Infrared Heating Pad vs Regular Heating Pad
Key Takeaways:
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Infrared heating pads penetrate much deeper than regular electric heating pads.
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Standard electric heating pads may not even reach the targeted muscle or joint.
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Most infrared heating pads are much safer than traditional electric heating pads.
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Far infrared heating pads allow for deep relief throughout the effected areas.
Heat therapy has been a popular form of recovery for many years. The differences you will find between the newer technologies of infrared is based on depth of heating and overall comfort. A Traditional heating pad heats the surface of the skin, causing only improved blood flow for an extremely short depth. Infrared heat penetrates deep below the skins surface, allowing circulation and blood flow to muscles and joints throughout the body.
How Deep Do Regular Heating Pads Heat?
A regular heating pad works through convection or direct contact to the body in order to to increase blood flow and blood circulation to areas that need it. It has been shown that regular electric heating pads only penetrate about .25 inches below the skin's surface. This means for most all people standard heating pads will not even target muscles and joints. If you have tried traditional heat therapy in the past and didn't experience much relief with joint pain, muscle tension, muscle pain, pinched nerves, then this is likely the reason why.
How Deep Do Infrared Heating Pads Heat?
Far infrared heating pads are truly revolutionary in heat therapy. They have shown to penetrate roughly 2.4 inches below the skins surface. This means that you will get direct relief of muscle tension, muscle pain, joint pain, etc. Since far infrared heating pads are able to penetrate heat far below the skins surface, they facilitate blood flow and blood circulation to the areas around the heating pad. This means that muscle tension will decrease, nutrients will be driven directly to muscles to help recover or fix muscle injury.
Can You Burn Yourself With Regular Heating Pads?
Accidentally burning yourself has become quite an issue with standard heating pads. Since these work through direct skin contact, they need to be very hot to facilitate any sort of recovery or blood flow. This can be very dangerous in the scenario where you may fall asleep or simply feel that it needs to be extremely hot for it to be effective.
Since far infrared heating pads directly heat the body, they don't need to be nearly as hot to reap all of the health benefits that they have to offer. You could use a far infrared heating pad at temperatures of even 80 degrees Fahrenheit and still get benefits because of the deep in which the far infrared light travels.
Far Infrared Heating Pads Are More Adjustable
With high quality far infrared heating pads, they are fully adjustable to your liking. Our far infrared heating pad in specific, is able to adjust from 77 degrees to 176 degrees Fahrenheit. This means that anyone can leverage the benefits of heat therapy due to the full adjustability of the product. Oftentimes with a regular electric heating pad, you may find only about three settings. This can put you in a position to where you choose a temperature that may be too hot, or too cold for your liking. Infrared heating pads are much more adjustable.
Heating Pads and EMF
Oftentimes EMF is brought into conversation when looking into buying a far infrared heating pad. EMF is extremely important in your safety and high levels could wreak havoc on your health. What many people fail to realize is that oftentimes regular electric heating pads you'd find in a store have extreme levels of EMF that could certainly be damaging long term especially when used for issues such as neck pain that are close to the brain.
Our heating pads have been tested to be below 2mG overall EMF. We take pride in this and assure your safety is never sacrificed. We personally have purchased off-the-shelf regular electric heating pads and found some to output levels as high as 150mG! The CDC tends to recommend anything below 3mG to be safe for prolonged use and 10mG to be safe for short term use. In that, far infrared heating pad pros relate to safety, unless EMF protection is not considered within the product.
What Does Heat Therapy Do For You?
If you're someone struggling with chronic pain, there's a chance alleviating some muscle tensions around the effected areas could help relieve pain. Through infrared heat, it is clear that you can achieve deep penetration into the body, allowing for it to heal. This can help with tons of symptoms such as:
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Stiff joints
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Stiff Muscles
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Chronic back pain
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Muscle spasms
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Poor blood circulation
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Even skin issues
Treatment of these symptoms can truly help you live the life you want to. It is important to use the most effective technologies available to make better use of your time. There truly is no evidence to conclude that infrared heating pads have any adverse effects in comparison to regular electric heating pads. One consideration should be cost, but in retrospect, if you're paying for standard electric heating pads to help with muscle pain, joint pain or nerve pain it becomes a waste of money simply because the heat penetration will not be able to hit those areas appropriately.
Does Infrared Heat Work on Pinched Nerves?
In the same regard of deep tissue massage, generally the path to fixing pinched nerves involved a deep release of muscle tension around the effected areas. This is what far infrared heating pads could do for you. Oftentimes impingements or pinched nerves can arise from issues such as muscle spasms. These are generated through built up tension and injury. In order to fix the issue you need to attack the source of it. Driving heat via a far infrared heating pad penetrates deeper than regular electric heating pads and can free tensions around areas of pinched nerves.
Does Infrared Heat Work on Cramps?
Menstrual cramps often hurt to extreme degrees when the muscles in the womb contract very heavily. Using far infrared heat therapy can help with the pain to a much greater extent than a regular electric heating pad because it allows for heat to reach the muscles in the womb causing the pain. Alleviating tensions in this area can provide quick relief when menstrual cramps are occurring. Consider implementing a far infrared heating pad into your routine when life happens.
How Should You Perform Heat Therapy?
In regards to infrared heat, it directly heats the body, opposed to a surface level of heat so it is quite easy to drive heat down to the joints and muscles. It is generally recommended to use far infrared heat therapy for at least 20 minutes in the effected area. This will allow for the area to fully relax and alleviate built up tension or soreness. This process can certainly become a part of your daily routine weather you have an injury, or are simply trying to recover from your workouts quicker. Overall, when using infrared heat therapy, use it as often as you can and aim for about 20 minutes each session.
When to Use Heat Therapy Instead of Cold Therapy
Cold therapy's purpose is to reduce inflammation in a given area. Heat therapy will help promote healing and should be used after inflammation is decreased. Using both of these therapies in combination will unlock many health benefits. For the most part, if you have an acute injury such as a broken ankle or tendon tear, cold therapy through ice packs or other forms, may be the best idea. This is to reduce the inflammation in that area allowing for the healing process to begin. Once inflammation is decreased, daily implementation of an infrared heating pad would help speed up the recovery process, driving nutrients and increasing blood flow.