Infrared saunas - has anyone else had a similar reaction?
A bit of a wordy post ahead, but I wanted to share a recent experience I had after an infrared sauna session to see if anyone has experienced something similar.
I’ve done 4 months of 10 mg and found myself stalling. I switched to 12.5 mg and didn’t feel much different at first. On day six of the higher dose, I did a session in an infrared sauna.
I’ve always enjoyed saunas, steam rooms, and hot tubs. Usually I prefer more traditional saunas, but I had ClassPass credits I needed to use and there was an infrared sauna nearby, so I booked on a whim. It was a 30 minute session, so I spent about 25 min total in the sauna. This was my first time in a sauna since January, but usually I find myself going in a traditional sauna every 2-3 months.
About 2 hours after my session, I started to feel horribly ill. My bones started to feel weak, my stomach was hurting, and I had developed quite a gnarly headache. I kept myself hydrated both before and after my session, so I know this wasn’t dehydration. Physically, it felt like I was coming down with a horrible cold or flu, but mentally I was totally fine. I did some googling and found that something called a Herxheimer reaction, which is basically your immune system going into overdrive when taking a medication that releases toxins in your body (if anyone knows more about this, please feel free to share. Correct me on anything if you must). I’ve never had this happen after any sauna experience in my life - even when I’ve been on vacation and used a sauna daily for 2 weeks at a time.
The next day, I felt completely fine. Since I drank so much extra water, I spent most of the day worrying about peeing so much. I did my next injection at 12.5 as scheduled and had no side effects.
About two days later, I weighed myself and I was down 9 pounds from my weight before my sauna session. Now, I know this wasn’t miraculous fat loss overnight, but I’ve still managed to stay between 5-10 pounds below my pre-sauna weight in the 1.5 weeks that have passed since.
I haven’t seen any anecdotal stories tying saunas and mounjaro together, so I wanted to share my experience in case anyone else has something unique to share. I’m curious to hear if anyone has had any similar experiences. I’m primarily curious about two things:
- Has anyone else has experienced feeling ill after using a sauna while on Mounjaro?
- Any thoughts on if this reaction I had could have triggered something in my body to respond better to the medication (ex. Is it reasonable to assume something was “released” from the sauna session), or should I just chalk it up to using a higher dose?