Sauna Belt
By Anna Lynn Sibal
Insomniacs would know that late night television is full of old movies, old reruns and infomercials about miracle products promising to help you lose weight, develop six-pack abs, enhance your “assets” or make cooking and housework a lot easier to do. Among such products that got a lot of late night air time through these infomercials are the sauna belt.
A sauna belt is touted to be a weight loss product that aims to help you sweat out the pounds and sculpt your waist, your abdominals, your thighs and your butt. It works by generating heat and vibration at the targeted area. The heat is supposed to make you sweat just as you would inside a sauna room, while the vibration is supposed to coax your body fat into loosening up and melting away.
The sauna belt did generate some hype in the past years. Nonetheless, this question still remains in the minds of consumers: Does the sauna belt really work or is it just a scam?
How a Sauna Works
Before you make an assessment as to whether a sauna belt works as it should or not, you need to understand first how a real sauna works. The sauna is seen by both alternative and mainstream medical practitioners to be a holistic treatment. For the sauna to work, the whole body must be exposed to the heat in the sauna.
This heat forces the heart to pump more blood. It also makes the blood vessels expand to accommodate the increased blood flow. The heat and the increased blood flow get the individual cells to consume more nutrients stored in the fat cells of the body and to flush away waste materials. The increased heat felt by the body and the increased level of activity inside the body because of this heat causes fat cells to melt and burn. All the waste materials that the body produces in this flurry are sweated out.
A sauna belt targets only one specific area of the body instead of the whole body itself. As thus, it cannot coax the heart to beat faster and make the body feel as if it has gone through a workout, which is the exact effect that a real sauna does. A sauna belt cannot even generate enough heat to make you sweat as profusely as you would inside a sauna.
The Downsides of Using a Sauna Belt
Aside from the fact that the sauna belt cannot really deliver on its promise to help you sweat out the pounds, there are downsides to using it. If you wear it for too long, two things can happen. One is that you can get dehydrated. The other is that wearing it for too long can cause burns and injuries to the skin.
Some people who were lured into buying sauna belts found an alternative use for it as a heating pad. Heating pads, as we know, help relieve back pain and menstrual cramps. Unfortunately, sauna belts are typically powered by electricity, so wearing one can get you tethered to a plug. Most of all, there are more effective heating pads that are a lot cheaper than sauna belts.
If you want to lose weight through sweating, there are other ways to do it. You can go to your local spa and see if they have a sauna room. You can also check out your local gym or health club; most of them have the use of the sauna room as part of their membership benefits. Or you can do it the old-fashioned way and exercise.
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