HEALTHTECH PERFORMANCE TEST DRIVE: THE FAR INFRARED SAUNA

Dr. Leslie Valle-Montoya’s Early Findings and Vision for Integrative Wellness (Relax Sauna)

August 18, 2026

For Dr. Leslie Valle-Montoya, the evaluation of the Relax Far Infrared Sauna began not with enthusiasm, but skepticism. As a clinical professional already experienced with infrared sauna therapy, she was accustomed to substantial wooden sauna systems used in both personal wellness and patient care. When the portable Relax Sauna arrived, its comparatively simple construction did not immediately suggest a technological advance.

Her first impression was candid: “I don’t like this. I feel this is a cheap version of another sauna.” She questioned whether a lightweight portable system could provide anything comparable to the larger infrared units she had already incorporated into practice. That skepticism, however, changed after she began using the device.

A Different Thermal Experience

The first practical distinction Valle-Montoya identified was efficiency. Unlike her larger sauna, the Relax system did not require a lengthy preheating period. Heat was apparent quickly after activation, while the operating temperature she cited was comparable to that of her wooden sauna—approximately 140°F. More important from a clinical workflow perspective was the shortened treatment period. In her experience, the portable sauna produced an intense thermal response within approximately 20–30 minutes, whereas longer sessions had traditionally been required with her conventional unit.

“If we can cut people’s time almost in half and still get the same or probably better benefit out of it,” she observed, “it is game changer.”

For a wellness practitioner, this is not simply a convenience issue. Treatment time affects patient compliance, scheduling, clinical throughput and the ability to combine thermal therapy with other components of a structured wellness program. A technology capable of generating a meaningful physiological response in a shorter period could potentially make regular sauna use more practical for patients who would otherwise resist a 45- or 60-minute commitment.

Valle-Montoya described the distinction in unusually clinical terms. Her traditional box sauna, she explained, was relaxing, soothing and beneficial. The Relax Sauna felt different to her—what she called “medicinal.” By that description, she was referring to the immediacy of the physiological experience: increased sweating, changes in heart rate and a sensation of active thermoregulation occurring considerably earlier in the session.

From Patient Experience to Measurement

Perhaps the most important feature of Valle-Montoya’s evaluation is that she does not want the assessment to end with subjective experience. Her larger clinical philosophy is based on an increasingly important question in integrative health technology: Can the physiological effects of a wellness intervention be measured?

At the time of the interview, she reported experience with approximately ten participants using the Relax Sauna, including individuals who had also used her conventional box sauna. Her developing evaluation model incorporates measures such as OligoScan assessment, heart-rate variability and other before-and-after indicators. She specifically described using OligoScan in her practice to follow heavy metals and mineral status.

Her preliminary observations intrigued her. She described one participant showing what she characterized as a small shift in mercury and aluminum after approximately three weeks of sauna use, and another long-term detoxification patient demonstrating a more pronounced change during the period in which the Relax Sauna was incorporated. Valle-Montoya was careful in the interview to describe these as early observations rather than the conclusion of a controlled clinical study. Nevertheless, they were sufficiently interesting to motivate her to pursue a more formal next phase.

This distinction is important. The clinical value of these early experiences lies less in declaring what the sauna has already “proven” than in identifying what should now be tested.

Building a Measurable Detoxification Program

Detoxification is one of the areas in which Valle-Montoya sees the greatest potential for integration. Rather than treating sauna use as an isolated wellness amenity, she envisions thermal therapy as one component within a broader protocol involving hydration, mineral support, recovery and objective monitoring.

Her future research interest is particularly ambitious: measuring environmental toxicant burden before an intervention, implementing a defined detoxification protocol incorporating far-infrared sauna, and then repeating the measurements afterward. She specifically expressed interest in studying heavy metals, PFAS and microplastics. “I want to be able to measure people’s environmental toxicities,” she explained, including “not only PFAS, not only heavy metals, but microplastics.” Her proposed model is straightforward: establish a baseline, implement the protocol and measure again. If measurable movement can be demonstrated, she believes the implications for accessible detoxification programs could be substantial.

Importantly, such a study would be needed before claims about removal of these substances could be established. Valle-Montoya’s interview therefore points toward a research hypothesis—not yet a clinical conclusion.

The “Dirty Towel” Observation

One of her most visually striking observations involved the white towels she intentionally places inside the sauna during each session. Valle-Montoya has repeatedly noticed dark or black discolorations appearing on the towels after use, across multiple patients—an occurrence she says she has not observed with the same frequency or intensity in her other sauna systems. While the source of these markings remains unknown, their recurring appearance has captured her clinical interest and raises an important question for further investigation: What exactly are these dark residues, and what might their presence reveal about the physiological processes occurring during far-infrared sauna therapy?

Scientifically, that qualification matters. Visible residue cannot simply be identified as a particular toxin without laboratory analysis. Yet the observation provides another testable question: What exactly is present in perspiration and residue collected during these sessions, and does its composition change over repeated treatments? That question could transform an anecdotal observation into a meaningful analytical investigation.

Cardiovascular Response, Recovery and Clinical Programming

Valle-Montoya also sees opportunities beyond detoxification. She reported monitoring changes in heart rate and heart-rate variability and compared the thermal response to aspects of cardiovascular exercise. In her view, the clinical story should include not only the stress induced by heat, but the body's subsequent adaptation and recovery.

“You also have to have recovery after thermoregulation in your body,” she emphasized, while underscoring hydration as an essential part of responsible sauna use.

This creates opportunities for the technology to be incorporated into broader clinical programs rather than being positioned solely as a “detox sauna.” Depending upon the patient and appropriate clinical oversight, Valle-Montoya’s model suggests studying the technology within wellness, recovery, metabolic, cardiovascular-conditioning and environmental-health programs. Its relatively short treatment window could also make it easier to pair sauna exposure with complementary assessments and therapies during a single visit.

The broader significance is programmability: sauna becomes not the program itself, but a therapeutic component within a measurable clinical pathway.

From Wellness Technology to Clinical Evidence

Valle-Montoya’s approach reflects a larger evolution occurring within integrative health. Emerging wellness technologies increasingly require more than testimonials. Practitioners need protocols, baselines, physiological endpoints, repeat measurements and reproducible observations.

That mindset is evident elsewhere in her work. In discussing other frequency-based technologies, she proposed dark-field microscopy and bioimpedance analysis as potential methods for examining before-and-after biological changes, including cellular vitality and phase angle. The same philosophy informs her interest in far-infrared sauna: observe the response, measure what can be measured, identify what remains unknown, and design the next investigation accordingly.

The Relax Sauna therefore appears to have moved, in Valle-Montoya’s assessment, from an initially unimpressive portable device to a technology worthy of deeper clinical evaluation. Its rapid heat delivery, shorter treatment window, pronounced perspiration response and potential compatibility with measurable wellness and detoxification protocols have earned her attention.

The next step is evidence. For Valle-Montoya, that means moving beyond whether a patient simply “feels better” after a sauna session. It means asking whether environmental markers change, whether physiological adaptation can be documented, whether responses differ from conventional infrared systems, and whether those findings can be reproduced across a larger population.

That is ultimately where her contribution to the HealthTech Reporter Clinical Evaluation & Performance Review becomes most valuable. She is not merely evaluating whether the Relax Far Infrared Sauna is comfortable or convenient. She is beginning to ask the more consequential clinical question:

What can this technology become when it is incorporated into a structured program, subjected to measurement, and evaluated as part of a modern evidence-building model for wellness, detoxification and progressive clinical care?

 

THE HISTORY OF SWEAT MEDICINE — PART II

 Before Science Had a Name: Ancient Observation, Ritual, and the Emerging Science of Heat

Inspired by the insights of Bobbi Kline, MD  | Edited by: Lennard M. Goetze

The historical record of sweat medicine presents a remarkable pattern of human observation. Across civilizations separated by geography, language, and culture, people repeatedly incorporated heat, sunlight, heated stones, steam, thermal water, and deliberate perspiration into practices associated with health, purification, restoration, and spiritual life. As explored in Part I, these traditions included Indigenous sweat ceremonies, Finnish sauna culture, the Mesoamerican temazcal, Greek and Roman bathing practices, natural hot springs, and the eventual medical development of heliotherapy. Although these practices differed substantially in purpose and execution, their recurrence raises an important question for contemporary investigation: whether the therapeutic significance attributed to heat historically involved considerably more than perspiration itself.

Bobbi Kline, MD, offers a useful framework for examining this possibility. Her interpretation shifts attention away from a single physiological endpoint and toward the larger environment in which ancient thermal practices occurred. Heat was rarely experienced in isolation. Depending upon the culture, thermal exposure could occur alongside water, darkness, sunlight, breathing, medicinal plants, periods of silence, communal participation, physical preparation, prayer, contemplation, and ritual. Kline emphasizes that traditions such as Native American sweat ceremonies should not be treated as a single uniform practice; nevertheless, she observes that “there are many similar elements that seem to be common across time and cultures.” This repetition does not establish medical efficacy, but it provides an important anthropological foundation for asking why comparable practices persisted independently in different societies.

One potentially important element is the physiological challenge created by heat itself. Contemporary physiology recognizes that controlled environmental stress can stimulate adaptive responses. Exercise provides the most familiar example: temporary physiological stress, when appropriately dosed and followed by recovery, can contribute to greater functional capacity and resilience. Kline identifies a conceptual similarity between this process and deliberate exposure to heat or cold. As she observes, heat and related environmental stresses “create a stress to the body that the body then has to respond” to. In appropriately controlled amounts, she argues, such stress “gets the body to adapt, to be resilient.”

This interpretation provides an intriguing bridge between ancient practice and contemporary concepts of physiological conditioning. Kline is careful to recognize limits, noting that thermal stress must remain within an appropriate window and may require gradual conditioning. Within those limits, however, she describes the process as one that may be “supporting resilience of your body's physiology.” Ancient cultures would not have described these responses through the language of cardiovascular adaptation, thermoregulation, autonomic activity, cellular stress responses, or hormesis. Their knowledge was observational rather than molecular. Nevertheless, repeated observation could establish an empirical relationship between controlled exposure, bodily response, recovery, and perceived well-being long before the mechanisms became scientifically measurable.

This distinction is important when considering the origins of medical knowledge. Institutional science is relatively recent, whereas human experimentation with the natural environment is ancient. Early societies possessed no laboratory assays, thermal imaging systems, biochemical markers, electroencephalography, or controlled clinical trials. They did, however, possess the capacity to observe reproducible phenomena. Heat caused perspiration. Intense warmth altered breathing and circulation. Cold produced a different physiological response. Sunlight influenced warmth, sleep, agriculture, behavior, and seasonal activity. Knowledge accumulated through observation, repetition, oral tradition, and cultural memory. Such practices should not be equated with modern experimental science, but neither should they be dismissed simply because their practitioners lacked contemporary terminology. The observation came first; the scientific vocabulary followed centuries later.

Reconsidering the Meaning of Prayer

Kline's interpretation of prayer provides another important perspective. Modern Western readers frequently understand prayer primarily within the framework of organized religion: prescribed language, doctrine, petition, or communication with a deity. Applying this contemporary interpretation automatically to ancient ceremonial practices, however, may obscure other functions that prayer could have served.

Kline specifically questions this assumption. “One of the things that we are potentially misinterpreting or misunderstanding is this whole sense of prayer,” she explains. Modern cultures, she notes, may associate prayer with prescribed religious practice, a script, or the act of asking an external power for intervention. She proposes another interpretation: “the idea of it actually being a form of contemplation. It's inner work. It's introspection for the goal of not only knowing more about yourself, but then self-improvement.”

This interpretation substantially changes how prayer within an ancient sweat ceremony might be considered. Rather than separating prayer from the health practice and classifying one as spiritual and the other as physiological, contemplation itself may have been an integral part of the experience. A participant undergoing intense thermal exposure is placed in an environment in which bodily sensations become difficult to ignore. Heat, perspiration, altered breathing, physical discomfort, darkness, stillness, and prolonged attention naturally direct awareness toward internal experience.

Kline connects this physical challenge directly with mental discipline. “There's the mental aspect, the discipline to be able to be uncomfortable, to sit with discomfort,” she explains. Physical discomfort, in her interpretation, inevitably directs attention inward: “Where does your mind go? Where do your thoughts go?” This relationship between physical stress and internal attention offers a potentially productive area of comparison with contemporary meditation, mindfulness, breathwork, exercise psychology, and stress-regulation practices.

What an ancient culture described through the language of prayer or spiritual preparation may therefore have included psychological processes that modern researchers would classify differently. This does not mean that ancient prayer and contemporary mindfulness are interchangeable. It suggests instead that historical terminology should be interpreted within its cultural context rather than automatically separated from questions of physiology and psychology.

The Underestimated Role of Community

The communal nature of many traditional practices introduces another important variable. Modern health interventions are increasingly individualized. Exercise may be performed alone, physiological data are collected through personal devices, and contemporary “biohacking” frequently focuses on optimization of the individual organism. Many ancient healing traditions, by contrast, were embedded within families, communities, ceremonies, and shared cultural expectations.

For Kline, this may represent one of the most overlooked differences between ancient and contemporary approaches. “We are underestimating the impact of community in healing,” she observes. She contrasts the communal structure of traditional practices with modern attempts to add increasingly sophisticated tools and biohacking technologies to individual health routines. The physiological intervention may still have effects when performed alone, she acknowledges, but she asks what changes “when you add in the spiritual component, the community component, the preparation” and “the whole ceremony around it.”

This is particularly relevant because traditional ceremonies frequently involved preparation rather than simply exposure. Kline notes that ritual may include “psychological, as well as physical and spiritual preparation.” Participants do not necessarily enter such practices casually or without conditioning; the preparation itself becomes part of the experience.

The effects of community need not be interpreted exclusively through spiritual terminology. Contemporary health science increasingly recognizes relationships among social connection, stress, behavior, adherence, psychological well-being, and health outcomes. Kline extends this discussion into more speculative territory by considering whether additional interpersonal energetic interactions may eventually become measurable. She acknowledges that these proposed phenomena remain poorly understood, stating that “we still do not fully understand” human energetic interactions and suggesting that this dimension may be “the most challenging to measure with our current science.”

That qualification is essential. These energetic interpretations should be regarded as hypotheses rather than established biomedical mechanisms. Nevertheless, Kline's larger methodological question remains relevant: when a complex historical intervention is reduced to a single measurable variable, might other meaningful components of the original experience disappear from the investigation?

From Reductionism to Synergy

Modern experimental science depends upon reductionism because isolating variables allows researchers to establish mechanisms and causal relationships. If the objective is to determine the cardiovascular effects of heat, other influences must be controlled wherever possible. Ancient practices, however, were not constructed as controlled experiments. Heat, hydration, fasting, breathing, social participation, expectation, ritual, contemplation, environmental exposure, and recovery could occur within the same experience. Consequently, studying heat alone may accurately characterize the thermal component without necessarily characterizing the complete historical practice.

Kline sees an opportunity for a broader form of scientific inquiry capable of examining both individual mechanisms and their interaction. “We are entering into a new era,” she suggests, in which research may be able to “dive deep into the molecular components, but also the energetic components.” Her larger question concerns whether science can eventually understand the “synergy” and “complex web of interaction” produced by these practices rather than reducing the entire phenomenon to a single biochemical pathway.

This does not require abandoning reductionist science. Rather, it suggests a second stage of investigation. Molecular biology can investigate cellular responses to heat. Physiology can measure circulation, thermoregulation, autonomic activity, and metabolic changes. Psychology can examine attention, expectation, stress, and resilience. Anthropology and history can preserve the cultural meaning of traditional practices, while theology and philosophy can help interpret concepts that modern biomedical terminology may inadequately represent. The challenge is ultimately to determine not only what each component does independently, but also what happens when those components are experienced together.

Before Science Had a Name

This interdisciplinary perspective may represent the most meaningful connection between ancient sweat medicine and contemporary health science. The objective should not be to prove retrospectively that ancient healers possessed knowledge equivalent to modern physiology, nor should the persistence of a practice be treated as evidence of clinical effectiveness. Rather, these traditions can be understood as repositories of accumulated human observation.

People repeatedly exposed themselves to heat, cold, sunlight, water, fasting, movement, plants, breathing practices, and altered environments because they perceived effects worthy of repeating and preserving. Some of those observations have subsequently acquired plausible physiological explanations; others remain uncertain, culturally specific, or scientifically unverified. The absence of scientific terminology does not invalidate the historical observation. It simply means that the mechanism remained unknown.

Part I of The History of Sweat Medicine established that therapeutic uses of heat, sunlight, steam, and perspiration are not modern inventions. Part II extends that history by suggesting that the intervention itself may have been more complex than heat alone. Ancient practices frequently combined physiological challenge with contemplation, preparation, community, environmental exposure, and ritual. Modern science now possesses the capacity to separate these components, measure them individually, and eventually investigate how they may interact.

Kline's most important contribution to this discussion may therefore be methodological rather than philosophical. She cautions against assuming that the measurable component is necessarily the complete component. As she observes, there may be effects within these ancient practices that are “vastly underrated or underestimated” when attention is limited to “the physiological response to the heat and the sweating.”

The historical importance of sweat medicine lies neither in romanticizing ancient practice nor in dismissing it as prescientific belief. Its importance lies in recognizing that systematic human observation preceded institutional science. Nature served as an early laboratory, while heat, light, water, plants, movement, fasting, breathing, temperature, contemplation, and community became its experimental variables. Contemporary medicine can now return to many of these observations with instruments capable of examining mechanisms that ancient practitioners could experience but could not quantify.

In this context, the history of sweat medicine becomes more than an account of humanity's early relationship with heat. It becomes part of the larger history of our attempt to understand how environment acts upon physiology, how the organism adapts to controlled stress, how mental state interacts with physical experience, and how community and ritual may alter the context in which healing occurs. Ancient practitioners could observe these interactions without possessing the means to isolate or measure them. Modern science possesses increasingly sophisticated means of measurement, but may still have something to learn from the integrated manner in which earlier cultures experienced them.

The task ahead is therefore not to ask whether ancient traditions had already discovered modern science. It is to determine which of their observations can now be investigated through modern science, which remain culturally or spiritually meaningful without requiring biomedical explanation, and which may lead to new questions that contemporary research has not yet considered.

 

About the Author

Bobbi Kline, MD, is a physician, educator, author, and integrative health strategist whose work explores the intersection of personalized medicine, genomics, women’s health, longevity, and whole-person wellness. Drawing upon decades of clinical and scientific experience, Dr. Kline examines health through a broader lens that considers physiology alongside environment, behavior, resilience, community, and the mind-body relationship. Her current work challenges conventional boundaries between established science and emerging areas of inquiry, encouraging thoughtful investigation without abandoning scientific rigor. Through writing, education, and advisory work, she advocates for a more integrated understanding of human health and our capacity for adaptation, prevention, and lifelong well-being.

THE HISTORY OF SWEAT MEDICINE

Heat, Sunlight, and the Ancient Origins of Energy-Based Healing

Excerpt from "The Science of Energy Healing" by: Lennard M. Goetze

Long before infrared saunas, photobiomodulation, thermal therapy, or the modern vocabulary of “energy medicine,” human beings were already experimenting with one of nature’s most accessible therapeutic forces: heat.

Across civilizations separated by oceans, languages, and centuries, remarkably similar practices emerged. People entered heated chambers, gathered around hot stones, bathed in steam, exposed their bodies to sunlight, immersed themselves in thermal waters, and deliberately induced perspiration. These activities were rarely viewed as simple hygiene. Heat became associated with purification, healing, restoration, spirituality, and the relationship between the human body and the natural world.

In this sense, the history of sweat medicine may represent one of humanity’s earliest attempts to use naturally occurring forms of energy therapeutically.

HEAT BEFORE MEDICINE HAD A NAME
Ancient healers did not understand infrared wavelengths, thermoregulation, vasodilation, heat-shock proteins, ultraviolet radiation, or electrolyte physiology. They learned empirically. They observed what happened when the human body encountered fire, heated stone, steam, thermal water, and sunlight. This knowledge appeared independently in multiple cultures.

Ancient Greeks and Romans developed sophisticated bathing traditions. Historical reviews of thermal medicine document that Hippocratic medicine incorporated bathing and perspiration into a broader approach to restoring bodily balance. Exercise, walking, massage, bathing, environmental changes, and sweating could all become components of health practice. Roman civilization subsequently developed elaborate public bathing complexes, including intensely heated rooms such as the caldarium.

The principle was strikingly familiar: apply heat to the body, provoke a physiological response, rest, cleanse, and recover. Yet some of the most profound traditions surrounding therapeutic heat developed far beyond Europe.

THE SWEAT LODGE: WHERE HEAT MET PRAYER
Among Indigenous peoples of the Americas, heated ceremonial structures developed as important spiritual and communal practices. It is important not to collapse these diverse traditions into a single generic “Native American sweat lodge”; ceremonies, meanings, protocols, and terminology vary substantially among nations.

Nevertheless, historical evidence clearly demonstrates that heat, perspiration, purification, prayer, and ceremony frequently intersected.

Smithsonian materials document Indigenous traditions in which sweating occurred alongside ceremonial practices, prayer, medicinal plants, purification, and even cold-water immersion. Smithsonian documentation of contemporary temazcal tradition likewise describes a sacred environment in which fire-heated stones, water, steam, medicinal plants, movement, prayer, and ceremonial songs may be brought together. The temazcal itself has pre-Columbian origins in Mexico.

This is significant because the sweat ceremony was not merely an ancient version of a modern spa.

Heat was embedded within a larger healing environment. The individual encountered darkness, warmth, steam, earth, stone, water, scent, sound, community, contemplation, and prayer simultaneously. Physical experience and spiritual experience were not necessarily separated into the categories that modern medicine uses today. The body was heated while the mind was focused and the community was gathered.

FINLAND: THE SACRED SAUNA 
Across the Atlantic, another remarkable heat tradition evolved around the Finnish sauna. The importance of sauna culture is so substantial that UNESCO inscribed Finnish sauna culture on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2020. UNESCO describes the sauna as extending far beyond washing: traditionally it has been considered a sacred space—a kind of “church of nature”—associated with cleansing the body and mind and experiencing inner peace. Central to the traditional experience is löyly, the steam or “spirit” created when water meets heated stones.

Again, the recurring historical pattern is difficult to overlook: Heat. Water. Stone. Perspiration. Cleansing. Stillness. Nature. Spirit. Cultures separated geographically nevertheless discovered variations of the same physiological intervention.

THE SUN AS MEDICINE 
Heat medicine did not remain inside heated structures. Humanity's oldest radiant-energy source was always overhead.

The sun became associated with life and healing throughout antiquity. Greeks constructed spaces for solar exposure, and Romans developed solaria. Pliny the Elder famously expressed the ancient conviction that the sun possessed extraordinary remedial power. By the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these older observations began transitioning into systematic medical investigation through what became known as heliotherapy—the therapeutic application of sunlight.

The scientific story became especially important with infectious disease.

Researchers demonstrated that sunlight could damage microorganisms, and Danish physician Niels Ryberg Finsen developed concentrated light treatments for lupus vulgaris, a form of cutaneous tuberculosis. His work helped establish light as a legitimate therapeutic modality and earned him the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Heliotherapy subsequently became incorporated into tuberculosis treatment programs before the antibiotic era.

The sun was no longer merely symbolic. Radiant energy could produce measurable biological effects.

Modern science would eventually explain additional mechanisms through which sunlight interacts with human physiology, while also establishing the very real hazards of excessive ultraviolet exposure.

WHAT ACTUALLY LEAVES THE BODY IS SWEAT?
Perhaps the most intriguing intersection between ancient belief and contemporary science concerns the concept of purification. For centuries, sweating has been interpreted culturally as a cleansing process. Modern physiology confirms one obvious function: perspiration is fundamentally a thermoregulatory system. Evaporation of sweat allows the body to dissipate heat and maintain temperature.

Sweat consists overwhelmingly of water and also contains electrolytes and numerous other substances. Researchers have detected certain environmental chemicals and toxic elements in perspiration. A systematic review examining arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury reported measurable excretion through sweat and found that, under some exposure conditions, concentrations could equal or exceed those found through urinary routes. The authors concluded that sweating deserved additional investigation as a potential pathway for toxic-element elimination.

But this finding should not be converted into the sweeping claim that “sweating detoxifies the body.”

A major physiological review reached a more cautious conclusion: kidneys, liver, and gastrointestinal pathways remain central to elimination, and convincing evidence that sweat glands preferentially remove environmental contaminants in clinically meaningful quantities is lacking.

Ancient people therefore may have been directionally perceptive—something does leave the body through perspiration—without possessing the analytical tools required to determine whether that elimination was therapeutically significant. That distinction creates an important opportunity for modern research.

THE FIRST ENERGY MEDICINE?
Calling ancient heat practices the direct predecessors of today's “energy medicine” requires careful terminology. They did not originate from modern concepts of electromagnetic medicine, and there is no evidence that ancient practitioners understood infrared radiation or cellular bioenergetics in contemporary scientific terms.

Yet in a broader historical sense, they were unquestionably practicing medicine through energy transfer.

Fire transferred thermal energy.

Heated stones stored and released energy.

Steam transferred heat to the body.

Sunlight delivered electromagnetic radiation.

The human organism responded through thermoregulation, circulation, perspiration, sensory signaling, neuroendocrine activity, and behavioral adaptation.

Modern sauna therapy, infrared technologies, phototherapy, thermal medicine, and photobiomodulation therefore belong to a much longer human story: the attempt to understand how externally delivered physical energy can influence biological function.

ANCIENT WISDOM MEETS MEASUREMENT 
The most compelling lesson from history is not that ancient healers had already proven modern detoxification theory. They had not. Their achievement may be more interesting than that. They observed.

Across generations, communities recognized that controlled exposure to heat produced reproducible experiences: perspiration, cardiovascular activation, relaxation, altered sensory awareness, physical cleansing, and often a powerful psychological or spiritual response. They incorporated these observations into systems of medicine, community, purification, and prayer.

Modern science can now ask questions those cultures could not. What exactly happens to circulation during controlled thermal exposure? What molecules appear in perspiration? How much is eliminated? How does heat affect inflammatory signaling, vascular function, autonomic regulation, or cellular stress responses? Which effects originate from heat itself, and which arise from rest, hydration, social connection, meditation, or ritual?

The ancient sweat lodge, Finnish sauna, Roman bath, Mexican temazcal, thermal spring, and therapeutic sun exposure should therefore not simply be dismissed as historical curiosities. They represent chapters in a much larger scientific story.

Before laboratories measured energy, human beings experienced it. Before clinicians quantified thermal physiology, cultures learned to harness heat. And before “energy medicine” became a modern term, humanity had already spent thousands of years exploring the relationship between heat, light, nature, and the healing human body.

The next chapters are not to prove that every ancient belief was correct. It is to determine—with modern measurement—which observations were.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lennard M. Goetze is a researcher, author, publisher, and medical communications strategist whose work explores emerging health sciences, medical innovation, and advanced approaches to human wellness. He serves as Communications Director for the Male Breast Cancer Global Alliance and is the author of The Science of Energy Healing. As Publisher of Overture Publications, Goetze develops books and educational works highlighting health innovators, clinical pioneers, researchers, and leaders advancing the future of healthcare. His work focuses on translating progressive science and emerging technologies into accessible education while creating platforms that recognize the people challenging and improving conventional standards of health and medicine.

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POST REVIEW

Perhaps Sweat Is Only Part of the Story- By: Daniel Root

The significance of heat therapy may extend beyond what is physically eliminated through perspiration. Even if sweating is not a major pathway for removing heavy metals or environmental toxicants, the physiological response to heat may influence the body’s primary systems of elimination.

Heat induces vasodilation, increases circulation and cardiac output, and affects autonomic and stress responses. This raises an important research question: Could these changes support, directly or indirectly, the liver, kidneys, gastrointestinal system, and other biological pathways responsible for biotransformation and elimination?

There is also another lesson within the ancient traditions themselves. Sweat lodges, saunas, thermal bathing, and other heat practices rarely involved heat alone. They incorporated rest, hydration, breathing, ritual, social connection, spirituality, and interaction with the natural environment. Modern science tends to study these variables separately, while ancient cultures experienced them together.

Perhaps the next frontier is therefore not simply determining what leaves the body through sweat, but understanding what the entire experience of controlled heat exposure activates within the body.

Ancient cultures observed the effects. Modern science now has the opportunity to measure the mechanisms—and perhaps discover that the value of these practices lies not in one pathway, but in the synergy among many.

References

1. Sears, M. E., Kerr, K. J., & Bray, R. I. (2012). Arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury in sweat: A systematic review. Journal of Environmental and Public Health, 2012, 184745. DOI: 10.1155/2012/184745.
   This is one of the most useful references for your article. The systematic review examined 24 reports and found arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury in human sweat. The authors concluded that sweating deserves further investigation as a route for toxic-element elimination.
   PubMed record
2. Laukkanen, J. A., Laukkanen, T., & Kunutsor, S. K. (2018). Cardiovascular and other health benefits of sauna bathing: A review of the evidence. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 93(8), 1111–1121. DOI: 10.1016/j.mayocp.2018.04.008.
   An important modern medical review connecting the ancient Finnish sauna tradition with cardiovascular, circulatory, autonomic, and other physiological effects.
   PubMed record
3. Peräsalo, J. (1988). Traditional use of the sauna for hygiene and health in Finland. Annals of Clinical Research, 20(4), 220–223. PMID: 3218891.
   Particularly valuable for the history section. It documents centuries of Finnish sauna use for cleansing, maintaining health, treating ailments, and even childbirth. It also describes the sauna as traditionally regarded as a holy place, where participants were expected to behave as they would in church.
   PubMed record
4. Heinonen, I., Laukkanen, J. A., & others. (2018). Effects of heat and cold on health, with special reference to Finnish sauna bathing. American Journal of Physiology—Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology. PMID: 29351426.
   Reviews the body's adaptation to heat and discusses mechanisms including vascular function, blood pressure, arterial stiffness, microvascular function, and cardiovascular responses.
   PubMed record
5. Matz, H., Orion, E., & Wolf, R. (2003). Balneotherapy in dermatology. Dermatologic Therapy, 16(2), 132–140.
   Useful background for the long-standing medical tradition of therapeutic bathing, mineral waters, and thermal exposure. It can help establish that therapeutic heat and water treatments preceded modern medicine by centuries.
6. Fioravanti, A., et al. / historical review: “History of the Baths and Thermal Medicine.” (2017). Clinical Cases in Mineral and Bone Metabolism.
   This historical review traces therapeutic bathing through Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and later European traditions. Particularly relevant to your article, it discusses Hippocratic recommendations involving bathing, perspiration, walking, massage, and environmental changes as part of restoring bodily balance.
   Full article in PubMed Central
7. Historical Issues of Hydrotherapy in Thermal-Mineral Springs of the Hellenic World. (2022).
   This scholarly historical review reports therapeutic use of water in ancient Greece dating to at least approximately 1000 BC, discusses the healing centers associated with Asclepius, and traces hot-water therapies through Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman periods.
   Full article in PubMed Central
8. Carter, S. (2012). The medicalization of sunlight in the early twentieth century. Journal of Historical Sociology, 25(1), 83–105. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6443.2011.01405.x.
   Excellent support for the article's transition from the ancient reverence for sunlight to modern heliotherapy. It examines sunlight therapy for tuberculosis and rickets and the development of natural and artificial light as medical interventions.
   Journal article
9. Roelandts, R. (2002). The history of phototherapy: Something new under the sun? Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 46(6), 926–930. DOI: 10.1067/mjd.2002.121354.
   This is especially relevant to your thesis that ancient observations eventually evolved into measurable energy-based therapies. The paper describes the long history of therapeutic light and the transition to scientifically investigated ultraviolet phototherapy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
10. Gøtzsche, P. C. (2011). Niels Finsen's treatment for lupus vulgaris. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 104(1), 41–42. DOI: 10.1258/jrsm.2010.10k066.
    Provides historical medical documentation of Niels Ryberg Finsen's investigations into sunlight and concentrated light therapy. Finsen's work on treating lupus vulgaris with concentrated light radiation earned the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
    Full article in PubMed Central
11. Gone, J. P., Blumstein, K. P., Dominic, D., Fox, N., Jacobs, J., Lynn, R. S., Martinez, M., & Tuomi, A. (2017). Teaching tradition: Diverse perspectives on the pilot urban American Indian traditional spirituality program. American Journal of Community Psychology. DOI: 10.1002/ajcp.12144.
    This provides scholarly support for discussing the sweat lodge as an Indigenous spiritual practice rather than reducing it to a primitive sauna. The study concerns an American Indian health center program organized around traditional spirituality and sweat lodge ceremony.
    PubMed record
12. Velásquez Luna, G., et al. (2021). Revisiting the past: Material negotiations between the Classic Maya and an entombed sweat bath at Xultun, Guatemala. Cambridge Archaeological Journal.
    This is especially valuable archaeological evidence. It describes the Mesoamerican sweat bath as a place for healing and hygiene, including historical associations with pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum care, supernatural beings, healers, and ritual practice. It provides archaeological and ethnohistoric evidence connecting heat, healing, spirituality, and ritual.
    Cambridge University Press article

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Balance and Longevity: Starting with RESET

Reprised from the original publication (BALANCE & LONGEVITY) by: Dr. Bobbi Kline (Oct 11, 2024) 

We all reach a point in our lives where we've gotten stuck in ruts where it seems really hard to even conceive of CHANGE. Change can be very scary, especially when, when it's on a larger scale. You know, the way we eat, the way we exercise our whole lifestyle is often very intertwined with our social interactions, with our work, with our expectations of how we're supposed to behave, how we're supposed to live our lives in our current world. That pressure to do and produce and be busy all the time is actually very detrimental. 

These habits that we create as coping mechanisms sometimes don't really serve us in the long run. So when it comes time to change, how many of you have tried a drastic change in diet, decided to take on a really rigorous boot camp exercise program, thinking that, "okay, I'm going to do it this time". And most of the time it fails. And it's not because you fail, it's not because you don't have the willpower. It's not because you don't have the strength. It's because success comes from building upon success, building upon your inner strengths, rather than trying to push and punish yourself into something that may not work for you.

The idea of reset comes from a different framework. It's about making small changes to reset how we think, how we feel, how we act. That is more in alignment with our goals of where we want to be. In our evolution, we're always, as a species hitting a point of needing to grow, needing to change in order to adapt to a new environment, in order to be better at whatever it is that allows us not just to survive, but to thrive. Initiating a reset at these points in time also applies to our lives. It allows us to take a step back and say, "what do I need to change to grow, to become the person in whatever way that looks like for me, that I wanna be next. Where do I wanna go in my own growth and evolution so that I can have the energy, the vitality, the enthusiasm for living life the way I want".

WELLNESS PHILOSOPHY 101 

LONGEVITY is not just a race to get to however old you can be in terms of chronological age. It's not a competition, but it's rather a form of self-love... and that comes with BALANCE. Life throws us all sorts of curve balls, whether it's internal or external in our lives. Balance is something we need to work towards- in order to give us resilience.  Nature teaches us to (automatically) try to regain balance when we fall or when we stumble. 

As an example, if you've ever tried standing on one leg- it's a challenge, right? If you add to that challenge by maybe lifting that leg higher or doing some other pose that adds more challenge to, to your balance.  When you're focused and you're grounded and calm, it's much easier to stay in that balance. But if your mind starts wandering about, "oh, I gotta do this today, your to-do list" or something that happened yesterday, it's very easy for those thoughts themselves to throw you off balance. And then you'll either put your foot down because you need to some extra stability, or you might fall altogether. The goal of balance is not to be able to stand on that one leg for the rest of your life. That's not possible, but it's about, okay, how do you get back into that place of balance when something throws you off? That's RESILIENCE. And that, to me, is the core of creating health for as long as we can. 

RESET to me, is a very forgiving way that is full of self-compassion to make these decisions without judgment, without guilt, without all the 'woulda-coulda-shoulda's.  We are very good at that negative self-talk. But it really doesn't help us regain balance. It doesn't help us in our RESET. We can take these moments as "the past has passed". I've gotten where I am today with all the choices. What choice do I want to make now to take me down the path that will give me the health and the life that I am desiring now?

PART 1: RESET & EXERCISE
When it comes to longevity of however you're going to RESET your life, whatever new programs, new behaviors, new habits that you decide to incorporate in your health program, the worst thing to do is to do something because you think you should... you usually end up making it boring. Follow somebody else's instructions without really thinking, "is this really the right thing for me?"  As an example, I find that using creativity is the best way for me to exercise is to make it fun. Now, exercising on the treadmill is boring. You're not going anywhere. You're just walking in the same place for 15, 20, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, however long you do it. When you are walking outside, you have an ever-changing landscape. You're out in nature. But indoor in the treadmill. Yeah. Not so much.

This is one of the reasons why so many treadmills purchased with great intentions end up serving as clothes hangers, storage places, uh, you know, get donated or sold on eBay. It's because it really didn't fulfill a need that we all have. And that's for creativity and fun. So the first thing I do when working with clients is to find out what is fun for them. For me, when I started ballroom dancing, I realized this was an exercise I could do forever and never feel like I was exercising. It was just fun. So when, on the days that I work out on the treadmill, I decided to be creative and translate that into my workout. So now I chacha, I salsa, I swing, I foxtrot, I do these dance moves, obviously modified for the treadmill so I don't fall off. And I've done that in the beginning. <laugh>, it helps me have fun. It gives me joy. And before I know it, whatever time I'm on that treadmill flies by because I'm not focusing okay, on how many miles or how many minutes. I'm just one with the music I'm feeling the music, I'm moving with the music. And that for me is the best way to get my exercise in.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ROBERTA KLINE, MD (Educational Dir. /Women's Diagnostic Group) is a board-certified ObGyn physician, Integrative Personalized Medicine expert, consultant, author, and educator whose mission is to change how we approach health and deliver healthcare. She helped to create the Integrative & Functional Medicine program for a family practice residency, has consulted with Sodexo to implement the first personalized nutrition menu for healthcare facilities, and serves as Education Director for several organizations including the Women’s Diagnostic Health Network, Mommies on a Mission. Learn more at https://robertaklinemd.com/

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"As an integrative doctor, my mission is to bridge conventional medicine with evidence based holistic practices, offering compassionate patient centric care that treats the whole person - body mind and spirit.  I am committed to exploring all facets of health, from lifestyle and nutrition to emotional and environmental influences, to create tailored treatment plans that promote healing and long-term wellness.  My goal is to empower individuals with the knowledge and tools they need to thrive, fostering a partnership in health and helping each person achieve balance, vitality, and overall a higher quality of life.  What you consume you become. Body, mind and spirit.” - Kimberly Zedalis -Integrative Center for Healing