Sauna Use Tips During the Fall Season

As the summer heat fades and the air turns cooler and crisper, Fall presents a great opportunity to reengage with your infrared sauna routine and find ways to add it in more regularly.

Below, I’ll walk you through how to transition into consistent use, why an every‑other‑day rhythm is a strong target, and practical timing strategies throughout the day to match your schedule.

Important Reasons to Sauna in the Fall

1. Boost Up Your Immune System

Cooler weather and more time spent indoors (breathing stale and shared air) increases the risk of colds, respiratory challenges, and other infections. Infrared sauna therapy is a proven method to bolster immune defenses so you can maintain better resilience and prime your system heading into winter.

2. Enhance Circulation and Temperature Adaptation

As air temperature drops, peripheral circulation often slows leading to cold hands, feet, and extremities. On a personal note, I used to suffer from Reynaud’s Phenomenon (a circulatory issue) and it COMPLETELY went away with regular sauna use! Regular infrared sauna use promotes enhanced blood flow and leads to more warmth spread throughout the body and better ability to handle colder temperatures.

How to Ramp Up Sauna Use after Summer Slowdown

If you’ve paused or reduced your sauna use over the summer, your body’s heat acclimation has waned. A gradual ramp up approach helps you re‑acclimate safely and effectively.

Rather than jumping straight into your previous temperature and time protocol, consider a phased approach:

Start modestly: After a period of little or no sauna use, begin with 1 session every day for 15 minutes at a max temp of about 120 degrees.
Increase gradually: With each successive session add a few degrees of temperature and minutes until you have reached your previous ongoing protocol.
Watch your comfort cues: Pay attention to how your body responds and if you have any signs of discomfort, fatigue, or overheating then ramp down your time and temp in the next session. As always, make sure you are well hydrated before each session. We recommend drinking 16 ounces of water before each session.
Aim for consistency over extremes: It’s better to maintain moderate regular use than to do long and hot sessions once a week.

Infrared Saunas are Ideal for post workouts

Why Every-Other-Day Sessions Are a Good Goal

Doing saunas sessions about every 48 hours will make your body heat acclimated which provides many important physiological changes / adaptations and maximizes all of the proven benefits of heat therapy.

Here’s why this cadence works well:

Recovery time: Heat stress, even the gentler stress of infrared saunas, requires recovery. On off days, your body will replenish fluids, repair (making us even stronger overall), and adapt which helps increase our sauna fitness.
Steady stimulus: Consistent regular sauna use maintains a frequent “reminder” to your physiology, keeping our cardiovascular, immune, detox, and nervous systems engaged.
Sustainability: It’s easier to sustain a pattern of every other day compared to daily or infrequent use, especially as seasonal temps shift.

Timing Strategies: Morning, Midday, or Evening?

One of the many advantages of infrared saunas over traditional saunas is their flexibility. They heat up MUCH faster (so you can fit them into your schedule easier) and because the air temp isn’t as hot they are not a shock on our systems, which happens with traditional saunas (especially if used at night).

Below are some ideas on why and when to use your sauna during Fall.

Cool Mornings

Pros:

Wakes you up and helps you “warm into the day”
Relaxes muscles and helps with morning stiffness
You can follow with a warm shower or gentle movement to carry the heat effect into the day.

Midday

Pros:

Great mental and physical reset in the middle of the day
Your body is already warmed from daytime activity and primed for increasing core body temp and activating heat shock proteins
You can integrate the session into your lunch break during the work week or before or after a workout or movement practice during the weekend

Cool Evenings / Before Bed

Pros:

Helps your body and mind relax, reduce muscle tension and stress, and promote calm before bed. I always get my best night’s sleep if I sauna before bed.
Can replace or complement hot baths or evening showers

Final Thoughts

Fall is a perfect time to renew your commitment to infrared sauna therapy. As the air cools and your body reorients for the season ahead, gradually ramping up your sauna use will help bolster circulation, detox, immune resilience, and cooler temperature adaptation.

Aim for a steady rhythm of every-other‑day and pick times that fit your lifestyle and body response. Over time, this supports not just Fall seasonal balance, but cumulative health benefits that carry with you into the Winter and beyond.

To help with consistency, our Sauna Guide and Sauna Fitness Indicator in our Smart Sauna takes all the guess work out, tracks and adapts to your use, sets the right time and temp for your body, and shows you when you should ideally use the sauna next to maintain heat acclimation.

If you’d like help tailoring a sauna regimen for your schedule, or more guidance around saunas use in the Fall, give us a call to speak with one of our knowledgeable sauna experts!

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