Build Your Own Ceramic Infrared Heater
Gerarda Zmuda
The infrared rays work even better if you take off your shirt, sitting two or three feet in front of the infrared heater. I usually have my back facing towards the heater, letting the heat penetrate nice and deeply into my muscles and bones (it helps melt away backaches also). Unlike ultraviolet light, infrared rays are actually healthy for the skin, and your whole body. You may start perspiring a little after 10 minutes in front of this warmth, but this is fine, and a good sign that your are being warmed.
These far infrared ceramic heaters use the same heating elements that you find in regular far infrared saunas. In fact, the treatment method I am describing here is just like having a far infrared sauna, except that you don't enclose yourself in a cabin, but instead bathe directly in healthy infrared rays by sitting right in front of the infrared heater. You can do this in any room in the house. The room air does not get hot, so you breathe easily; but the body soon gets warmed up in these infrared heat rays.
These far infrared ceramic heaters are very cheap compared to buying a home infrared sauna: you can buy an far infrared ceramic heater for around 100 or less. These heaters typically output around 1400 Watts or so. (Note, there are also quartz halogen far infrared heaters that you can buy for around 20, but these do not work as well; you really need the far infrared ceramic heater, as the ceramic type emits a deeper infrared which can penetrate further into the recesses of your body. Also, don't confuse these \"far infrared ceramic heaters\" with fan heaters that are sometimes called \"ceramic heaters\".)
I know that SAD is often treated with full spectrum light boxes that are designed to produce bright white light with some ultraviolet light too, but the infrared treatment I am describing has nothing to do with this. You don't shine the infrared rays from the heater into your eyes, but rather let these rays penetrate deep in your body.
Believe me, even in the middle of a dark winter, after just 20 minutes of this infrared treatment, your mood will really soar upwards. You will suddenly find yourself becoming enthusiastic for life, as if it were summertime, rather then being a recluse within your winter blues.
If you know somebody that has a far infrared ceramic heater (many homes and workplaces have them these days), you might ask to borrow it, and try out the treatment described. If it works for you too, then perhaps you can consider getting one yourself.
What is the mechanism behind this far infrared therapy for SAD? Those with some scientific background may be aware that SAD has been associated with a lack of a factor called BH4 (tetrahydrobiopterin). BH4 is a crucial factor the body needs to make the all important serotonin. Low serotonin causes depression, so when you don't have enough BH4 to make serotonin, you will feel depressed.
Fortunately, far infrared will strongly increase your body BH4 levels, which then increases your serotonin levels, which in turn rapidly banishes your winter blues. So this is how the far infrared ceramic heater treatment most likely works to treat winter blues: by raising BH4 levels.
The summer sun provides an abundance of natural infrared light to make BH4, so all you are doing by sitting in front of your infrared heater is getting the warm, infrared rays that you are so desperately missing during those long, cold winters.
Note that I am just putting this information up for the benefit of others. I found great improvements in my own SAD using this simple infrared therapy, and I really hope that this treatment works well for everyone with SAD.
They are similar in concept to those special \"red light bulbs\" that emit warming infrared, but the ceramic infrared bulbs are (a) much more powerful, and (b) emit a much deeper, more penetrative and effective frequency of infrared that those red light bulbs.
I use 400 to 800 Watts when I do this infrared treatment. My heater has three 400 W ceramic bulbs, and I typically have one or two of these switched on. It does not use much electricity, because you only need to do this for 20 minutes a day. That's going to cost only a few cents, if that.
The white (or cream-colored) ceramic bulbs you see on these heaters are basically a solid piece of ceramic \"stone\" that have electric wires imbedded within them, and the current heats them. But they never get hot enough to glow with visible light, so pretty much all the light is emitted in the deep infrared range.
These are much cheaper, and are found for sale everywhere. They use a quartz glass tube with a filament inside that heats up to produce infrared heat. However, the infrared light output by these quartz infrared heaters, although equally as powerful as the the ceramic types, is again not so deep in frequency, so I am not sure if it will work as well as the ceramic infrared heaters.
The infrared saunas that have become popular use exactly these ceramic infrared heaters, because ceramic infrared heaters emit the right frequency of infrared. Hip Posted 12 years ago
Any heater like the Rhino Junior Infra-red Heater, which has these white ceramic infrared bulbs or plates is fine. These ceramic elements emit wavelengths roughly in the 2 to 10 m range, which looking at the Wikipedia article, actually corresponds to mid-infrared. However, manufacturers seem to refer to these heaters as ceramic far infrared heaters, for some reason. daronj Posted 11 years ago
I've suffered from SAD all my life and bought the Sealey CH2800S far infrared heater after reading this thread, as i saw one selling for a fraction of the normal price on ebay. So it was no big deal for me to buy one to try. If it didn't work then i could sell it again and get my money back or use it as a heater. So i went ahead with the purchase and used it every day for a week and for half an hour each time on my bare back. I had it on half power at a distance of 1 metre away and it was still really hot and made me sweat after a few minutes. Despite this, it did not have much effect on my SAD.
Yes, it did help with a couple of the symptoms of SAD. For example, it helped relieve stress and helped me sleep better. For that i am thankful, but those are two symptoms out of maybe a dozen or more symptoms of SAD. It had very little effect on my mood, which is the main problem with SAD, other than maybe a slight lift in mood thanks to sleeping a bit better the night before.
I went on to buy one of those far infrared portable saunas that i read about after looking into far infrared. I enjoyed the sauna but I'm under no illusion that it did anything for my SAD. mc1965 dz1 Posted 8 years ago
One thing worth mentioning is that I also have some mild bipolar depression. Some researchers think bipolar disorder and SAD may be interelated. Anyway, I noticed that there is a clinical trial on the far infrared treatment of bipolar (see here: ), so presumably some researchers think that far infrared may help bipolar depression.
Ceramic infrared transfers heat through nichrome wires centered in the groves of the ceramic heater face and radiates on to the tool it is heating. Ceramic infrared heaters come in a variety of shapes and sizes depending on the applications along with energy efficient emitters.
This conversion of electrical energy to thermal energy is beneficial to the heater as it raises its efficiency. Electric resistance heating is 100% energy efficient which means that all the incoming electric energy is converted to heat.
When the temperature of the ceramic heating element reaches a specific preset point, the resistance will increase and this will stop the flow of current and the production of heat. Hence ceramic infrared heaters provide the required heat without raising the surrounding temperature unnecessarily.
Nexthermal is the only supplier of Elstein ceramic infrared heaters and emitters in North America. Nexthermal offers energy efficient ceramic infrared heaters that can reduce electrical consumption by up to 25%, leading to significant savings.
Our trough-style elements produce a concentrated output which disperses with distance, making it better suited to emitters positioned further from the target. Hollow style elements produce a uniform output better suited to emitters positioned closer to the target material.
They are also used very effectively in infrared outdoor heaters and infrared saunas. Ceramic elements produced by Ceramicx include ceramic trough elements, ceramic hollow elements, ceramic flat elements, and ceramic infrared bulbs.
Our ceramic radiant heat panels are popular because they are much more efficient than standard heaters. Normally, heaters function by burning fuel to heat the air and then distributing this air throughout the area in question. This process is known as radiative heat transfer.
With ceramic IR heaters, up to 96% of the fossil fuel energy is directly transmitted to the target. This efficiency level means that our customers minimize wasted fuels, preserving valuable resources and cutting down their costs.
Because so little of the energy is wasted, IR heaters have minimal need for air removal, so first-time users do not need to worry about revamping their vent systems. This characteristic also means that IR heaters are quiet, allowing our customers to run them without increasing their ambient noise or annoying their employees.
Additionally, our heaters are customizable. For customers who need to hyperfocus their heat to cook food or manufacture a metal product, we offer concave heaters. For customers who want to heat their buildings or keep their storage areas from getting too cold, we have flat heaters.
Ceramic heaters are popular in industries that require constant low-level heat, including food dehydrating, plaster or plastic mold pre-heating and heating, and sanitary packaging. The automotive, information technology, and medical industries also depend on IR heating to warm their sensitive components carefully and steadily.
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