BY DR. SHERRY A. ROGERS, M.D.
(Excerpts)The Superior Sauna
F I R S (Far-Infrared Sauna) pg 199
What is the best way to get rid of toxic chemicals including pesticides, heavy metals and hydrocarbon residues when you cannot tolerate a sauna? When a sauna makes you feel weak, sick, have a fast heart rate, faint, dizzy, panicky, headachy or just plain miserable, what is the solution?
The Far-Infrared sauna:
Thanks to improved technology, the far infrared sauna is far safer and infinitely more tolerable, because it uses a heat energy that penetrates tissues, triggering mobilization of chemicals from subcutaneous fat storage, directly into the sweat. This activating penetration allows for a much lower overall temperature to be used (as I’ll show you later), one that is enjoyable and not torture.
But more importantly, you haven’t forced the body to bear very high temperatures (160 degrees and higher), pulling chemicals back into the bloodstream where they can duplicate original symptoms. Instead they slip out the back door, so to speak, from just under the skin storage directly into the sweat. Over weeks and months there is equilibrium, or chemicals that are stored in other organs slowly and safely disseminate throughout the body and eventually empty into subcutaneous fat. It is the chemical load that is stored beneath the skin that is the main area activated by the far infrared sauna.
Another thing I always worried about in a conventional sauna, even for a few brief moments I could stand one, was the fact that my eyeballs burned so much. I couldn’t believe that intense heat on my corneas was good for them and feared triggering cataracts. To my knowledge, no studies have ever been done on this, but this high-temperature on the eyeball and lens cannot be good for them. It’s unphysiologic. Anyway, I do not get that type of eye pain in the infrared sauna, only profuse sweating. And that is just the effect you want in order to release a lifetime of toxins from the body storage. The body gets rid of stored chemicals in stool, urine or sweat. The sweat route requires no drugs and is the most efficient and natural (man used to physically work and sweat before computers were invented). As the oldest of eight children I used to hesitate to recommend something as expensive as a home sauna. I was looking for treatments that were natural, but inexpensive and definitely not high-tech! But when you realize the lifelong incapacity and expense of diseases such as chronic pain syndromes, heart disease, chemical sensitivity, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, migraines, Alzheimer’s, cancer or any others caused by chemical toxicity, a sauna is cheap. Let’s face it: high tech pollution requires high tech solutions.
(1) Just add up the time and money you wasted getting diagnosed. (2) or add up the cost for a year of prescription medications and you will pay for it. But its advantages do not end there. (3) Once you have it, it’s yours to use forever, for the world will never run out of ways to poison us. (4) The whole family can use it. (5) It is not only capable of providing the primary “cure” or solution for your current medical problem, but can free you from symptom producing medications. Since we’re continually being bombarded by new chemicals every day, it is a tool to keep you “cleaned out” for life. It is a win – win situation.
I’m convinced that the far infrared sauna is something that everyone should do to restore health, and then continue to do on a less frequent basis to maintain the “cleaned out” state for the rest of their lives. It’s therapeutic as well as prophylactic.
The Hot Solution for Body Pollution: FIRS pg 202
How can we bring aging and illness to a screeching halt? Better yet, how can we turn back the hands of time? By booting those nasty disease-causing chemicals out of the body. Sweat out the poisons is the answer, but not any old sauna or sweating program will do, in fact some are dangerous.
FIRS, the Only Sauna Proven Safe for Elderly, Severe End-Stage Heart Patients pg 202
Many people, who are sick, like heart patients, would never tolerate the extreme temperatures of regular saunas. In fact it would make them worse, raising blood pressure and heart rate, while triggering arrhythmias and shortness of breath. Clearly heat is contraindicated. Imagine a man with cadmium-induced arthritis and hypertension, or a woman with Mercury-induced shoulder pain and angina, or toluene-induced migraines and arrhythmia. When environmental chemicals create pain in addition to cardiovascular disease, as examples, what is the heart patient to do?
If you are like most people, you may have never learned much about the diagnosis of CHF or congestive heart failure. Yet it attacks more people each year than cancer, and it is as lethal as cancer. For with the diagnosis of cancer, the median survival (different cancers have their own survival rates, but if you average them all together) is six years. With CHF, the median survival is less: five years. When the diagnosis of cancer is made, folks feel eminent doom and urgency. But with CHF, it has received such scant press that it merely engenders a “So what?” Response. It fosters no doom and gloom urgency. In fact, even though congestive heart failure is more prevalent and more lethal than cancer, folks know so little about CHF that they do not concern themselves with preventing it the way they do cancer. CHF starts with any heart symptom you can imagine. High blood pressure, high cholesterol, angina, arrhythmias like arterial fibrillation, dyspnea (shortness of breath, beginning with the stairs and inclines), claudicating (leg pain when walking), pedal edema (ankle swelling), pericarditis, cardio-myopathy (heavy metal or other poisoning of heart muscle), fluid in the lungs, recurrent pneumonias, bypass surgery (putting new coronary vessels in) or endarterectomy (roto-rooting or reaming out the old plugged arteries) can be the beginning that insidiously leads to congestive heart failure. The most common symptom shortness of breath, especially on stairs, inclines or while doing repeated deep knee bends, or jogging. An even worse sign is swelling of ankles at the end of the day, indicating a heart so overloaded that fluid backs up all the way to the leg vessels. As with every illness, in “modern medicine” CHF suddenly, becomes a deficiency of a multitude of heart drugs. Drugs to control the rhythm, like calcium channel blockers (proven to cause shrinkage of the brain and loss of mental function as well as increase the risk of heart attack and cancer). And ACE inhibitors are often prescribed, known to cause bronchitis (chronic cough). Digitalis-type drugs like Lanoxin to boost the force of contraction, and diuretics or fluid bills to decrease the swelling and work of the heart (and known to cause worsening of high blood pressure and a chance of sudden death by heart attack) are some of the other drugs added to the brew. And the list does not stop there, for the CHF patient has more drugs on board than most other diseases. Meanwhile the real underlying causes, which can be totally correctable, go consistently ignored by medicine. And once a congestive heart failure victim starts accumulating drugs, it is extremely rare if any drugs are withdrawn. Instead his physicians steadily pile on more to keep pace with his worsening symptoms.
The Heart as Allergic Target Organ pg 205
The number of drugs should tell you that medicine doesn’t have a clue as to what the true underlying cause is for CHF. But you know. It is anything that can poison the heart; mercury from dental amalgams, fish and paints; cadmium from auto exhaust, cigarette smoke (including secondhand from others), shellfish, incinerator pollution, and industrial pollution in air, food and water. You cannot escape heavy metals or other environmental pollutants. Yet even though these toxic elements have been a recognized cause of high blood pressure and heart failure for decades, they remain ignored by medicine.
What else can silently poison hearts? You guessed it, herbicides and pesticides, which are also hidden in our air, food and water. No one is protected, while not one toxin is suspected. And the causes of heart disease do not end there. They include hydrocarbons and other environmental pollutants or toxins, from trichloroethylene in city water supplies, solvent extraction fluids used to decaffeinate coffee, toluene in painted rooms, formaldehyde in carpets, and benzene in air fresheners, to good old diesel and other common pollutants in vehicle exhaust (EPA, Bond, Theriault, Levine, Atkins, Kesteloot, Alexander, Goldsmith, Meyerson, Asokan, Williams, Mee, McLeod, Wiseman, Wright, Speizer, Antti-Poika, Edling, Kobayaski, Sharp, Schroeder).
You might be tempted to fall for the story that there is no way to get all these poisons out of the heart, but you’re much too smart for that by now. The far infrared sauna (FIRS) has been proven by specialists at the famed Mayo Clinic to improve heart failure, even when nothing more could be done by medicine. And in Japan, clinicians and researchers have confirmed its life-saving properties when nothing else could be done to (Time, Kihara, and Imamura).
But not any old sauna was effective, for example, the regular dry Finnish saunas actually triggered worsening arrhythmias, increased hypertension and shortness of breath (even at rest), and most heart patients could not tolerate them. In fact, some of these heart failure patients could not even tolerate a hot bath or a hot day out of doors without drawing closer to death.
As an example of how little and increase in ambient temperature heart patients can tolerate, a July 7 2000 Wall Street Journal front page article reported that in Europe as temperatures reached 113 degrees Fahrenheit from a high-pressure system trapping drifting Sahara air masses, 25 people died. Later that not a July 14th, CNN reported multiple deaths for heart patients as temperatures in Texas lingered between 105 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Clearly a regular sauna of over 140 degrees Fahrenheit would be out of the question for the heart patient.
But hang onto your hats, for the far infrared sauna (FIRS) was not only well-tolerated with no adverse reactions, but it got rid of so many of the underlying chemical triggers of CHF, that these end-stage heart patients actually reversed and improved and were able to discard some other medications (Tei, Kihar, Imamura)! This is unheard of. With CHF, the rule in medicine is you increasingly pile on medications as you deteriorate. You rarely drop any, for there is no hope of cure. It is a one-way street—at least it is if you do not do FIRS. Currently they are evaluating cutting out a part of the damaged heart muscle (ablation) as temporary improvement for heart failure! As usual, when drugs fail, medicine resorts to cutting it out and throwing away. They figured they do yet with cancers, colitis and other problems, so why not the heart?
How is the Far Infrared Sauna Different pg 208
Let’s look at the energy that comes from the sun. It is responsible for photosynthesis, the process by which plants make energy to grow. In essence, solar energy is responsible for all of life (since animals must have plants to eat or there are no animals).
The spectrum of energy from the sun is classified according to the link of the waves. The shortest (and most damaging) rays of the solar spectrum are gamma rays. Think of a gamma gun in a sci-fi movie that vaporizes assailants in an instant.
The next longer rays of the sun are x-rays (carcinogenic), then ultraviolet (causes sunburn, corneal and lens damage and skin cancer), and then visible light. After that is the infrared spectrum, then radio waves.
At the far end of the infrared spectrum are the longest and most healing rays, the far infrared (FIR) spectrum, spanning from 1000 to 4 microns. Between 4-14 microns in the FIR (far infrared) spectrum, fall most of the rays that are the safest and most vital to health and healing. They are responsible for photosynthesis, without which there would be no life on earth.
Even our bodies radiate infrared energy through our skin between 3-50 microns, mostly around 9.4 microns. This is the basis for Infrared glasses allowing Special Forces to see the enemy at night. Palm healing and other hands-on therapies are based on the healing properties of natural far infrared rays, with our palms emitting infrared energy at between 8-14 microns. Our bodies absorb 93% of the infrared waves presented to us, the basis for similar heaters being used to warm premature infants in nurseries.
The FIRS uses a patented zirconium ceramic infrared heater, emitting between 2 and 25 microns, with a third of the output in the 2-5.6 micron range for deepest penetration, about 1.5 inches. Patented in 1965, it was used predominantly in Japan, and then use extended to the U.S. since 1981. Safer, more economical to operate, lower in a EMF, and inducing 2-3 times the sweat volume, while allowing a much more tolerable and safer operating temperature, makes it my preferred tool for purifying detoxifying the body. Naturally nothing stands alone, and a clean diet, environment and soul are, of course, crucial components to healing the impossible. I’ll take you through more of the “TOTAL LOAD” later.
Far infrared wavelengths have other beneficial properties. They lower lactic acid (the acid that accumulates and causes pain in muscles when you have overdone during exercising), stimulate endorphins or happy hormones of the brain, and kill organisms like bacteria and parasites. More important, they penetrate tissues, detoxify cells by vibrating ionic bonds, stop swelling, improve lymphatic flow and blood circulation, and attract calcium to cell membranes where it is needed for healing.
Far infrared wavelengths also decrease the size of water clusters, giving them greater mobility and penetration in and out of body tissues. For it is when these hyperactive or energized water molecules move in and out of cells that they also carry toxins that previously were stuck. FIR energy actually causes a resonance dance between the water and chemical molecules to mobilize and unite them.
The lungs, urine, stool, and sweat are the main vehicle the body has for getting rid of nasty chemicals. But by far sweat is the most efficacious. And Mayo Clinic studies show that FIR is the safest way to healing sweat, using the most heat-sensitive cardiac patients as proof (Tei).
In studies published in Circulation and the Journal of Cardiology, both respected cardiology journals, physicians at the famed Mayo Clinic used the worst classification of congestive heart failure patients to demonstrate the safety and therapeutic value of the far infrared sauna. The New York Heart Association (NYHA) classifies the most debilitating heart patients with the highest, III and IV. The study used patients who were end-stage heart patients who were maximally medicated and unable to walk across the room without shortness of breath, and unable to tolerate warm baths, much less tolerant a sauna. There were no further therapeutic options available. They had reached the end of their ropes.
But not only did these serious end-stage heart patients all tolerate the FIR sauna, but they had no side effects from it. Furthermore, in getting rid of chemicals that were the underlying causes of their diseases, they improved their heart function, something that the latest in surgery or drugs was powerless to do for them. The FIR sauna literally saved their lives.
During the sauna, no patients had dyspnea (shortness of breath), angina (chest pain) or arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat), nor complained of excessive heat. There were no side effects, something that never happens with drugs and surgery. Diastolic blood pressure (the low number) decreased but systolic pressure (the top number) was unchanged. This means they did not get hypertensive, and in fact the work of the heart was lessened. Furthermore the stroke volume and ejection fraction increased, meaning the heart beat more efficiently with less effort.
Contrast this with warm baths that caused an increase in systemic blood pressure and pulmonary vascular resistance. Warm baths, by raising blood pressure will cause more work for an already failing heart. And in a regular sauna, the arrhythmias increased 20%, whereas in the FIR sauna, arrhythmias decreased or disappeared entirely. Other cardiovascular improvements unique to the FIR sauna that would impress cardiologists include decreased pulmonary arterial and capillary wedge pressure as well as right arterial pressure, and in some cases disappearance of mitral regurgitation. The Echo (echocardiogram) showed smaller left ventricular and left arterial dimensions, and epinephrine levels did not change, but norepinephrine increased. And FIR actually increased the core and intrapulmonary arterial temperature to 38.2 +/-0.4 C (normal body temperature is 37 degrees Centigrade).
Because the far infrared sauna has so many physiologic benefits that improved cellular detoxification (without making the rest of the body toxic or sick in the process), no side effects were observed with the FIR sauna, even at 60 C (140 degrees Fahrenheit). Meanwhile, recall warm baths adversely increased cardiac work for heart patients, as did regular high heat saunas which triggered arrhythmias in over 20% of patients at 90 C. (194F). In fact, even mere high outdoor ambient temperature can kill the heart patient. In contrast, with the FIR sauna, arrhythmias disappeared, even when these folks were exposed to the high end of heat that the FIR sauna can reach. But the FIRS can generate a total sweat and 120 F. and less, providing the opportunity for even longer and more tolerable therapeutic time in the sauna.
In regular high heat saunas, plasma norepinephrine (related to adrenaline) increased 100-160% accompanied by subjective discomfort and intolerance. Adrenaline can, of course, trigger arrhythmias or a heart attack. In contrast, FIR sauna was extremely well tolerated and did the impossible. It improved the cardiac status of folks who were at the end of their therapeutic ropes. Even though medicine had nothing more to offer, congestive heart failure was reversed by the far infrared sauna.
FIRS Cures the Most Mysterious Cases pg 213
The bottom line is that folks with the most severe forms of heart disease and resistant to all medications, tolerated the FIR with no side effects. Most importantly, it improved their heart health in this Mayo Clinic study within three short weeks. Of course, it is recommended to continue longer, say a year of daily or every other day saunas for an hour or less to more completely lower stored chemicals that cause disease. Then it is necessary to do them at least once a week for life, since the world will never run out of ways to poison us.
It should not surprise you by now the mysterious joint pain in war veterans exposed to Agent Orange also disappeared, as did a host of other pain syndromes. Schnare of the U.S. EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) also showed that not only did sauna reduced body levels of HCB (hexachlorobenzene) and PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) in electrical workers, for example, but it did this even though the men were continually exposed at work.
This is important because it means that if your livelihood depends on an occupation with continual exposures, you still have a chance of being able to tolerate it more safely, as long as you are reducing chemicals faster than you are taking them in. And let’s face it. Most occupations have their specific toxins. Also this could allow tolerance of poorly tolerated implanted items that we would like to keep, like root canals and artificial joints.
Schnare also reviewed different types of workers, drug users, victims of accidental ingestions, and those poisoned by a variety of environmental chemicals; all recovered with sauna detoxification. Meanwhile, scientists from the Tokyo Medical and Dental University and others explained in further studies, once more how the FIR is superior to just plain old heat of regular saunas. There is no lack of data on this subject that remained a “secret cure” for decades.
There are many manufactures that sell the far infrared sauna, but only a few that make them with poplar wood for chemically sensitive folks. You see, the terpenes of cedar smell great, but saunas were originally made from cedar because it was native to Sweden. And because Swedes often had their saunas outside as a separate building, they wanted them bug-proof and mold-proof, a necessity when perpetually creating steam by pouring water on hot rocks. But for in-home unit that has no steam coupled with the need to avoid terpenes, poplar is ideal. Furthermore, there are lower electromagnetic fields (EMF) generated in a FIR sauna than in a conventional electrically heated one. This is important because it reduces the chance of becoming EMF sensitive.
In addition, some saunas are a combination of far infrared along with regular sauna heaters. This is self-defeating for our heart patients. They need just the far infrared, for they cannot tolerate any extra heat. Likewise for highly poisoned people, they do not need auxiliary heat forcing chemicals out of storage into the bloodstream to duplicate symptoms. They just need the far infrared technology to pull chemicals out of subcutaneous fat storage directly into the sweat. Furthermore, being the oldest of eight children from a poor family, I’m much like a mother hen. I needed a supplier with whom I could trust my precious patients and readers.
Sweating is a God-given mechanism, but it must be done properly and safely to be successful. The far infrared sauna is something that you will use for a lifetime. It is a major tool not only in your detox program but also in your anti-aging program. Because it is major expense, you might want to figure a way to put it in a garage, basement, game room, patio, lanai or porch to share it with neighbors, or have your church, physician, chiropractor, or organization buy one, for example. There are smaller units that could fit into a corner of a room. These units plug into a standard electric outlet.
At the end of this chapter you’ll find a letter for your insurance company, for they can save untold dollars by covering the cost of far infrared sauna that not only treats the whole family, but treats the family forever. And it can do what no medication can do, reverse disease. Clearly the evidence bears out the facts: FIRS will save untold lives and dollars.
Where is Your Focus? pg 218
No matter what disease you look at, from the most seemingly innocent to the nastiest symptoms, environmental chemicals are at the base. Look at endometriosis. It is not a killer; you rarely hear about it, it has a devastating effect on millions of women in the United States. It affects 15 percent of women in reproductive age range and is increasing each year. It leads to extensive and expensive problems with infertility as well as loss of much productive work time, not to mention loss of personal time because of severe pain and/or abnormal bleeding.
Even worse, endometriosis often cripples women to the point of forcing them to have a hysterectomy in early 20s, before they’ve had a chance to marry and have a family. Or they are put on drugs like Lupron, which is analogous to a chemical castration and may contribute to irreversible infertility, chemical sensitivity, or cancer later on.
Did you know the dioxins are one of many causes of endometriosis? Totally unavoidable in the 21st century lifestyle and diet, dioxins are even in everything from our foods and toilet paper to coffee filters, diapers, tampons, and much more (Birnbaum). Since they are persistent environmental poisons, they never leave the soil or water permanently, but cycle through rain, plants, animals, and into our food and bodies. The only way out is through sweat.
Remember the EPA study where 29% of folks had high levels of trichloroethylene in their exhaled breath? This can come from wearing a dry cleaned suit, and it out-gases from carpeting, cardboard and a multitude of other everyday sources. It is not exotic. It is in the water supply of many municipalities as an industrial contaminant. It can cause bizarre numbness and tingling, dizziness, inability to concentrate, headaches, depression and brain fog. And that’s just in the brain. In terms of cancer, is been associated with kidney cancer, liver cancer, Hodgkin’s disease and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma as well as cervical cancer, leukemia, and esophageal cancer (Wartenberg). And it can cause cardiac arrhythmia endometriosis, and much more.
Clearly our most potent environments are in our homes, but we are not safe regardless of where we go. Most work environments add even more to the total daily body burden. And depending upon meteorologic conditions, cloud cover, wind velocity, temperature and other factors, outdoor air pollution definitely fluctuates causing increased death by heart attack (a Janssen, Zanobetti, Laden, and Wong).
In our outdoor as well as indoor air, we have the heavy metal, lead, as one of hundreds of contaminants that is rarely looked for. It causes devastating effects from lowering children’s IQ (Schwarts 1994) to loss of hearing (Schwartz 1991). But if that were not enough, the level that causes brain damage in children is lower than 10 mcg/dl, which has been designated by “authorities” to be the cutoff point for diagnosing whether lead is a problem (Lanphear). Because this arbitrary cutoff has been inappropriately assigned, to too low a value, regular testing often will not pick up a lead level less than 10. The only way brain-damaging lead in the body can be found is with the same provocation test we used for mercury. But instead of asking for mercury to be analyzed in the urine, the doctor should order lead.
But where are the physicians who are doing lead and other heavy-metal provocations for a child who’s IQs do not match their parents? I can’t tell you the number of times I see children who are not half as smart as their parents, but no one is curious about why they are not. Where are the physicians who are looking for environmental triggers for hearing loss, endometriosis, high blood pressure, heart disease, disparate I.Q. or cancer? We have a true information warp. We’re focused on drugs, surgery, organ transplants and genetic manipulation, when we should be focused on merely getting the causative chemicals out. Or as they say, GET THE LEAD OUT!
The bottom line is that sweat is the only proven method for getting the most damaging toxins out of the body. There are no drugs, no surgery, no chelation, nor other detoxification methods with before and after measurements proving that unwanted chemicals like PCBs and pesticides were eliminated. Regular saunas have a disadvantage of generally starting well above 160ºF, and could be damaging to the eye lens and other delicate tissues. But far infrared technology is safe enough for elderly end-stage heart patients, because you do not even have to go above 100 F. degrees. It makes no sense to push the body to unphysiologic temperatures or to make someone who is already sick even more uncomfortable.
Let’s face it. You and your doctor have been screwed into believing every symptom is a deficiency of some drug or surgery. You’ve been led to believe you have no control, when in truth you’re the one who must take control.
The ailing heart for example, is a result of a lifetime of tanking up on heavy metals like cadmium, mercury, lead and aluminum, in addition to chemicals like the plasticizers, PCBs, volatile organic hydrocarbons, pesticides, dioxins, and more. The heart truly is a toxic target organ. No wonder it is the number one cause of death and disease. When there are only two causes for disease (diet and environment), its imperative that we be able to reverse both of these. And we can!
Far infrared sauna technology is the only proven, most efficacious way of getting rid of stored environmental chemicals. Preferably start with an oil change to get rid of Tran’s fatty acids, and restore missing fatty acids while correcting mineral deficiencies, like selenium, manganese, zinc and magnesium, to facilitate safer detoxification. The formula is really quite simple. The problem is it doesn’t make any money for the drug industry that owns medicine. In fact the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA 287: 6 12- 6 17, 2002) documented how over 87% of physicians who make up the panels of “experts” who determine the practice guidelines for medicine receive compensation from the drug industry. These are the guidelines that your doctors and insurance companies follow.