Interview
SweatLounge
In Conversation with SweatLounge founder Allison Huff in Chiswick, West-London
Allison Huff is the founder of SweatLounge, an infrared sauna studio in Chiswick, West London. She reveals why people have been flocking to her studio since it opened earlier this year.
How has your sauna journey been so far, Allison? How did your sauna business come about?
I wasn’t looking for a health and wellness business. The last 20 years of my life I had spent working in technology, which is why I moved to London in the first place. However, through a life of sport and activity, I had suffered some devastating injuries which left me with a very painful back when I was pregnant with my second daughter. After she was born, I worked with my spinal surgeon. Unfortunately, there is not much they can do to fix the problem. They can offer you different therapies, injections and prescriptions for pain management. But there really wasn’t a lot of hope that my back pain would actually go away. I was in the States visiting my parents for my 40th birthday and there was an infrared studio next to my parents’ house, which I thought was a brilliant idea because you could just go and use a sauna. You didn’t have to buy one for your house, which was obviously not only out of the budget, but I didn’t have the space to put it in my own house – very few people in London actually do. I tried the infrared sauna and it was a life-changing experience, absolutely phenomenal.
Wow. So, has your back pain improved?
I felt better almost immediately. While I was in the States for a month, I went to that sauna studio a lot. My husband loved it too, so we wondered where we could do it in London when we got back. Unfortunately, the options were limited at best. I mean, there are a few places in London that offer infrared saunas as part of a portfolio of other biohacking solutions. However, the prices are almost prohibitive – we were looking at places that were charging between £50 and £90 a session and not really focusing on the transformational therapeutic benefits of heat therapy. So I decided that this was an opportunity for me to bring this solution to the UK. And that’s how SweatLounge was born.
"I tried the infrared sauna and it was a life-changing experience, absolutely phenomenal."
Allison Huff
Amazing! What other positive health impacts does an infrared sauna have?
Heat therapy has been such an integral part of so many different cultures, particularly in Scandinavia, that the medical and scientific community has been able to study and analyze the different applications in great detail over the last 40 to 50 years. So everything we talk about as a company in terms of helping people with certain health issues, we can back up with science and data and journals that have all been published. The number of studies that have been published about heat is thousands and thousands. People come to us for a lot of different things. Generally speaking, we are not an infrared sauna studio per se, but we are a longevity business.
How would you define longevity?
Longevity means doing the things you enjoy today for longer. When we look at all the causes of aging at a cellular level, heat is scientifically one of the best ways to slow down the aging process and reduce the causes of disease and mortality. Studies have shown that regular sauna users reduce all four causes of mortality by over 40 percent. Those four causes are atherosclerotic disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease – Alzheimer’s being the most common – and foundational disease, which is a spectrum of everything from insulin resistance to fatty liver disease to type 2 diabetes. These causes have been defined by Peter Attia, who is arguably one of the world leaders in the field of longevity. Heat therapy addresses all of these things.
"Studies have shown that regular sauna users reduce all four causes of mortality by over 40 percent."
Allison Huff
What are the special benefits of an infrared sauna compared to a traditional sauna?
Infrared technology has been around for decades, it’s not new, but it’s becoming more popular in conversations about health benefits. Because infrared light waves penetrate your body up to four centimetres deep, it encourages your fat cells to release the impurities, toxins and heavy metals they contain. Your fat cells are usually where all these impurities are stored. Infrared light waves detoxify your body from within. A traditional sauna simply heats the air around you, and you just have to be able to tolerate that long enough for it to raise your core body temperature. In an infrared sauna, not only do you raise your core body temperature, which then catalyses and triggers all the other health benefits, but you actually achieve a higher level of detoxification than you would with a traditional heat-based method.
"Infrared light waves detoxify your body from within."
Allison Huff
Is there any scientific evidence, too?
Of course! There are studies that look at the sweat content of a single person using a traditional sauna versus a steam room versus an infrared sauna. The same person’s sweat content will contain seven to ten times more impurities after an infrared sauna than after a wet or dry traditional sauna. This is because an infrared sauna detoxifies your fat cells. An interesting observation has recently been published by a University in New York: people who use an infrared sauna three times a week without any additional changes to their lifestyle – be it fitness or diet – lose an average of 4% body fat over 16 weeks. Another study group had people who used an infrared sauna five times a week and these people lost an average of 4% body fat, but they reduced the time from 16 weeks to eight weeks.
This is fascinating! Another thing: when visiting your studio, one cannot help but notice the unique design and colour scheme. What is the concept behind it?
I learned about infrared light therapy in Austin, Texas. Austin has a really special place in my heart, that’s where my family lives. The design in Austin is absolutely phenomenal. There’s a lot of mid-century-style architecture and design. I wanted to design this studio to give homage back to the design of Austin, Texas. When I was designing the studio, there were a couple of things that I took into consideration: Firstly, one of the key values of our company is being an inclusive business. We want to make this a happy place for everybody. Secondly, our design had to be gender neutral. There is no intrinsic benefit to either gender using infrared light therapy. This is a valuable therapy for everyone. Also, it needed to be accessible for people who might have mobility challenges. We have a lot of people who have substantial injuries or autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis who might need assistance when coming in and out. In terms of design inspiration, I kind of wanted to feel it a little bit like a spiritual experience when coming in. I wanted it to feel as transformational from a visual perspective as well as a physical perspective. To do so, I tried to embrace the idea of the desert a day and the desert at night – the desert has both the heat aspect and the sun aspect. I wanted it to feel like you’re going through that transformational experience and that is how it’s designed: the front of the house is very light and airy, the inside of the studio is kept in darker tones.
You can find more about the SweatLounge here: www.sweatlounge.co.uk
Follow them on Instagram: @sweatlounge.w4
About the author: www.business-photographer.com
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