Infrared Therapy, The thought of it brings a vision and sensation of the universe just vibrating through us while doing awesome things. Today, we're going infrared Sweat Nation!!!
I've caught myself thinking more about infrared lately. I've been curious about it since hearing about it's benefits from several sources. A new yoga studio then popped up named Sol Yoga in Wynwood, an up and coming hip neighborhood of Miami, so I decided to quench my curiosity.
Infrared, which is a form of electromagnetic radiation outside the visual spectrum, gets its name from the fact that it lies just beyond the wavelength of red light. It is often categorized as near-infrared (NIR), infrared (IR), and far infrared (FIR) radiation.
These differences in wavelength cause infrared radiation to have a range of effects and medical uses. It also has the ability to penetrate human tissue, as the wavelength with the greatest ability to penetrate tissue in regards to tissue lies between 690 and 900 nanometers
This spectrum of frequencies has manifested itself with scientists using infrared radiation for research and medical purposes. It seems to have a positive effect on decreasing potential cell damage associated with more harmful ionizing radiation.
Let's take a dive into what some of the benefits are.
-Reduces Inflammation
In a study of arthritis patients, infrared pulsed laser devices reduced inflammatory markers. Now, what's cool is that the patients had clear improvements in function and pain after only a few months of treatment. This could allow arthritic patients to reduce their reliance on the standard clinical treatment, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatorydrugs (NSAIDs), which is really not the best thing for your liver.
Infrared treatment also significantly reduced immobility in rats with artificially induced arthritis by lowering inflammatory markers.
-Speeds Up Wound Healing
Shout out to my boy Eddie who's going to need some healing after suffering an injury, Heal well buddy! I'm definitely sending him a link to this article. Gotta be there for our people when they need us, right Sweat Nation?
Infrared rays increased the levels of key markers that take place in the healing process. These increases reduced the production of key inflammatory factors. Reducing the duration and intensity of these factors seemed to have shortened the inflammatory response time, allowing wound healing to move into the proliferative period quicker.
-Help To Treat Cancer
Infrared therapy could add another piece to the puzzle of treating cancer. Nanoparticles that are exposed to near-infrared radiation seem to become highly toxic to nearby cancer cells.
After only 5 minutes of irradiation using nanoparticles, radiation raised the temperature high enough to cause significant cancer cell death. In mice, after only 21 days, infrared radiation caused all of the tumors to die. How interesting, right?
-Improve Exercise and Recovery
Infrared helped to reduce the inflammation and soreness associated with post-exercise recovery to shorten recovery periods. This allows for more intense and frequent training and improved results. We love this benefit in Sweat Nation!
In a study, infrared emitting fabrics improved the performance of soccer players during normal training. The players wore the fabrics for 10h at night and saw a moderate decrease in muscle soreness 24 and 72 hours after exercise. Bonus for men is that Infrared also seems to raise testosterone, which full transparency I felt after a few classes at Sol Yoga.
How did I realize this you may ask? Exactly how you might think I would. I felt "in the mood" to the point where it woke me up a few nights in a row. Something was going on, and my significant other noticed too!! 😉
-Take Aways
Infrared is a rather new darling in the scientific world. We gotta be straight up with ourselves when it comes to all these new technologies. There are not many available human clinical trials that use infrared radiation. Additionally, most of the available human studies are not high quality (not double-blind or don't have a large enough sample size). It's in its infancy, I'll keep my eye on it for you as information begins to unveil itself. The only way to see how something works is to give it a whirl, and my curiosity is all about it!
Here's to your Health/Wealth
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