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The 1,000 Calorie Sauna

The Smarthouse Technology Guide features an infrared sauna that burns 1,000 Calories in 30 minutes.

The sauna technology is from a company called Health Mate.

It claims its sauna's can burn up to 1000 calories in 30 minutes and provide excellent benefits for skin, due to increased blood, and also relief from arthritis, sprains and strains.
A brief perusal of the Health Mate site shows this interesting health claim:
As you relax in the gentle heat of the Health Mate sauna, your body is actually hard at work, producing sweat, pumping blood - and burning calories. According to a Journal of the American Medical Association report, in a single sauna session you may burn as many calories as you would rowing or jogging for 30 minutes. So you lose weight - not just water.
Lose weight - not just water? That leaves muscle, bone, fat, and organ tissues. I'm not sure how an infra-red sauna is capable of doing that. I would like to see that JAMA report.

As for thirty minutes of jogging - if a 180 pound person was running at 6 mph (10 minutes/mile) they would burn about 432 Calories (src).

1,000 Calories in 30 minutes? That's a very bold claim.

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26 Comments

eric m.

wow, and people actually believe this stuff. whoo! :-)

Reply
Susan Gooding

Well to me that sounds unhealthy. It's just another company trying to sell a product.

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Panu Kinnari

And why can't you just enjoy sauna without making it fatloss fad?

Afterall it is the ultimate way to relax. Turn up the heat to 70 degrees celcius and let the sweat pour out.

Even better if wood is used to warm sauna stove instead of elecric stove or these ridiculous infrared saunas. And lake to dip in makes experience almost orgastic :)

Reply
Fat Dan

If you could lose 1000 calories in a sauna in 30 minutes then there would be obesisty epidemic. Everyone would simply sit in a sauna for an hour a night and never have to worry about what you ate.

Of course we would all die from some sort of cancer that I am sure these things cause. Everything causes cancer you know.

Reply
phoveo

The idea is that your body spends calories to air-condition itself.

I will quote someone from the discussion that is going on over at digg.com:

"...sweating takes work in the form of calorie consumption (producing one gram of sweat requires 0.586 kcal). so, when you sit in this toaster, you sweat, and use up calories. then, to compensate for the water loss, you can rehydrate afterwards with water, which doesn't have any calories. so, bascially, you body works in order to produce sweat to cool itself, causing you to burn calories, and you rehydrate with water, so there's an overall loss in calories, hence, weight loss."

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Elissa

In college there was a sauna in the women's locker room with windows at the entrance to it. One day after leaving it I walked past and saw a young student, very thin already sitting inside with all her clothes and her heavy winter jacket on. This sort of weight loss scares me and the risk to your heart sitting in saunas can be immense.

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Jim

These sort of claims are nonsense. Even if sweating itself burned calories - then you would have to sweat 100 grams of fluid just to consume 50 calories! All you have to do is take a bite of a burger and it's all over!

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Spectra

Yeah, there is no way you'd burn 1000 calories in an hour. You may sweat out a couple of pounds of water, but that'll be replaced when you drink some water. Your body actually uses more calories to HEAT itself than it does to cool itself down. Shivering is involuntary muscle contraction and your body basically burns some fuel in order to create heat to keep you warm. So maybe the next big thing will be giant walk-in weight loss freezers. Betcha I'd make a million bucks if I marketed something like that.

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Prufrax

Maybe they mean 1000 calories instead of the normal _kilo_calories that food energy value is counted in that people often call "calories".

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Spectra

Prufrax...that WOULD be sneaky! I guess yeah, it could burn 1000 calories instead of 1000 Calories, lol. I don't think most people know that food Calories are actually kilocalories. 1000 calories=1 Calorie.

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www.iportion.com

Jim I feel you are right;
Saunas let you lose water so yes you will seem smaller but food will put it back fast.

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Heather

And to think I've been riding my bike and running... like a schmuck!
:)

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Weight Loss Coach

This is very interesting as I bellieve strongly that someone would only lose water weight. I have never thought of your body is actually hard at work, producing sweat, pumping blood - and burning calories. This does make a lot of sense and I am going to research it to know the truth.

Reply
Atlanta Girl

I haven't altered my workouts or diet at all in the past 2 1/2 months except to sit in the sauna for 30-45 mins 4x a week (with a good book) at 170 degrees. (Not infrared). I down about 20oz of water while in there.

I've lost 24 lbs in that time (and my body fat % has reduced 6%). I don't know if it's the sweating, if it's kick-started my metabolism, or what. I have 30 pounds to go, but I have been plateaued for more than a year.

And as an added upside, I'm a lot more tolerant of the summer heat. Complaining about 90+ degree days seems sort of lame.

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raechel

me and kaila wish this were true!! we dont like being fat and this wud b our DREAM!!

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Ryan

"Your body actually uses more calories to HEAT itself than it does to cool itself down." - Spectra

Amen to that. Before I moved to California, I loved winter because I could train in the snow. No shirt, no shoes. Your feet get used to it. The heat getting sucked out of your body greatly increases the amount of calories you burn. This can result in a huge boost of metabolism as well. This is a fairly advanced technique though, so don't try it at home. You need to already have a high enough metabolism that your muscles won't get cold in the freezing weather, or else you can easily injure them.

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Spectra

Ryan--where did you train? Training in the snow would be insane! I've thought about it though. I frequently run in the winter with few clothes on so I can get the maximum effect of the cold raising my metabolism. But you say you do it barefoot? How's that work for you?

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Ryan

I trained in Pennsylvania. It gets fairly cold there. Running in minimal clothes should be enough for most people's purposes. I added in training barefoot mainly to help my focus. Your mind learns to ignore the cold and other outside factors. When it does this, it can dedicate more to proper form and technique (I was training in martial arts). Another thing I liked about training in the snow is that I could push my body harder, as I'm pretty sensitive to heat.

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Chris

Running barefoot in the snow? Man thats crazy lol. Couldnt you get frost bite or something?

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JS

Who believes that?
Its all water weight.100%.
Pathetic these ppl will take advantage of overweight ppl desperate to lose weight.

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infared sauna kid

1000 calories is a very bold claim. i heard 600 calories for 30 mins and thought that would be hard to achieve. msut have sweated buckets

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infared sauna kid

JS - it does work - I forget the exact figure but the body consumes a fraction of a calorie for each drop of sweat. not far from 1 cal/drop

Reply
2 much info

I dont get all this health stuff. Im 15 years old about to turn 16 i weigh about 117 i sweat all the time cause im very athleitic. I eat about 1,800 calories a day, i sweat alot and i do burn alot of calories. So i think that sauna thing is true, but i dont think you burn 1000 calories in 30 min. In 30 min you'll proballly burn about 90 calories at the most.

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Lauri

Yeah, absolutely agree. Some even say that no direct weight loss in saunas is possible.

It's a very temporary thing - you could very well lose several kilos by going to the sauna, but it's through perspiration and will come back the moment you will rehydrate yourself (and for your health's sake, you will need to do it).

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Infared Sauna Kid

still not getting it - the body has to work to create a drop of sweat - that's where the calorie burn comes into play

Reply
Dr.J
Infared Sauna Kid said:
still not getting it [...]
My educated guess is this: Sweating is a passive activity. It does not require energy expenditure. The heart rate will go up, however due to the peripheral decrease in resistance the work load on the heart does not increase(as it would with actual exercise). The slight added work of the heart in beating faster is minimal and insignificant in adding calorie usage. Bottom line if you will: Every day I see the same overweight people in the sauna and they ain't gettin' no thinner. Reply

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