Infrared saunas - Just another wellness trend or here to stay?
Johannes Kettelhodt
Johannes is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Clearlight Saunas, providing infrared saunas & health stacking systems to Europe and Australia and Asia. Johannes co-founded Clearlight Saunas Int. as a 23 year old while finishing his engineering studies and living overseas in New Zealand. Since then he’s been at the core of promoting Clearlight globally, and providing the newest health and wellness technologies to the public. Recent launches included #TheSaunaShow Podcasts, and providing various eBooks around sauna use and related therapies. Recently, Sebastian, Johannes and the team started working on designing predictive sauna software solutions, and their own manufacturing to truly create pioneering wellness solutions.
Johannes Kettelhodt explores whether infrared saunas are a fleeting wellness
If you use a sauna four to seven times, your cardiovascular disease risk goes down forty eight percent. There really isn't any reason not to use a sauna. Go out there, go in the ice bath, and have fun. It is the best rejuvenating feeling.
Summary
- Infrared saunas heat the core body temperature directly using invisible light rather than extreme air heat, allowing for longer, more gentle sessions at lower temperatures of 40-60°C.
- Raising core temperature through whole-body hyperthermia mimics a natural fever to stimulate the immune system and has shown significant potential in reducing clinical depression markers.
- Frequent sauna use can reduce cardiovascular disease risk by 48% and all-cause mortality by 40%, with infrared technology providing a modern, accessible way to achieve these health outcomes.
- Infrared therapy is highly effective for detoxification; it helps the body sweat out heavy chemicals and toxins, a protocol currently utilized for health recovery in firefighter centers.
- Infrared saunas offer high efficiency with short preheat times and the ability to combine multiple wellness modalities, such as red light, salt, and aromatherapy, into a single session.
Article
Infrared Saunas: Just Another Wellness Trend Or Here To Stay?
A Finnish Ritual Met A Modern Claim
At Biohacker Summit 2022 Helsinki, held in Helsinki, Finland, on 3 to 4 June 2022, Johannes Kettelhodt stepped into one of the most symbolically charged rooms imaginable to make his case. In the country where sauna is less a luxury than a civic language, the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Clearlight Saunas asked a deceptively simple question: was infrared sauna merely the latest wellness fad, or had it earned a permanent place beside tradition?
Kettelhodt knew the tension in the room. Finland hardly needed an outsider to explain sauna culture. Yet his presentation, delivered on Friday 3 June, did not try to displace the old faith of wood, steam and searing air. Instead, it argued that infrared technology belonged to the same long human story of heat, recovery and ritual, only translated into a gentler and more engineered form.
The Ancient Heat Behind The Modern Device
He began with history, grounding his case in the deep lineage of sauna itself. Traditional saunas, he noted, have roots reaching back to around 4000 BC. In that telling, the impulse was ancient and elemental: humans have long sought enclosed heat not only for comfort, but for cleansing, resilience and social life.
In Finland, that heritage has become almost inseparable from national identity. Kettelhodt leaned into that connection, acknowledging sauna as cultural inheritance rather than commodity. But the pivot of his talk came quickly. Infrared, he suggested, should not be dismissed because it looked different from the archetypal hot room. If anything, it represented an adaptation of old thermal wisdom to modern habits, smaller homes, tighter schedules and a growing appetite for measurable health outcomes.
How Infrared Worked Differently
Unlike traditional saunas, which heat the air to punishing highs, infrared systems use invisible light spectra to warm the body more directly. The result is a lower ambient temperature, typically between 40 and 60°C, but a session that can last longer and feel more tolerable.
“Infrared is part of the invisible light spectrum that heats your core temperature,” Kettelhodt said. “It helps you break that oxidative stress in your body and is a really nice and gentle experience.”
That distinction mattered. In practical terms, infrared was presented as an option for people who found conventional sauna overwhelming. The gentler heat opened the door to longer exposure, and with it, Kettelhodt argued, many of the same physiological benefits associated with heat stress.
The Fever Effect
The core idea running through the presentation was that artificially raising body temperature could mimic one of the body’s oldest defence mechanisms: fever.
“Raising your core temperature artificially is a good thing,” Kettelhodt said. “It shows the immune system is working and your body is actually fighting bacteria or disease.”
This was the language of whole-body hyperthermia, a field of growing interest in wellness and medicine alike. Kettelhodt pointed to research suggesting that controlled heat exposure could trigger thermoregulatory responses linked to immune activation, recovery and mental wellbeing. In this framing, sauna was not simply relaxation. It was stress, but stress of a useful kind, calibrated rather than chaotic.
Depression Research And The Promise Of Heat
Among the most striking claims in the talk was the emerging connection between heat therapy and depression. Kettelhodt referenced research into whole-body hyperthermia that found notable reductions in markers associated with depression.
“Heat and sweat, although uncomfortable, seem to have a thermoregulatory effect on the human body,” he said. “Research shows that through infrared therapy, depression markers go down severely.”
The science, he acknowledged, was still developing. Mechanisms remained under investigation, and the field had not settled every question of causality or protocol. But the direction of travel was clear enough to command attention. In a wellness market saturated with gimmickry, this was Kettelhodt’s strongest defence against the charge of trendiness: infrared sauna was beginning to intersect with serious medical inquiry.
Cardiovascular Benefits That Were Hard To Ignore
He also tied infrared sauna to the broader body of sauna literature, especially the much-cited Finnish research on frequency of use. That work has associated regular sauna bathing with a 48% reduction in cardiovascular disease risk and a 40% drop in all-cause mortality among frequent users.
Those findings came from traditional sauna contexts, not infrared cabins specifically. Yet Kettelhodt’s argument was that infrared offered a modern, accessible route into the same broad therapeutic terrain of heat exposure. If the human body benefited from repeated, tolerable heat stress, then the delivery mechanism might evolve without losing the principle.
It was a pragmatic claim, not a purist one. For many users, especially those outside Nordic sauna culture, convenience could determine adherence. Infrared systems, with shorter preheat times and lower thermal intensity, made regular use more plausible.
Beyond Wellness, Into Clinics And Recovery Centres
The most compelling part of Kettelhodt’s presentation may have been the one that moved furthest from lifestyle branding. Infrared technology, he said, had already found roles outside the boutique wellness economy.
He pointed to its use in warming newborn babies, where gentle radiant heat can be delivered without overheating the surrounding air. He referred also to cancer therapy research, particularly in Germany, where heat-based approaches have been explored in clinical contexts. And he highlighted firefighter detoxification programmes in the United States, where infrared sauna has been used as part of efforts to help those exposed to heavy chemical loads.
“There is evidence building up around the effects of artificially creating heat stress in the body,” he said. “Raising the temperature beyond what is comfortable has severe detoxification effects.”
That was where the presentation acquired a sharper edge. If infrared sauna had applications in neonatal care, oncology research and occupational recovery, then its future could not be explained solely by influencer culture and premium home installations.
Efficiency, Stacking And The New Wellness Logic
Still, Kettelhodt was speaking at Biohacker Summit, and he knew his audience. He described infrared not just as heat therapy, but as a platform for “stacking” multiple interventions into one session: salt therapy, aromatherapy and red light among them.
This was wellness translated into the logic of efficiency. Sessions required only about 20 minutes of preheating. Time inside could stretch from 20 to 40 minutes. Multiple modalities could be layered without adding extra appointments or elaborate routines.
“Sweating in general is good,” Kettelhodt said. “I try to sweat once a day and I encourage everyone to do the same. Infrared saunas are a great way to combine health therapies to make the most efficient use of your time.”
In that sentence lay the commercial and cultural genius of infrared. It promised not just health, but optimisation. It converted an ancient act into something modular, measurable and compatible with contemporary self-improvement.
More Than A Trend
So was infrared sauna just another wellness trend? Kettelhodt’s answer, delivered in the sauna capital of the world, was no. His case rested on three pillars: ancient human familiarity with heat, emerging research into hyperthermia and mental health, and practical accessibility in a time-starved age.
That did not mean every claim had been proved, nor that all wellness marketing around infrared deserved trust. But the presentation at Biohacker Summit 2022 Helsinki suggested something more durable than trend. Infrared sauna had attached itself to a powerful convergence of science, ritual and convenience. It offered a softer threshold into the same old human desire to sweat, recover and endure.
In Finland, where the traditional sauna remains untouchable, that was a bold argument. Yet by the end of Kettelhodt’s talk, it sounded less like a challenge to tradition than an attempt to extend it.
Part of Biohacker Summit 2022 Helsinki