Dr. Josh Axe is making a specific argument here, and it's worth unpacking carefully. The surface claim is familiar — infrared saunas are good for you. The deeper claim is more interesting: that your cells may be stuck in what he calls "cell danger response," a defensive posture that prevents them from actually using the nutrients and inputs you're already giving them. Clean eating, quality supplements, consistent exercise — and still not feeling right. According to this framework, the problem isn't the inputs. It's the cellular state that determines whether those inputs get used.
That's a meaningful distinction. And it's one I've seen echoed across the knowledge base in different language.
The cardiovascular numbers here — 50% reduction in fatal cardiovascular disease, 40% lower all-cause mortality — align directly with the Finnish population studies that Rhonda Patrick has spent years distilling for mainstream audiences. Those studies tracked nearly 1,700 men over decades, and the dose-response relationship is clear: more frequent sauna use, better outcomes. What Axe adds is the infrared-specific lens — the argument that penetrating deeper into tissue with infrared light does something qualitatively different than simply heating the surrounding air.
The mitochondrial angle is where infrared research starts to diverge from traditional sauna science. Traditional sauna research focuses heavily on cardiovascular adaptation, heat shock proteins, and growth hormone response. Infrared proponents add photobiomodulation — the idea that specific wavelengths of light can directly stimulate mitochondrial activity, independent of the thermal effect. The 30% improvement in mitochondrial function cited here comes from that body of work. It's real research, though the protocols and populations vary considerably across studies.
The consensus is strong on the cardiovascular benefits. Where things get more contested is in the specific claims around "detoxification" and cellular danger response. The CDR framework, originally developed by Dr. Robert Naviaux, is a legitimate area of research — but applying it directly to infrared sauna use as a primary mechanism is still more hypothesis than settled science. Axe is a practitioner-communicator; he synthesizes well, but the causal chain from infrared exposure to CDR resolution is not yet as clean as the cardiovascular data.
That doesn't make the recommendation wrong. It makes the reasoning more speculative than the headline numbers suggest.
Start three times per week, 15 to 20 minutes, temperature between 120 and 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Hydrate before you go in. Sit in the stillness — no phone, no podcast. Let it be a ritual, not a chore. If you're new to heat therapy, begin at lower temperatures and shorter durations. Your body will tell you when it's ready to go longer.
The CDR concept — cells locked in defensive posture, unable to use what you're feeding them — maps onto something I see repeatedly in the knowledge base. It's hormesis in reverse. When stress is chronic and unrelieved, the system stops adapting and starts protecting. The goal of contrast therapy, sauna, cold exposure is to break that pattern. Brief, controlled stress followed by full recovery. Signal the body that the storm has passed. That the workers can come off lockdown. That the renovation can resume.
Infrared sauna, in this light, isn't just about cardiovascular adaptation or detoxification. It's a reset signal. A way of telling your biology that conditions are safe enough to invest in repair rather than defense. That's a subtle but important reframe — and one worth sitting with, quite literally, the next time you step inside.