Andy Smith 00:00 
A quick disclaimer before we begin, the PEMF podcast does not contain any medical advice and the content provided is for informational purposes only. If you have any health concerns, please visit a healthcare professional. Welcome back to another episode of the PEMF podcast. Today's guest is living proof that rock bottom can be the beginning of something powerful. Allison Huff-Ritchie is a tech turned wellness entrepreneur, infrared sauna expert and the founder of Sweat Lounge in London. But just a few years ago, Alison was in a completely different place. In agonizing pain, barely able to move, ordering takeout five times a week, drinking to dull pain and feeling completely lost. But a trick back to the USA and three life-changing sessions in an infrared sauna. What happened next sparked a full transformation not just in her body, but in her mindset, her career and her purpose. But let's kick this off. Who are you and what brings you here today?

Allison Huff-Ritchie 00:53 
Thank you so much for having me. What an amazing opportunity to talk to your listeners about just the absolute transformational power of using infrared light therapy as part of your lifestyle. So, God, what a crazy story. You're in your 20s and your 30s, you have a back injury, you just kind of say, oh, that was weird. You don't lift weights for a few months, and then you move on with your life. Well, I spent almost my entire career working in technology solutions, cloud-based technology solutions, all over the world. And in fact, that's why I moved to the UK 12 years ago. And when I was pregnant with my second daughter, I was having back pains. I had just flown back from the United States. It was just this pain that wouldn't go away in my back. I was five months pregnant, went to get in the bath, lost complete control of my leg, had to call the ambulance, was laying on the floor. I tell people I was in labor with my first daughter for three days, and I would have rather done that again than the agony that was the pain in my back at that moment. Called the ambulance, went to the emergency room, had the MRI, met with a spinal surgeon. I was diagnosed with degenerative disc disease. So my L4 and my L5 are tremendously prolapsed. And in fact, a couple of other discs on top of those are almost non-existent. And as a pregnant lady, there's not much that they can do for you. It's just, take a pair, send them all, and good luck. And so I was just in complete and utter agony. I couldn't move, gave birth to my daughter, and was just in the absolute worst mental and physical shape of my life. I suffered for over a year. I wasn't doing any of the things that I needed to do to recover and to be the best person I could be as a mother to my children because I was in complete agony. I was walking with a limp. The nerve was so compressed that I couldn't feel the entire front part of my leg. I was told that that may or may not ever go away. That might be it. And I just had absolutely, in what was supposed to be the most joyful moment of your life when your children are young, I was absolutely, absolutely miserable and depressed. I gained a ton of weight. I wasn't moving. I wasn't cooking. My life's passion is cooking outside of everything else. And I wasn't doing any of the things that sparked joy in my life. And it just so happened that we were in Austin, Texas, where my family lives for my 40th birthday. And there just so happened to be an infrared sauna studio across the street from my parents' house. And I thought, I'd read a little bit about infrared. All I had found on infrared specifically was the infrared sauna blankets. And those are quite expensive to buy outright. And there were not too many places in London that had infrared saunas. And I tried the one across the street from my parents' house. And they had an introductory offer. You go three times for a deal. I said, what do I have to lose? So I went. And there are moments in your life that you feel like the universe is speaking to you. And that was one of those moments of my life.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 04:46 
It was one of the most profound moments when not only was my back pain completely gone. And I thought, how can I now deliver this to people? How can I bring this solution to people who are suffering the same way that I'm suffering? And so, yeah. So I started to do research. I mean, I was still in Texas and I started to do research. Where could I do this in London? Where is their infrared sauna in London?

Andy Smith 05:17 
Just talking about that first session of infrared sauna, because they come in all different shapes and sizes, as you probably know now. So what was that first experience? So those three sauna sessions you had in America, what kind of sauna was that?

Allison Huff-Ritchie 05:33 
dome. So it was the same dome as what I have in in my studio. So it's it's a it was a lay down, you know, you're in your own private room, you're under a dome, the dome only comes up to your chest, and you're breathing fresh air the entire time.

Andy Smith 05:51 
Because when most people, when you say sauna, a lot of people think about the cabins, you know, you open the door, you get in a cabin and, and you get infrared saunas and those types, but this is more on your own, laying down in a dome.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 06:05 
Yes, if we think about what you're looking to achieve as part of using heat as part of your lifestyle. So just to take a step back. So when when we think about heat as a lifestyle intervention, heat is as profound to your longevity as diet and exercise. And what do we mean by longevity? What does longevity mean? So longevity is the pursuit of avoidance of chronic disease and death as we into the second chapter of our lives.

So at heat as part of a lifestyle intervention, and we know this because we've been observing Finnish people for over 40 years, we've got 40 plus year long studies on the on the inclusion of heat as part of your lifestyle. You will, if you use sauna regularly, you reduce your risk of all causes of mortality by 40%. That includes insulin resistance and diabetes, you reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease by 59, I'm sorry, 49%. You reduce your risk of cardiovascular death by 60%. You reduce your risk of Alzheimer's disease and dementia by 66%. And there's a lot of different reasons why, why those outcomes occur. But essentially the core of what you're looking to achieve as part of this is raising your core body temperature. So that's a that's a hormesis experience known as hyperthermia, right, not dissimilar to what you would experience if you had a fever. Now, with the with the with the pursuit of raising your core body temperature, there are three main modalities of heat that achieve that end result. There's Finnish sauna, there's steam room, and there's infrared, all three of those deliver the same outcome, which is raising your core body temperature. Now, if we think about in a traditional sauna setting, so Finnish sauna, for example, if we if we think about that, you are counting on a very hot ambient temperature for that to raise your core body temperature. So what that means is, the vast majority of the studies around the efficacy of using heat as a hormesis experience have subjects in a Finnish sauna for 76 plus degrees centigrade or 176 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes. Most people can't tolerate that for long enough. Most people when I ask people, oh, you know, do you do sauna? Oh, I love sauna. How talk to me about how you do sauna, I go in there for five to 10 minutes and I get out.

Andy Smith 08:35 
I think it's the breathing is a lot of people's problems that's the thing that i noticed the most especially when you're in a really really hot sauna you just tip loads of water cuz that's the first thing you do is you go in there and match a stick bucket or whatever the calls that something in the heat comes off it. Then it makes it really difficult to breathe correct so some people almost is like a fight or flight kind of reaction and they want to get out so it's one of. One of the ways in which people only spend a short amount of time in there.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 09:00 
For the vast majority of people who haven't grown up in sauna culture, they actually find it quite uncomfortable and quite difficult in order for them to maintain in that environment for the amount of time for it to achieve the end result, which is raising your body temperature. Now the beautiful thing about infrared, infrared light therapy, infrared sauna, it is using the electromagnetic spectrum to heat your body from the inside out. And what that means is that in a traditional infrared cabin, as you suggested, the ambient temperature for that is significantly lower than what you would have in like a traditional finished sauna. In fact, we run our saunas, our cabin saunas at sweat lounge anywhere from 50 to 60 degrees. And that's just based on personal preference. You actually don't have any intrinsic health benefits making it hotter. It's just because people might like it that way. But the way that we are exposing heat therapy to people who cannot tolerate hot air full stop is by the fact that we have the only solution in the UK where people are in domes. They're in their own private rooms. They're laid down. The dome only comes up to your chest. You're breathing fresh air the entire time. So what that means, and you've tried it. Yeah, yeah, it's an experience.

Andy Smith 10:21 
It's a great experience. It's good that we did that before this podcast, because, you know, we can talk about how I... It's hard. It's a combination of the two, yeah. It's hard. It's like...

Allison Huff-Ritchie 10:29 
hot little rotisserie chicken in there, but you're breathing fresh air the entire time. So what that means is that whereas a traditional sauna experience, you would typically leave after 20 minutes in our solution, in our studio, our sessions are 30 minutes long. So what that means is you've got a higher rate of where your body is producing additional plasma, which we can get into in a bit and why that's important. You're producing more heat shock proteins, which is one of the most profound things that you can do to reduce chronic inflammation inside of your body. You're producing far more endorphins, which helps you sleep better, helps your mood. And you're having a fantastic experience. You're burning more calories because you're in there for 30 minutes. I not that I infrared sauna is a compliment to your wellness routine. It is not there to replace anything. It's there to make everything that else you're doing better. I like to say that we are a cog in the wellness machine. However, um, I track everything on my aura ring as you do, and I will burn more calories laid in the infrared sauna for half an hour than I do in the same amount of time during a strength training session or Pilates, um, by about 15 to 20%. Yeah, which is, which is a, it's, it's a nice benefit. It's a nice peripheral benefit. It's not why you're there.

Andy Smith 12:00 
Um, I mean, a nice benefit I had when, which I wasn't expecting so much is when I got out of one of your domes, um, you know, you've got these nice full body mirrors there and I had a little look and I thought, wow, I look pretty chiseled. Like because you, you know, you, you're sweating, like profuse, I wasn't expecting to sweat that much. And I've done a lot of different saunas in the past and you know, all the muscles are pumping out and it's like, oh, this is great, but probably more of a temporary thing because of its more attention and, and, but.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 12:30 
And we suggest you load back up after. Yeah, right. We've got electrolytes. We've got all of that.

Like hydrate yourself afterwards. It's actually quite critical that you make sure, but you are drinking your electrolytes, we talked about that.

Andy Smith 12:40 
And that's the thing like and I wasn't actually thinking to myself either that burning a lot carry the calories in there so, you know, that's another thing that is on top of this because when When he was going through your darkest kind of points you you put on quite a lot of weight. Sorry, you know And you lost a lot of weight in this kind of buy hacking journey and that sort of thing and Was the sort of there to help or how

Allison Huff-Ritchie 13:11 
Like I said, we're a cog in the machine. And so this is how I like to explain this to people. So when I wasn't in pain, I was sleeping better. When I was sleeping better, I was making better food decisions the next day.

When I was sleeping better and I wasn't in pain, I was going to the gym. Cause I enjoy going to the gym. I just, I couldn't, I couldn't. I was so completely paralyzed to do anything. And so once you have these different aspects of your life in a more productive manner, everything's going to fall into place. When I wasn't in pain, when I was sleeping, when I was making better eating decisions, then I could walk and I was walking around. When you walk more, your back feels better. When you lift, you put the structural integrity in place to support the different areas that need to be supported. Using infrared light therapy is medically proven to be one of the best ways to naturally ride pain relief. And when you're not in pain, you're sleeping. We know sleep is the cornerstone of everything. When your sleep is broken, everything's broken. That is the number one thing that I think we as a society need to really have a long, hard look at ourselves about is this grind culture and not sleeping because it will steal years from your life.

Andy Smith 14:36 
I agree you know the big buyhacker in the scene at the moment Brian Johnson and we actually saw a talk with him recently and and he's. His whole ethos is built around his sleep everything for the minute he gets up.

It's all about how he's gonna get to sleep at night what time and how he's gonna sleep and it's it's so important such a corner sign of. The health and the stars everything like you say you're sleeping better than you can stop performing and doing everything the next day.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 15:05 
Exactly. I mean, it is when you're sleeping, and you're making good dietary decisions, and you're moving your body, it is a miracle what that does to your mental health. It is an absolute miracle. Right. And regarding sleep, I mean, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm part of the cult, man. I, all I care about is how am I going to get the best possible sleep at night? And, you know, I touched on this in my, in a couple of the articles that I've been, I've, I've been written about, but the number one thing that changed my relationship with sleep, and it changed my relationship with alcohol was this thing.

Andy Smith 15:49 
Yeah, it was.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 15:50 
or a ring because it gamifies the sleep. But you can quite acutely bear witness to what it means to have a good night of sleep. You're like, wow, I feel great. I worked really hard on having a really good night's sleep last night because I wanted to be in peak form for you today. And I feel like a million bucks. I haven't had any coffee. And I have to remind myself, this is what a good night of sleep feels like. This is how I don't need the caffeine. I don't need the other things. I feel brilliant. And it's this ring because I can see how much a glass of wine is going to cost me.

Andy Smith 16:39 
Yeah, and 100%. We actually talked about this on a couple of episodes back with Professor Green and I talked about the Woot band because again, it's the same thing. Same concept. Same concept. I mean, I don't wear mine at the moment because of the EMFs and things, and I want them to bring out a version. I think you can with the aural ring. You can put them into an airplane mode of things. But for the information it gave me was completely invaluable. Like you say, you know, and it changed my view on alcohol completely because you can see what it costs you in the next day. It literally does. You can have a great day. You can have nine hours sleep. You can get up, you know, and you feel okay. And then you put your data from your Woot and your battery's on 10%. And you're like, how is that possible? And you think, oh, I had two beers last night. Just, you know, it was Friday. I had two beers. It just absolutely destroys. And the day 11 tech at the moment is really important for people to see that, to understand it, to see what it does to your body and to your statistics.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 17:46 
It's about making data-driven decisions. It's how I run my life, it's how I run my business. Everything has to be a data-driven decision. I mean, maybe that's an echo of my previous life working in technology and helping other businesses make data-driven decisions, but I wanna make data-driven decisions. And look, I still drink wine. I'll still have a margarita here or there, but I know the consequences of that. I know what the price is gonna be. And quite frankly, the juice is not the squeeze. Quite frankly, the juice is not worth the squeeze. A lot of times, especially when it comes to eating or drinking after a certain period of time, that's my new thing right now. I'm big on that as well.

Andy Smith 18:31 
I'm that guy that if someone books a restaurant at eight o'clock, I really complain, you know, I have to eat by five and six, you know, it's, and then it gives you time, give your body time to digest and get ready for bed.

And, and again, it's something that you can see on the data from, from either a whoop or an aural ring that if you eat nine, 10 o'clock at night and then you go to bed, it's just, yeah, you just, your, your sleep stats are just destroyed.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 18:54 
My, so, so my, if I think about like my journey, um, the, the first thing I just wanted to focus on was, um, sleep and sleep hygiene. So obviously how much sleep am I getting enough sleep? And am I getting enough deep sleep? Am I getting enough REM sleep? Now it's, um, quite apparent that my heart rate variability is not great at the moment. Um, I'm a mom, I've got two small kids. I'm running a business. I'm trying to scale this business. Um, you know, I'm trying to be a good partner to my husband and, you know, be there for my family. I got a lot on my plate. Um, so is that a consequence of that? Like, you know, perhaps, but now I'm really focusing on my heart rate variability. And, um, the two things that have really turned the dial for me is A, not eating after like five 30, which is very sad because my life is very difficult for me to not eat after five 30. But I've noticed acutely, if I don't eat after five 30, like my heart rate variability literally went up 25 points last night. I couldn't believe it. Um, I also, I have a, I do have a sauna at my house. Um, so doing the sauna at night before I go to bed seems to be helpful. And also here's a little fun one, um, which Tim great actually made a post about the other day and I tested it last night and I was like, Oh no, because that means we're switching sides of the bed. But if you lay on your left side, if you lay on your left side, the way that your stomach and your esophagus, um, is oriented inside of your body, um, you have less like acid reflux coming in and you get better sleep. So I made my husband switch with me last night. I was like, I have an experiment. He's like, what happens if it works?

Andy Smith 20:41 
You can let him sleep on the other side.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 20:43 
I'm like, well, you gotta go to the other side. Sorry, babe, but anyway, it was remarkable. Yeah, it really moved the dial. But I mean, look, you can get really neurotic about this stuff if you let it. And I look at biohacking as a way to help maximize my health and wellness in conjunction with the lifestyle decisions which I wanna make. Because like I said, I still wanna go out with my friends and have a good time, you know, I'm 42, I can't do it like I was in my 20s, right? And the joke is, you know, I had a really good time in my 20s and 30s, which is why I was like, oh no, I need to set up a longevity business now to offset like some of these, some of the times I had when I was younger, but you know, there are ways to, like I said, make data driven decisions in terms of like, is it worth it and be, you know, can you kind of offset some of the lifestyle decisions that you've made? And that's kind of how I look at biohacking in the longevity space, really.

Andy Smith 21:58 
So let me bring this back a couple of questions.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 22:00 
Yeah.

Andy Smith 22:02 
weight loss. Yes. Was it? What was your secret to that? We talked about you and previously, was there a key takeaway for you that, you know, or did you just stop eating?

Allison Huff-Ritchie 22:17 
No, I was definitely eating. And in fact, you know, if you don't eat, it can have pretty negative consequences from a hormonal regulation perspective. So it is quite important that we are eating and we're eating at the right times, especially as women, especially as we move into perimenopause. You know, it is important that you there's a fantastic doctor, she's one of my friends, her name is Dr. Amy Shaw, which is a really easy way to kind of put a framework around your dietary decisions. And it's a 3033. So it's 30 grams protein with each meal, 30 grams of fiber in a day, and three fermented foods a day. And you know, that's that's a North Star, right? You know, you're not gonna, you're not gonna hit that every single day. But if that's what you aim to achieve, then you're going to be light years ahead of everybody else and you're going to be feeling really good. And so that's kind of the principle that I typically try to follow is making sure that I'm getting that now. Ironically, the hardest thing for me is the fiber. 30 grams of fiber is a lot of fiber. It is a lot more than than what you think it is. But I just, you know, I just keep it in the back of my mind. And and that's it. Now, in regards to the weight loss, you know, I have a I have a philosophy, I have a philosophy with my life and my business. And that is progress, not perfection, give yourself a break. Yeah, you know, if you are doing great 80% of the time, then you should be really proud of yourself for that. You know, I, for me, strength training is really important. I don't actually enjoy cardio. I do does someone who does so bad. Ironically, when I do cardio, I do intervals on the stair stepper, which is apparently like the worst one, but I can I'm fine with that. Um, but I do cardio, I do specifically do intervals for my my heart health. But but strength training is for weight loss. There's no doubt about it. Your muscles are the metabolic engine of your body, your basal metabolic rate, the more lean muscle mass composition that you have, the higher your basal metabolic rate is, which means that you burn more calories at rest, the more muscles that you have than you do as as having a higher body fat percentage. So by building up that lean muscle mass, you're already like in increasing how many calories that you can consume in that day. So for me, it's, it's, you know, I live in West London, I walk everywhere. And I don't, the beauty of living in London is that you can just walk to get to where you need to go. And all of a sudden, you've done 15,000 steps in a day. And I love that. But I walk everywhere. I string train two to three times a week. And I follow this 3033 thing. And I try to, you know, I try to chuck a interval training in there. If I can, if I can bear it.

Andy Smith 25:27 
And that's the thing, it's not over complicated, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's all part of the puzzle. Like I said, you know, you start putting in these small buy hacks, more changes to your diets, more, you know, all these different things. And it just falls into place eventually. So I mean, let me, let me talk more about this saunas because you know, that's, this is where your expert lies, you know, so I really want to dig into this a little bit more. Okay. I've just bought a nice ice bath. We'll come to that later. Oh, I'm looking at buying sauna next and I am torn between heat and infrared. Okay. So what would you give my advice if I'm only going to, I've only got space for one, two person max sauna or maybe less a dome, something like that. Where should I go?

Allison Huff-Ritchie 26:13 
I have seen your gym, you can fit a two person in there and you should absolutely get I suggest getting, you know, within reason, obviously, I suggest getting the biggest that you can because the reality is the more comfortable the solution is, the more often you're going to use it. And sauna is better than no sauna. So if you've only got space for, you know, one person, then, you know, certainly that's, that's great, but you don't want to make it as comfortable as you can, because the more comfortable something is, the more you're going to use it. It's human nature. Traditional versus traditional finish versus infrared. So a couple of differences. So just, if we think about there's a couple of different ways that we can think about it. If we think about it from just like a pure play mechanics perspective, inference on is you can plug into the wall, you don't need any kind of specialist electrician to do it, it's plug and play. Inference saunas can heat up quite quickly. Whereas traditional saunas take quite a bit of time to heat up. And inference saunas are extremely particularly if you buy from like a high quality company, which I know you would, they're extremely low emf. And they are extremely low energy usage, extremely low energy usage. So if we think about like, you know, our, our environmental impact, and, you know, how we want to, like, exist on this planet with the other, like, 7.8 billion people that that live on it with us, uses the least amount of energy. Now, that's from like, just like a mechanics perspective, if we think about the physiological impact of infrared versus finished sauna. I mean, you don't see me having a finished sauna business. Um, I would pick, I would pick infrared light therapy any day of the week. And there's a lot of different reasons for that. So first and foremost, because the ambient temperature is lower, you are in the sauna for longer, which means that there is a force multiplier in regards to the health benefits. With the infrared, typically the infrared now you have, you also have a red light panel company, so you probably stick one in front, you do your PEMF and red light at the same time. So you're getting your red light. But a lot of infrared saunas now have red light panels inside. In fact, my cabin has red light panels inside, I think using infrared and red light at the same time are extremely complimentary. Um, so for people out there who, you know, don't use infrared or red light, this is a great opportunity for them to really accelerate the health benefits between the two at the same time. Um, we used to think that energy was simply from nutrition, but it's not. Energy comes from light, comes from the air, it comes from everywhere, right? And we know, and this is not woo woo, this is medically substantiated science. We know that there are certain wavelengths of red light and infrared light that are actually absorbed by the mitochondria. Mitochondrial health is a hot topic at the moment. The reason being is that the less effective your mitochondria are, the more accelerated your aging process then becomes.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 29:49 
A lot of negative health issues are specifically related to dysfunction of the mitochondria. Your mitochondria will absorb energy from, um, certain wavelengths of red light and infrared. Um, and that will then, you know, improve the efficacy of all those different functions inside of your body. Positive benefit. Um, we know that, so we live in a toxic era. The human body is bombarded with more toxins today than we have ever been bombarded with in the history of humanity. You cannot escape it. There is nothing that you are going to be able to do to fully escape the amount of toxins that are in our environment. The only way that you are able to address and mitigate the issues correlated to those toxins is to detoxify your body. Now, there is a lot of, there are a lot of bad players out there talking about detoxification. The reality is that you've got two different kinds of toxins inside of your body. You've got, in a very basic distilled level, you've got water soluble toxins, so that's like alcohol, and you've got fat soluble toxins. So water soluble toxins, like alcohol, your kidneys, your liver deals with it. You sweat it out, pee it out, you poop it out. It's gone, unless you do it a lot, in which case, then you give yourself fatty liver disease, but that's a whole nother topic of conversation. Fat soluble toxins, okay? Heavy metals, cadmium, arsenic, lead, all of the forever chemicals, all the PFAS, everything, PB, you name it. Those are all the forever chemicals. Your body is notorious for sequestering these fat soluble toxins in your fat cells. Very difficult to get rid of them. Very difficult to get rid of them. Exercise does get rid of them. Exercise is quite good for detoxifying the fat cells, but the other thing that's really fantastic for detoxifying those fat cells is infrared light therapy. So to go back to what happens when you use infrared light therapy. So infrared is, as I mentioned, it's heating your body at a cellular level. So what's happening is infrared light, which is the same thing that comes off the sun, 75% of the energy coming off the sun exists in the infrared spectrum, measurement spectrum. Infrared light is penetrating your body throughout. Some studies say up to five centimeters, some studies say up to an inch and a half, there's a little bit of wiggle room there. But essentially, if we think about the fact that the infrared light is penetrating your body to that depth, that's where all of your subtenius fat is. So you've got subtenius fat, visceral fat. Your subtenius fat is sitting within that spectrum of where the infrared light is entering your body. When that happens, your fat cells are releasing those fat-cellular toxins. They've run studies that essentially compare and contrast the same subject going from a traditional Finnish sauna to a seam room to an infrared sauna, same individual. And that individual, if they test the impurities contents of their sweat coming off of an infrared sauna, will have seven to 10 exponential times more impurity contents in their sweat than they would in a traditional sauna.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 33:21 
And we know, we have observed, as recently as 2003, the Canadian Journal of Diabetes has run a study talking about using infrared light therapy as a mechanism to address the, to address like diabetes-related issues, so high blood pressure and waist circumference specifically. 12, not 12, in a 12-week study, subjects had statistically significant reduction in their waist circumference and in lowering their blood pressure in the study. So where I'm trying to get to with this is that we know that if you use infrared light therapy on a regular and consistent basis, you will reduce your body fat composition. No, it's amazing. So don't get a Finnish sauna. Yeah.

Andy Smith 34:18 
And I mean that was information overload that was great because you know, that's what I love about it. 

Allison Huff-Ritchie 34:24 
Sorry. What's your guy called? Which one? Your editor. Josh. Josh. You got a lot of info for you, buddy.

Andy Smith 34:32 
So, yeah, I mean, what I love about this podcast is like meeting people like you, I learn so much, you know, and it's an educational process throughout. Something I want to touch on, you said about low EMFs and that's something that gets confused a lot with the whole PEMF and EMF. So just for our audience, I just wanted to explain a little bit that, especially when it comes to infrared saunas and infrared light and that sort of thing, they use quite high frequencies, but if not done correctly and with the wrong equipment, you know, you tend to get dirty electricity, which is like high EMFs and that sort of thing. So it also does come down to purchasing the right equipment, good equipment. You know, it's the same in the PEMF industry. We're seeing these cheap multi-therapy mats flooding the market, which, you know, we've got one of those EMF meters and we've put it on top and it's just, you know, it's incredible. It's incredible. So I want to ask you a question similar because where I've been looking at getting a sauna myself, you know, and after using your dome sauna, I was like this, you know, I haven't sweat like I sweat in that in a normal kind of seating sauna before and I started finding my line for £1,000, £2,000 and that sort of thing. And I wanted to know how that compares with what you've got. Because I remember you saying to me that you're just shipping some in from Sweden or something now and it's a nice finish and it's, you know, so when looking at dome saunas, is there a range in terms of quality or is any dome sauna you've seen a pretty good?

Allison Huff-Ritchie 36:04 
Uh, well, I mean, as my mom always says, there's nothing, there's no such thing as a free lunch, right? And you definitely get what you pay for. Um, and, and what you don't want to do is, is you don't want to try to achieve, you want to buy something with the end result of achieving a health outcome. And then you bought something that's just making it worse. Right. And, um, you know, there is a lot out there. It's same as, is what you're seeing, right? There's a lot of, of, of, um, bad actors out there selling, you know, not, not quality profound products. Um, but this is why I set up the sweat lounge. So our mission as a company is to democratize access to longevity solutions that are typically only available to the elite. Not everybody can buy an infrared sauna, right? They're quite, they can be quite expensive. If you want to use a best in class sauna, which is what I deliver to my community, it is going to cost you some money. And as such, you know, maybe some people don't need to have one in their house. Maybe they can't fit one in their house. Um, and this is, this is literally the catalyst for why sweat lounge exists because I wanted to create a place where people can come and use a best in class sauna, um, have a fantastic experience, really enjoy themselves. And then, and then that's it. And it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a pay as you go kind of scenario. It's a one off. Um, but there absolutely is a lot of, um, you know, there's a lot of bad actors out there in the, in the sauna business, as you would expect, right? I mean, with more, with more press, with more, um, publications, you're going to get people who want to come in and take advantage of that. Um, but you know, like we have, we have one studio today. It was my first studio. Um, I'm opening up two additional sites this year. Um, my goal is to have, you know, 50 sweat lounges across the United Kingdom. Um, it, if, if people, my goal is to drive half a billion pounds of cost off the NHS every year in the next five to seven years. And if I want to do that, sweat lounge has to be everywhere. It has to be convenient, has to be convenient, affordable, and accessible for people. And that's, that is my mission is to make it, make it convenient, affordable, and accessible. I'll put one in Canterbury. I'll put one next to the, uh, next to the Korean barbecue restaurant.

Andy Smith 38:34 
Yeah so and then that's the thing you know because people want to do everything from home and then sometimes I want to just save money but you know spending a thousand two thousand pound on one of these sauna domes putting at home you know you're not necessarily doing your body any justice when and and squeezing all these things together because we say it's all part of the puzzle you know so if you want to do that if you want to do ice baths if you want to do PEMF if you want to do red light therapy. Then you don't have to set all that up at home there are places now like sweat lounge that are popping up that give you access to come use that facilities and the best possible facilities and then go away from.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 39:09 
We want to talk about the PEMF in Fulham.

Andy Smith 39:12 
That's it. So, stacking therapies and one of the reasons we started talking was because, you know, you approach a society and, you know, you're interested in looking at adding PEMF to what you do because, you know, I do it myself. I do PEMF every morning and I do red light therapy and that's got infrared in the panel. It doesn't get quite as hot as the saunas. It's a near infrared. Near infrared, so not far in. Yeah, it's nice.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 39:35 
Yeah, but it's good. It's good. It's good. Yeah

Andy Smith 39:38 
So it's not the heat kind of, it's not juicing the heat, so it's different to that. But putting therapies together, like we said, as part of the puzzle, all comes with buying benefits but also synergistic benefits. Synergy. Synergy, yeah. And something you've seen quite synergy with is PEMF and infrared saunas.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 40:02 
You know, God bless Texas, man. God bless Austin, Texas. Austin, Texas is arguably one of the top thought leadership areas around longevity medicine, longevity technology. And in fact, the last time I was in Austin, I went to a fantastic biohacking studio and they had PEMF and I was like, what is this? You know, I was really fascinated by it. And I started to look into it. And I've been looking for a PEMF partner in the UK for quite some time now, because that for me, using PEMF in conjunction with infrared and red light therapy is going to force multiply the health outcomes that people are going to receive as part of the experience. And that's why I was so delighted to meet you, because I absolutely love what you guys are doing with your technology. It's incredibly vetted. It's UK built. The efficacy is defined. And I am really, are we going to talk about the commercial grade, commercial grade? And I'm excited to be able to showcase and to deliver in a democratized fashion the first CELLER8 commercial device in the United Kingdom.

Andy Smith 41:35 
Yeah. So what what Alison's talking about is our unofficial official maybe launch. Not sure if it had gone out by now, but there's the there's the teaser for you. So yeah, we've got our signature UK made PEMF device, which is our low intensity, which we really designed for home use, but it can be used like inside saunas, which we'll talk about that sort of thing. But we're also now about to release high intensity PEMF device, um, which we can see more suited for professional sayings where people aren't going to be using it every single day. They want to come in and use it once a week, or they want to use it before they use sauna and all these different modalities. So it's a, it's a chink and armor that we've had for a little while, because we always talk about low intensity versus high intensity. It's not really team low, team high. There's, there's, there's benefits for both. Like you say, there's benefits for heat. There's benefits for infrared.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 42:28 
It's just a matter of, these are high quality machines and there is a cost associated with these high quality machines. Because again, you would want to make that investment in the company that's delivering a solution which is gonna be giving you those outcomes, right? However, not everybody is able to afford that for their home use. And so that is the beautiful thing about having a studio where you can go and use something on a one-off, like a once a week kind of basis, which is gonna help amplify your health goals. However, if we are looking at this as being a frequency of once a week kind of scenario, then obviously it needs to have a higher level of electromagnetic field than you would need if you're using it on an everyday basis. Exactly.

Andy Smith 43:28 
And we'll be talking about that on this podcast a little bit more in terms of the high versus low we've got a nice episode set up for for that so and it's it's the same thing in terms of you know whether you need that at home so you wouldn't go out and buy a hundred thousand pound sauna for for your home room some people might but I mean some people might I don't.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 43:49 
I don't know him.

Andy Smith 43:50 
No, you don't, you know, you don't really need that in, in your home setting. It's, it's, you know, high intensity PEMF is, is great. It comes with its own benefits, but putting that in your everyday routine for me, I would say is absolute overkill. So it's, you know, something that is much better suited for a professional setting.

And when we talk about protocols for PEMF and infrared, we've mentioned this before, but using PEMF before any other therapy tends to make that therapy even more effective because PEMF has this real great ability to separate the blood cells, which then allows your body to carry more oxygen, helps the detox and that sort of thing. So it's almost like preparing your body for the next, the next thing that you're about to put it under. So using PEMF therapy in, you know, in one of your new locations before going into your infrared saunas, you know, it's not only going to give you the benefits of the PEMF therapy, but it's going to then accelerate the benefits of the infrared sauna.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 44:49 
No doubt about it. And for me, you know, the main, there are a lot of benefits to PEMF. I want one in my house. No pressure. I will trade you a sauna for a PEMF. But for me, you know, one of the most beautiful things that I love about PEMF, specifically if we think about women's longevity is what it's going to do for your bone density in your bone health. You know, if you are a woman and you fall over, you know, your mortality rate within a year is not insignificant, right, as we get older. So what are the things that we, as women, should be doing to ensure that our bone health and our bone density is as high as possible, right? How are we going to lower inflammation inside of our body? How are we going to deal with lean muscle mass acquisition and maintenance? And I think that's why those two things just fit so beautifully together.

Andy Smith 45:53 
And I was on a podcast called Menopositive, which is talking about post-menopausal women and really drilling into the effects of PEMF therapy on bone health. It's something, PEMF therapy is something that passes through the body. So within threads, it's great, but it does have a penetration depth. As we talked about, PEMF therapy can pass through and help with, with bone density and that sort of thing. So again, it's just a great modality, especially with, um, post-menopausal women that are more susceptible to osteoporosis.

Um, so yeah, I mean, combining the two just makes absolutely absolute sense. Um, and something is a little bit more controversial. We'll talk about on this podcast. Um, something you don't like combining with heat. Um, and you know, we've talked about contrast therapy and contrast therapy. And there's, you know, I've got a nice bath at home. We've got Laura Fullerton coming on soon for a monk who is going to talk about the benefits of ice baths. Um, there's, but there, there is, you know, another side to this and, and my wife won't touch it. She hates it. She hates the thing, you know, she would never go knit. She's, she's tried it a few times. Didn't agree with her. It's off the bucket list. You know, it's, it's shit for her. It's the PEMF, the red light prioritizing sleep, all that sort of thing. So ice baths don't come into her vocabulary. So tell me what are your views on the ice baths.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 47:18 
Look, cold therapy, a lot of people really like cold therapy. A lot of people have, you know, really great outcomes from using cold therapy. I think that there is, so A, you're never gonna find a cold plunge at a sweat lounge. And the reason is that while I think that cold, but water bathing has a place, I love natural swimming. I love, you know, the old school saunas on the beach, and then you go jump in the sea, and you're scrounging, and it's just such a fantastic experience. And like I said, there are a lot of people that do have good outcomes out of using the cold water, but contrast therapy is not necessary for getting the health benefits out of sauna. And I think that there's a lot of confusion out there at the moment around the requirement to do the cold plunge to get the health outcomes. It's completely irrelevant. I personally think that if you are going to be doing cold water therapy, that the best time to do it is first thing in the morning. I think the best time to do sauna, you know, I do sauna all day, every day. But if we're thinking about it from like a sleep improvement perspective, doing sauna at night's really great. I own a longevity business. So Sweat Lounge, I like to say, we're gonna give you a beautiful spa-like experience. You're gonna have a great experience from start to finish, but I'm not a spa. I'm a preventative healthcare and recovery company, and I'm a longevity business. And I consider us to be a science-led organization. And the reason why I am delivering light therapy is because it is so incredibly evidenced in terms of what outcome you are gonna get out of that experience. infrared light is so safe that when babies are born premature, and they need to be put in the NICU, and they use infrared light to help them regulate their body temperature, they're out of every single study that you can possibly read, the only negative impact that you could have to be using infrared light, and that's the same as using a regular sauna is dehydration. So you just need to make sure you're drinking your water and you're drinking your electrolytes, right? Now, with the cold, there are a lot of extenuating circumstances for why the cold plunge might not be appropriate for you. And particularly if we think about women's bodies, you have to be conscious of what time in your cycle are you using the cold plunge? How you're feeling from an emotional perspective, is it a right time for you to be doing the cold plunge? If we think about longevity and specifically women's longevity, the number one leading indicator for a woman's longevity as they move into perimenopause and menopause is your lean muscle mass composition. And there is a variety of different reasons for that. Now, you think about lean muscle mass composition, acquisition and maintenance as being our North star, right? For making sure that we're gonna be vibrant and wonderful and running around and playing with our grandkids in the second half of our life.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 51:01 
There have been studies that show if you do cold plunge immediately after exercise, that it reduces or ceases your body's response to that exercise and will cease production of lean muscle mass composition and collagen. Now, that doesn't mean that cold plunge is not something that you can have in your life, but you absolutely should not be doing it after you do an exercise unless you are Ronaldo and you're playing 160, 175 games a year and you cannot be sore the next day and you're not worried about lean muscle mass acquisition, then do not do a cold plunge after you do exercise. Now, all of these different factors are reasons why, if I'm looking to deliver these kinds of health outcomes, go cold plunge at your house. You know, go do it at your house. That's great. For me as a business, it's just not, it doesn't align with our ethos as a company in terms of what we're looking to do. And there's just too many anomalies for me to wanna be able to deliver it in a democratized fashion where I can control for outcomes. Because ultimately, I don't know what people are doing when they're not in my studio, you know? I don't have the granularity. I don't know enough about them to know what's going on in their life to include that.

Andy Smith 52:35 
At the end of the day, with the sawn and the heat, you're trying to get to a desired outcome of getting the body hot, getting it to sweat. One of the first things you want to do after that, when I got out of the dome that I was at yours, I was really hot, really sweaty. The first thing I want to do is jump in a cold ice bath because you want to cool yourself down. But then you're stopping the progress of the next 10, 20 minutes of what you've just done in the sawn out because you're still sweating, you're still detoxing, there's all these things that's still happening that you're almost kind of putting your brakes on. I think part of the problem with ice baths is the way they're sold. It's a really cheap thing to get into the house because I did the same. I bought one of those inflatable ice baths, turned into a bubble bath after I bumped it up. I love it. The kids love it now as a paddling pool. Very expensive paddling pool. Yeah, that's it. I think the message of ice baths got very lost in translation when it comes to marketing because you get these kind of cowboys that take on these products and it goes from being something, for me, I think it's the mental aspects with ice bathing that I absolutely love.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 53:53 
It's great mental. It's a great mental resiliency tool. It's a fantastic mental resiliency tool.

Andy Smith 53:59 
comes to the physical side of it, you know, I don't get in my ice bath to build muscle. I don't get in my ice bath to heal from my injured ankle, you know, that's where the PEMF, the red light, the infrared, all those sorts of things are way more effective. Um, but I think where the ice baths are advertised these days in terms of just like the silver bullet, you know, it's like getting an ice bath 10 minutes a day or whatever it is. And you know, you'll be right as rain again. And I think that's the thing. It's, it's again, it's just part of the puzzle.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 54:31 
People are just trying to sell shit. Do you know what I mean? They're like, Laura is doing a phenomenal job of, I follow Laura, she actually lives not too far away from me. I would love to have her in my studio. I think these two things can absolutely coexist. Laura's doing a phenomenal job of educating the community around, you know, how to use this. And the fact that she's built a device that's, you know, has a little bit more intelligence in it means that you can tailor it to your own biometrics. And especially as women, like you can really get a little bit more sophisticated with it. And I have a ton of respect for what she's done because it's fucking hard. It's really, really hard.

Andy Smith 55:18 
And Laura is CEO of Monk, which is an ice bath manufacturer, which I've just installed at my house. Love it.

It's great. If you're going to get an ice bath, it's the one to get. Honestly, if you're going to get one, I would love to have one at my house.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 55:32 
I would love to have one in my house, right? But it's, but so a couple of issues. So a couple of issues that I have with contrast therapy, specifically, A, it is absolutely overhyped. It is, there's no doubt about it, it's overhyped. There are a lot of cowboys out there that are trying to sell you that ice bath is going to buy you a pony and solve all your life's problems. And unfortunately, that's just not the case. Now, with the contrast therapy, if you read the Harvard medical website about sauna best practice, they advise you to wait 15 to 20 minutes after you get out of the sauna, before you take a shower, before you jump in the water, before you do anything. Because the action of shocking your system to such a degree is not great, because you're not going from a baseline of body temperature, you're going from up here, right? And so if you're, especially for women, especially for women who have small kids, you're in fight or flight. If you're going from a hot experience, and you're jumping right in the ice bath, it is going to shock your system in a way that is not going to deliver you the health outcomes that you're looking to achieve. A, and B, it is very jarring on your cardiovascular system. Okay, so if you have congenital heart defect, and you're going really hot in a sauna, and you're going to jump really cold in an ice bath, guess what? You could send yourself into a cardiovascular event, which you may or may not recover from. And again, as a business owner, as somebody who is looking to be a thought leader in the community and help give people positive health outcomes, like I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it. Like, you know what, I'll just be a little bit different from everybody else. And that's okay, right? And, you know, the idea is that infrared light therapy can be as profound to your longevity as diet and exercise, but you need to use it. And you need to go, right? I'm not going to go to one spin class and be on the cover of Sports Illustrated. It doesn't work like that, right? You got to put in the work. And if I want to deliver those health outcomes to people, I have got to make a place where people are going to want to come all the time. And that's what we've done at the Sweat Lounge, right? You know, with the cold, with the spas, with the cold plunge and doing that stuff, that's great. You can do that like a few times a year. But let's focus on things that are going to give you the health outcomes that you're looking to achieve. And like I said, look, this is my own personal anecdote, obviously, but God, in the last year, I've lost 65 pounds. I've reduced my biological age by 20%. I've improved my VO2 max by 20%. My sleep is floating around like 90 to 92 on Aura. I feel the best that I've felt in my adult life with a three-year-old and a five-year-old is an absolute miracle. I want to make a place where people are going to feel good again, like I felt good again.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 58:48 
I mean, the joke is I couldn't fit one of these things in my house. I live in London, so I couldn't fit one in my house. I had to make a business for it. So, yeah, I don't pay myself anything. I just get infrared sauna, infinite infrared sauna.

Andy Smith 59:01 
No, no, that's great. And we'll take a deeper dive in a few episodes time on the ice bar. So it, you know, if we want to listen to that one and we can talk about that, but no, you're looking great.

Um, you say you've made some amazing changes in your life. Um, are you doing any kind of supplementation or any hacks in that aspect, something that you prefer, want to share?

Allison Huff-Ritchie 59:21 
I mean, unfortunately, I call myself the hillbilly Brian Johnson. But, um, you know, look, I, I am trying to make more data driven decisions in this aspect. If I'm, if I'm talking to, to your listeners, I'm talking to your listeners and I want to give people, particularly women advice on the top four to five supplements that are really going to move the dial for them. Creatine is the number one. Magnesium is number two. Omega three is number three.

Andy Smith 01:00:02 
creating for men and women.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:00:04 
every body on the planet should be taking creatine. I love creatine so much, I almost started a business for it, but I didn't. You was talking to me about it, wasn't you? I know, I did. I'm focusing on the task at hand. I was this close, I was this close to doing it. So pure soul, you're welcome. I would have taken your lunch. But I mean, honestly, they should take fluoride out of the water and put creatine in the water. It's, if we think about the preservation of lean muscle mass composition, creatine is the most important thing that you should be taking every day. It's the most studied, it's the most longest studied supplement that we have as a community. I take it every day, it's changed my life. Not only do we think about creatine from a muscular protection perspective, but it is one of the most important things that you can take to preserve your neurological system. So two out of every three Alzheimer's disease patients are women. Women have 70 to 80% less creatine in their body. Your body makes creatine and you can eat it in food, but we're not making enough of it and we're not eating enough of it. Just take creatine people, take it, it's great. It will change your life in ways unimaginable. Omega-3, we know about the protective natures of omega-3, it's absolutely phenomenal. Make sure that you're taking an omega-3 that is, if you can find it, organic is great. Non-rancid, there's an issue with rancid omega-3. Don't try to save money on omega-3, get a good one. Magnesium blend, amazing. Magnesium, your body uses magnesium for over 40 different cellular processes inside of your body. And we are magnesium deficient. Women blow through magnesium because our cortisol is so high. We are running through magnesium like it's coal in a furnace, let me tell you. Supplement with magnesium, get a blend because you wanna make sure that you're getting different kinds of magnesium in your body. What else do I love at the moment?

Andy Smith 01:02:20 
I think it's really important that you've mentioned those three because, um, I've just done my biological age, uh, with actual age, well, yeah, it was, it was, so I'm not telling anyone yet, but it was, it was younger than my chronological age, but I'm, I'm trying to play with the results a little bit. So I'm trying to do some different supplementation, some different protocols, and I want to see how that affects it.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:02:43 
Who did you speak to? Did you speak to Irina? Yes. Yeah. She's amazing. I think it was Irina. Yeah. Yeah. She's good.

Andy Smith 01:02:49 
So, you know, I mean, coming back to what I was saying, it's, it's, it's important that you mentioned those three because, um, you know, we, we get sucked into this world of all this new shiny stuff going on in a D plus, uh, which I think is amazing. I think it's great. Um, but we forget, I mean, I've been supplementing for a little while. I've been taken with different, different formulas and trying different things. Um, but I had that call with, I think it was arena. And she said to me, you're doing omega free. Are you doing creatine? And I, and I was like, do you know what? You just forget about those because I think where they've become to a point where they're very easy to get hold of lots of companies doing them. Um, and they're, they're just in the back burner somewhere and you forget that these are really like a magnesium is, is just the real cornerstones.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:03:42 
vitamin D3 plus K2. And vitamin D3.

Andy Smith 01:03:45 
I know, and I've got one in the spray form now.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:03:47 
Yeah, I do too. Bare Biology do a really great omega-3 anti-vitamin D product.

Andy Smith 01:03:53 
You can tell we've spoken to the same person.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:03:55 
No, I started seeing them because I work with a company called Health, so they advise me on all this stuff. I also have it available for my customers in the studio.

Andy Smith 01:04:08 
I think that's the takeaway for me is like don't get lost too much that there's all these new ones coming out like i take one for myself specifically for like building cell health and are you doing your listening plus and no timeline no no sorry yeah timeline yeah 

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:04:26 
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andy Smith 01:04:27 
So doing all these ones, but you just kind of forget about the ones that are all that you take and you have to and I'm in the NMN is the plus, isn't it?

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:04:38 
It's the precursor to NAD+. Yes, because it's the one that-

Andy Smith 01:04:41 
helps you produce an NAD plus rather than actually injecting an NAD plus yeah yeah do you think actually we've we've got Nichola Conlon coming on here too which yeah so and she is our speciality in an NAD plus

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:04:52 
tell you about why taking NAD intravenously is a bad idea. 

Andy Smith 01:04:56 
Yeah, I know. nd she actually popped up on Instagram because I was injecting it on on my feed and she said you need to learn So we've got an episode coming up about any plus

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:05:07 
phenomenal. She's absolutely leading a charge on this, this technology in this, this area of interest. I've known her for several years. She's phenomenal.

Andy Smith 01:05:16 
Yeah, nice. So we'll have that one come out soon. So anyway, Alison, we're going to have to wrap this up so we can sit here and talk for hours. But if there's one main takeaway from this for our listeners, that you want to kind of really drill home, what would you say?

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:05:30 
I don't care what kind of heat therapy that you're using, just use it. Use a traditional sauna, use infrared sauna. You know, if you don't have either of those options, take a really hot bath. Using heat as part of your lifestyle is the most profound thing you can do to impact your longevity outside of diet and exercise. And I, you know, like I said, my goal is to improve the longevity for the entire UK population. If I die tomorrow, my legacy is just getting people to use heat more regularly as part of their lifestyle. The impacts across the board will just be absolutely remarkable and miraculous. And, you know, hopefully you'll enjoy it as much as I have.

Andy Smith 01:06:23 
One little question that just popped into my head that I wanted to quiz you on before we leave this is where I haven't got a sauna at home and specifically after I left your place and I'd started thinking about getting heat therapy into my daily routine, I've started having some really hot baths.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:06:41 
Hot baths. Yeah.

Andy Smith 01:06:42 
Is that a good alternative?

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:06:55 
It's a good alternative. Yeah. So I mean, because I can get it, you know, you can get your bath to a level where it's almost, you know, uncomfortable, painful to get in. But when you get out, you're sweating for the next 10 minutes. Yeah. So what you're looking to achieve is to produce heat shock proteins. So heat shock proteins are essentially the proteins that will help damage proteins within your cell structure, which then build up and then cause inflammation. You will produce heat shock proteins taking a really hot bath. But take a 45 minute long bath and like keep turning the heat up, you know.

Andy Smith 01:07:19 
That's where I struggled because I'd get it quite hot and then same with like a heat sauna up five minutes in, I'm like, I'm done, I'm out.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:07:26 
You gotta power through it, you've gotta power through it. But absolutely a hot bath, a hot bath is gonna get you, is gonna get you far down the road. Yeah. Absolutely.

Andy Smith 01:07:37 
And again, that's where I think coming somewhere like the sweat lounge is better because it's not so uncomfortable as doing the heat, it's doing a hot bath and that sort of thing, but it's a good alternative to do.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:07:48 
improvements and everything like that, you know, there are, there are significantly more health benefits in using infrared, but if you don't have access to infrared, you know, yeah, 45 minutes, hot bath, cheap free hack, cheap free hack.

Andy Smith 01:08:04 
The good thing about London is there's loads and loads of wellness places setting up and some of them try and tick every single box. They do all these different modalities, but also they do them in a group setting.

So you've got like saunas now that like 60 man saunas or sorry, 60 people saunas. Um, but what I liked about the experience with sweat lounge was that it was very individual. I went in there. It was a very nice setting. It's all calm. The lighting in there is great. You've done, you know, really nice with, with the kind of setting and everything in there. I did it myself. Yeah, blood, sweat and tears went into that literally. Um, but it was just a really nice time to myself. And, uh, you know, you said to me, put the bloody phone down, you know, give this half an hour to yourself. And I still didn't, I still had to post a picture of me being in there.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:08:53 
I mean, I appreciated that too.

Andy Smith 01:08:56 
Um, but it, you know, it was that time to myself and, and that's what I think you're creating at sweat lounge and where maybe it's a little bit different to.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:09:04 
Yeah. Look, social wellness is having a moment and that's great and it's a beautiful thing. When I was in my early 20s, how did you hang out with your friends? You went to the bar.

Andy Smith 01:09:19 
in the parks to start with is bottles of what we call it white lining. I don't know if you get that. We had Mad Dog 2020. It was grim. White Chlora and that sort of thing as well. Oh, God, yeah.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:09:29 
And I love the fact that, you know, the younger generation are taking their long-term health a lot more seriously than certainly my generation did, right? And I think that it's so amazing that there are these places that are creating spaces where people can go and socialize and meet each other and, you know, have a time together that isn't revolved around alcohol, right? Now, that being said, you are never gonna find also a communal sauna at sweat lounge. You know, our approach is that those communal wellness places are fantastic. But the reality is that we want people to come and see us on a regular basis. So, you know, we wanna have people in anywhere from one to three times a week. I mean, we've got people who have unlimited memberships who come in almost every single day, right? Now, what that means is that, you know, at the sweat lounge, every single room is completely private. You're in your own private space. We've got the binaural beats or jazz, depending on who's playing music that day. In our sauna system throughout, you have beautiful aromatherapy, it's quiet, it's dark. You're laid down, you're breathing fresh air. Nobody's bothering you. We've got a lot of people coming in, a lot of moms coming in, a lot of people who are really busy working, you know, in the tube, going around every day, constantly around people, they just wanna be away from people for that moment of solace for 30 minutes. And so, essentially, that's kind of how we are unique to the other places that are doing the big social scene at sweat lounge.

Andy Smith 01:11:15 
Yeah so you get a individual saying and and it's just more more time to yourself different benefits.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:11:21 
It's more time to yourself. You know, it's nice to spend 30 minutes by yourself and just be quiet and be still, um, and, you know, listen to your own music if you want to. I mean, God, I I'm, I'm usually doing emails, um, unfortunately, um, but I'm also doing a lot of sauna. Um, so yeah, it's just, it's your own prerogative on, on what you want to do with that time, um, and use it as a, as a moment to have peace.

Andy Smith 01:11:48 
Where can people find you? Obviously, Sweat Lounge, if you want to let us know where that location is, but then how can people contact you if they want to?

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:11:56 
Um, so I am on Instagram, sweat lounge dot London. Um, we are located today. We're located in Chiswick. That's what was our first site. Um, we're opening up two new sites, one in Brentford and one in Fulham. Um, and those will be alive by Christmas. And we're at sweat lounge dot code at UK. Um, you can follow me. I'm at sweat lounge dot Alison on Instagram. We have a Tik Tok that nobody's working on at the moment, but if you want to go watch some old videos, then they're, they're there. Um, and on LinkedIn, Alison Huff, Ritchie, um, CEO and founder of sweat lounge.

Andy Smith 01:12:33 
Amazing, thank you for coming on today.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:12:35 
My pleasure, thank you so much for having me. It's been a joy. It's been fun.

Andy Smith 01:12:39 
And the first podcast you've been on, pull the plaster off.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:12:42 
I know, yeah, it was great, wasn't it?

Andy Smith 01:12:45 
Thanks for listening to another episode of the PEMF podcast. Uh, can we just listen? Can we just ask our listeners, we've got loads of listeners now. We're growing every month. Uh, we don't have everybody following us subscribing to us. So if we can get you to do that, just take five seconds out a day, then we can get more amazing guests like Alison on the podcast.

Allison Huff-Ritchie 01:13:02 
Thank you. Thanks for having me.