Safe use of infrared sauna blankets

An infrared blanket is first and foremost an electrical appliance that produces heat and that you then wrap around yourself. With a blanket that has been built and tested properly you notice none of that: you choose a setting, the blanket warms up and the temperature stays stable. With a blanket built mainly to a price you do notice it: a control unit that gets warm itself, a cable that sits stiffly in the connection or heat that is unevenly spread.

So safety does not start with how you use the blanket, but with what you bring into your home.

Almost every blanket carries a CE marking. Good to know: CE is not a quality mark awarded by an independent body. It is a declaration by the manufacturer or importer that the product meets the European requirements, in this case mainly around low voltage and electromagnetic compatibility. That declaration should be backed by test reports for the model you are buying.

So the question is not whether it is CE marked, because it always is. The question is whether the seller can show you the declaration of conformity. It lists the model, the manufacturer, the European standards applied and a signature. Anyone who takes the product seriously has it ready. If nobody can find it, you know enough.

A lot is claimed about infrared and EMF, in both directions. It helps to separate two things that easily get mixed up: the heat radiation the blanket deliberately gives off, and the electromagnetic field that every mains powered appliance has around it.

The heat in an infrared blanket is far infrared radiation. The same kind of radiation you feel when you hold your hands above a radiator or stand in the sun on a cold day. It is not ionising radiation: the energy per wave is too low to change anything about molecules in the body. Far infrared also reaches no further than the top few tenths of a millimetre and is turned into heat in the skin almost immediately. So what you feel is exactly what is happening. How that works is explained in more detail in how infrared heat works.

Every appliance plugged into a socket has a low frequency electromagnetic field around it. A hairdryer, a hob, an electric blanket and so an infrared blanket too. The strength of such a field drops quickly with distance: at ten centimetres you measure only a fraction of what you measure at one centimetre.

With a blanket you lie close to the heating elements, so it makes sense that manufacturers do something about that. Better blankets use wiring laid out so that the fields largely cancel each other out. On the packaging you see this as low EMF wiring. The European requirements for electromagnetic compatibility also set limits here.

Want as little field as possible anyway? Place the control unit and the cord by your feet instead of next to your head, and ask for a measurement report instead of relying on the term on the box.

Most unpleasant experiences with an infrared blanket are not caused by the appliance but by wanting too much too soon. Someone puts the blanket straight on the highest setting, stays in longer than planned and then gets up too quickly. Heat is a stimulus your body puts energy into. If you increase it gradually, your body gets used to it and a session stays pleasant from start to finish.

Want to know roughly what you will notice at each setting? The complete temperature guide goes into that in more depth. For the basics of what happens in your body while warming up, see what an infrared sauna blanket does to your body.

In an infrared blanket you are going to sweat. That is the idea of a heat session, but it also means you lose fluid and salts without really noticing. The sweat stays in the blanket instead of evaporating, so you easily underestimate how much it is. In half an hour it is quickly a few hundred millilitres, and more in a long session at a high setting.

Almost everything people describe as unpleasant after a session, feeling dizzy when getting up, a headache later in the day, feeling foggy in the evening, is linked to that fluid loss and not to the heat itself. It is also the easiest part of this page to fix.

• Alcohol before or during the session. It disrupts your heat regulation and your sense of how hot it is.
• Exercising just before without topping up first.
• A session on a warm day without lowering the setting.
• Two sessions shortly after each other on the same day.

If you feel drained afterwards instead of relaxed, that is usually not a sign that the blanket does not suit you. Lower the setting one step, shorten the duration and drink more.

Your body clearly tells you when it has had enough. People just tend to ignore those signals, because they feel the session is not finished yet or that they have only just started sweating. That feeling is wrong. There is no minimum. A session you end after twelve minutes because it does not feel right is a successful session.

• Dizziness or a light headed feeling.
• Nausea.
• Heart palpitations or a heart rate that stays high while you lie still.
• A headache that comes on during the session.
• Tingling, numbness or pain in a spot that rests against the blanket.
• Shortness of breath or the feeling that you cannot breathe properly.
• Restlessness or a feeling of being shut in.

This is how you stop: switch the blanket off, unzip it and stay lying down for a moment so you do not get up all at once. Drink water and only then stand up. If you still do not feel normal after a quarter of an hour, or the same thing comes back on a next attempt at a lower setting, contact your GP.

The following list was not dreamed up behind a desk. Each point is about something that goes wrong in practice, usually because it seemed logical at the time.

Two habits that achieve nothing: putting the blanket on the highest setting to warm up faster, and dragging out the session because the sweating starts late. Preheat at the setting you then want to use, otherwise you start too hot. More examples are in the article about common mistakes when using an infrared product.

With an infrared blanket, care is a safety matter and not just a question of tidiness. Sweat, moisture and skin oils end up exactly where the heating wires are. A blanket that is folded away while still damp starts to smell, and the folds wear faster than the rest of the material.

Never immerse the blanket in water and do not put it in the washing machine, even if it says somewhere that the inner layer is removable. An inner liner saves most of the work, and cleaning is described step by step in the article about cleaning and caring for your sauna blanket.

If something does break, do not tinker with the wiring yourself but contact the seller. Within the 2 year warranty, that should be sorted out.