Local business owners make the cardiovascular case for adding some heat to your wellness routine.
Written by Ethan Mathews
Resilience. This is a word you’ll hear often in the infrared sauna world, but it is a tad more technical than just how long you can sit in the heat before tapping out. In fact, this kind of resilience is built at the cellular level. When you’re exposed to heat, body temperature goes up, signaling the brain to release nitric oxide, relaxing and widening blood vessels. This sends more blood to the surface to cool you down, raising your heart rate and engaging the cardiovascular system while improving circulation and oxygen delivery. At the same time, cells activate heat shock proteins to repair damaged proteins and protect against stress. Over time, this response strengthens cardiovascular and cellular resilience. For regular infrared sauna users, it’s that controlled stress — called hormesis — that supports vascular function and overall well-being.
While infrared saunas may seem like a modern wellness trend, humans have sought the benefits of heat for millennia. Some of the earliest documented saunas were simple dirt pits in Finland, using hot stones to store heat. Today, Finland boasts half a sauna per capita — a fun statistic if there ever was one — and it’s no coincidence that they have consistently ranked No. 1 on the World Happiness Report. Fortunately, you don’t need to travel far to tap into these benefits. Right here in Savannah, two local businesses offer accessible, modern versions of this time-tested approach to building resilience.
Fiona Hagerty, alongside her husband, James, owns Pure Sweat Sauna Studio on Victory Drive and is a lifelong believer in the practice. In this day and age, we are so used to comfortably controlled environments that “your body is never put under any stress whatsoever, so we’ve gotten weaker and weaker,” says Hagerty.
To combat this, Pure Sweat provides 45-minute infrared sauna sessions offering the full spectrum of far, mid, and near wavelengths — all targeting different benefits — set to a recommended
145 degrees. For those looking for a new level of resilience-building, they also offer contrast therapy sessions, which alternate between infrared saunas and cold plunge baths. “You have to think about what we can’t see, which is the vascular system,” Hagerty says.
Because infrared provides a relatively mild stress load on the body, multiple sessions are recommended for optimal results, and some users incorporate it into their daily routine. “People are learning that you can use these ancient modalities that have evolved in a way that we can access them living in a metropolitan area,” Hagerty says.
For those looking to introduce infrared into their regular exercise routine, HOTWORX offers exactly that. Just ask Brittany Miller, owner of HOTWORX Sandfly and two other locations, who was a customer-turned-owner swept up by the benefits of this practice. “I saw my labs change, my body change, my attitude change,” Miller says. She left her career as a cardiovascular perfusionist to launch the studios.
HOTWORX combines infrared with workouts such as yoga, Pilates, or cycling — all inside a sauna. The goal isn’t simply to layer exercise on top of heat but to let the two work together: the infrared raises heart rate, circulation, and metabolic demand, while the workouts challenge muscles and aerobic capacity. Together, they deliver a potent cardiovascular effect that many users find more efficient, accessible, and sustainable than traditional gym routines.
Due to the combined intensity of movement and heat, the temperature caps at 130 degrees — and, according to Miller, you’ll quickly realize that’s all you need. “Anything over 105 degrees will give you the benefit of infrared.”
As you consider joining the growing number of people building vascular resilience through infrared heat, Miller notes a perk especially appealing to Savannahians. “The heat shock proteins actually help you adapt to heat better as you expose yourself to it,” Miller says. “My joke always is, ‘How do you make Savannah heat feel cooler?’ You spend some time in the infrared!”
