfere with their daily life. This can occur due to a variety of underlying causes, with the most common ones being:
- stress
- anxiety
- sleep deprivation
- hormonal changes
- poor diet
- specific medications
- medical conditions such as autoimmune disorders and depression
How do Infrared Saunas Help?
While we have yet to receive studies that specifically determine the impact on brain fog, the theory here is that the advantages of infrared sauna usage may potentially extend to combat this condition.
How? Infrared saunas increase blood flow, promote detoxification, and improve mood, we believe future studies may explore these in the future.
In a recent study published in 2022, researchers analysed the sweat and urine of 17 participants living near streams in China. Once tested, they found that heavy metals such as lead, zinc, cadmium, cobalt, nickel, and copper were present in the participants.
Here, they used infrared sauna-induced sweating to remove these toxins.
They also discovered that these heavy metals were discharged more in sweat than in urine, which suggests that sweating, particularly through infrared sauna use, can be an effective method for removing these toxins from the body.
Furthermore, the same study observed that IR saunas may improve mood. This is further supported by an older study published in 2016, wherein the results showed that IR saunas provided a potent antidepressant effect lasting for up to six weeks.
Additionally, IR saunas help keep your brain cells out of harm’s way by stimulating heat shock protein production. For context, heat shock proteins can be responsible for cognition and memory, although emerging studies are limited in this regard.
Nevertheless, these IR saunas may improve overall brain function and prevent neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s from creeping up on you.
Achieve Better Mental Clarity With Sun Stream Saunas
While we would love to have more studies done in this area to fully understand its effects, these are just some of the probable mechanisms of action through which infrared saunas may help combat brain fog and help you achieve mental clarity.
If you have any questions, inquiries, or concerns regarding the topics we haven’t covered, or if you’re interested in taking home an infrared sauna for yourself, feel free to contact us for more information.