Can You Wear a Sauna Suit in The Sauna?

A sauna suit is designed to trap heat close to your body, increasing sweating during exercise. While some believe it enhances detoxification and calorie burn, its primary function is short-term water weight loss .

Although these suits can be useful for athletes under controlled conditions, using them in a sauna is not safe and poses serious health risks .

• Your heart has to work a lot harder: This can quickly lead to overheating, putting excessive strain on your cardiovascular system.

• Sauna suits make your body heat up very fast: Research shows that exercising in a sauna suit significantly increases core temperature, heart rate, and sweat loss, even in normal conditions.

• Mixing heat with more heat is risky: In hot environments, the strain becomes even greater. While it might help your body adapt to heat, it also raises serious health risks.

• Your body gets too stressed in all that heat: The  study  found that participants wearing a sauna suit in high temperatures experienced greater physical and mental stress, showing how dangerous it is to trap too much heat.

• It might feel like a fitness boost, but it’s not safe: “Sauna sweat helps increase your sweat production...and for some, that added challenge feels like a way to push their fitness routine,” says  Dr. Shivani Amin  , a functional medicine physician. But when you combine it with a sauna, it becomes dangerous.

• People with health conditions are at even more risk: Individuals with diabetes have a reduced ability to handle heat, making it even riskier for them to use a sauna suit in high temperatures, warns  Dr. Lance C. Dalleck  , a professor of Exercise and Sport Science at Western Colorado University.

• Dehydration can hit you quickly and hard: Without proper cooling, your body overheats. This can lead to dizziness, weakness, or even fainting, clear signs that dehydration is taking over.

• Trying to lose water weight too fast puts your health at risk: Athletes sometimes wear sauna suits to lose water weight quickly. For example, fighter  Justin Jaynes  , walked over three miles in a sauna suit, then sat in a sauna just to shed a few more pounds, an extreme and risky process.

• Most of the weight you lose is just water, not fat:  Research shows  , people wearing sauna suits lose more weight, but most of it is water. This kind of weight loss is short-term and increases the chances of getting dehydrated, especially in hot conditions.

• Wearing a sauna suit in a sauna is a dangerous combo: When you combine a sauna’s heat with a suit that traps even more heat, your body loses fluids even faster. Without enough water, this can lead to serious health problems very quickly.

• This extra strain can be risky for people with health issues: If you have heart problems, high blood pressure, or any underlying health conditions, this added heat stress can be dangerous and increase health risks.

• Sauna suits are meant for workouts, not for saunas:  Dr. Gowri Reddy Rocco  explains that sauna suits are designed to raise your body temperature during exercise, helping with sweating, detox, and fitness goals, not for use in a sauna.

• Combining both can seriously stress your heart: Using a sauna suit in a sauna creates too much heat, which can place extreme stress on your heart and raise the risk of heart-related problems.

• Athletes use sauna suits for quick workouts, not for cleansing the body: Professional fighters like  Matt Frevola  use sauna suits to get intense workouts done in a short time, not to flush out toxins.

• Sweating more doesn’t mean you’re getting rid of more toxins: A lot of sweat might feel like a good cleanse, but it’s misleading. Your body removes toxins through your liver and kidneys, not by sweating buckets.

When your body overheats too much, you may experience heat exhaustion , which includes symptoms like nausea, dizziness, headaches, and confusion .

In severe cases, this can escalate to heatstroke, a life-threatening condition requiring immediate medical attention .

Wearing a sauna suit in a sauna puts you at a much higher risk for these dangerous conditions.

• Dry Sauna: A sauna suit prevents your body from regulating temperature, making overheating almost inevitable.

• Infrared Sauna: These saunas heat the body directly, and wearing a sauna suit interferes with the intended benefits.

• Steam Sauna: The trapped moisture inside a sauna suit can make the experience unbearable and increase the risk of overheating even faster.

• Wear breathable clothing to allow your body to sweat naturally without trapping heat.

• Stay hydrated before, during, and after a sauna session.

• Limit your time to avoid overheating and excessive dehydration.

• Listen to your body and leave the sauna if you feel lightheaded or unwell.

Wearing a sauna suit in a sauna is unsafe and unnecessary. The extreme heat buildup can lead to serious health risks, including dehydration, heart strain, and heat-related illnesses.

If you want to maximize your sauna experience, stick to safe practices and allow your body to regulate its temperature naturally.