Two very different kinds of heat
A traditional steam sauna heats the air around you to 80 to 100°C. Your body responds to that hot air by sweating to cool itself down. An infrared sauna runs at 50 to 65°C but uses infrared light wavelengths to heat your body's tissue directly, bypassing the ambient air almost entirely. The room feels milder. The physiological demand on your body is not.This distinction matters because the mechanism drives the outcome. Steam saunas create a cardiovascular stress response primarily through skin-surface heat. Infrared penetrates 4 to 5 centimetres into soft tissue, which means the core temperature rises faster relative to the air temperature the person is sitting in. For someone unaccustomed to intense heat, which describes a large share of first-time sauna users in India, this is a meaningful difference in how the body is being worked.
