Your body knows it’s wintertime. A quick, corporal inventory might reveal shoulders tense from shivering continuously for weeks. Skin as dry as a forgotten dish sponge by the basement sink. Joints that sound like a certain crisped rice cereal when asked to bend too quickly. Muscles pulled from wrestling Christmas decorations into storage, flinging shoveled snow a little too gregariously and maybe a terrible sledding decision. Add to that, a tummy still contemplating your holiday feasting.
To improve life and limb, you could drop a few grand on an all-inclusive wellness spa week someplace tropical to warm up, detox and let your body relax. Or you could skip the expense, the flight and the wheatgrass smoothies and spend 30 minutes in a sauna right here in town.
A sauna is basically just a hot room with benefits. Sitting in temperatures ranging from 150 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit and inviting the sweat is an ancient practice rooted in cultures around the world, who have known for millennia that heat helps our bodies heal in several ways.
People are also reading…
Saunas mimic exercise while you’re sitting still, quickening heart rate, increasing circulation and inducing a lot of sweat. The health benefits vary by session duration, body type and frequency of visits, but can include stress relief, soft tissue repair, increased metabolism, detoxification, an immune system boost, clearer skin and improved cardiovascular function. Many health insurance plans allow members to use health savings account dollars to pay for sauna visits. (As with exercise, people with certain health conditions should check with their doctors before booking a sweat session.)
Modern saunas use two different methods for heating the booth. Traditional ones typically use electricity to power heating coils inside the walls and floor, which raise the temperature in the room and warm the body from the outside in. Traditional saunas produce a dry heat to encourage sweating, or visitors can pour water over the heating source to create steam. The other option is infrared heat, which uses a full spectrum of invisible light wavelengths to heat the body from the inside out, and is the technology used by most saunas nowadays.
Many local private gyms, like Next Gen Fitness and Jada Blitz, offer saunas for member use. Other facilities are open to the public to book sessions whenever they’d like to turn up the heat. Visits average $25 to $35 for 30 minutes, with some facilities offering discounted rates through packages and memberships. Here are a few local sauna spots.
Lumos
Williamsville, Orchard Park, Rochester, Victor, Greece | lumosinfraredsauna.com
Specializes in infrared saunas, with booths that fit 1-4 people so friends and couples can spend relaxing time together. Visitors are given terry cloth coverups to wear inside the sauna rooms—a perk that saves personal clothes from the sweat.
Buffalo Holistic Center
Kenmore | buffaloholisticcenter.com
A relaxed-vibe, total wellness spa that offers a wide variety of skin care, massage and holistic wellness services that include two saunas. In addition to an infrared sauna, the Buffalo Holistic Center also has a near-infrared sauna, which uses shorter, shallower waves to focus heat just below the skin for muscle recovery and tissue growth.
Buffalo Cryo
Buffalo | buffalocryo.com
Known for intensive cold therapy, but it also offers a sauna to help athletes and others reap the performance and recovery benefits of heat. Its sauna fits 1-2 people and uses a combination of infrared and traditional heating, making for a hotter ambient temperature and the option to add steam by pouring water over the hot stones.
