Far Infrared Sauna Heat Therapy for Pain Relief New clinical research on pain offers evidence to establish a novel class of pain “heat responsive pain” or HRP, which encompasses several common pain conditions that can be treated with the use of heat therapy. Researchers studying HRP have observed remarkable therapeutic benefits by using continuous low level heat therapy for treating lower back, upper body and menstrual pain, all conditions that fall under the new HRP classification.

“For centuries healthcare providers have used topical heat to relieve minor aches and pains, but today we are just beginning to understand the full range of therapeutic benefits that heat offers,” said pain expert Peter Vicente, Ph.D., past president of the American Pain Society and Clinical Health Psychologist, Riverhills Healthcare, Cincinnati, OH. “Through new clinical research, we have found that heat activates complex neurological, vascular and metabolic mechanisms to mediate the transmission of pain signals and effectively provide relief for a variety of pain conditions.”

Rheumatoid Arthritis

A case study reported in Sweden involved a 70 year-old man who had rheumatoid arthritis secondary to acute rheumatic fever. He had reached his toxic limit of gold injections and his erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) was still 125. After using a far infrared sauna for less than five months, his ESR was down to 11. A rheumatologist worked with a 14 year-old Swedish girl who had difficulty walking downstairs due to knee pain from the age of eight. This therapist told her mother the girl would be in a wheelchair within two years if she did not begin gold corticosteroid therapy. After three far infrared sauna treatments, she began to become more agile and subsequently took up folk dancing without the aid of conventional approaches. A clinical study in Japan reported a successful solution for seven out of seven cases of rheumatoid arthritis treated with whole body far infrared sauna therapy.