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Joie Risk

Joie Risk

Managing Director of Sunlighten for the UK, Ireland and Europe (EMEA), leading the infrared sauna and light-therapy brand's European expansion.

Sep 2, 2026

27:47
Are you seeing a different response in those populations or even any other populations? Like, do we need to be mindful of someone who's got cardiac conditions in infrared saunas?
28:01
I mean, yes, we obviously use, we have a range of contraindications, mainly around the heat aspect and some people who have complications with the inability to sweat.
28:15
But they are fairly limited contraindications, I would say.
28:18
When it comes to perimenopause, what we know and we have a lot of partners in this space is that it's a highly beneficial tool as part of perimenopause.
28:29
It helps to regulate those hormones.
28:32
It helps to regulate stress.
28:36
And a lot of our clients are women in that perimenopausal stage of their life naturally.

10 MINS LATER

39:00
have.
SammyHOST
2:30
So can you tell us about Sunlighten and also its origins and your role here in the UK?
2:37
Yeah, absolutely.
2:38
So Sunlighten was started over 25 years ago by Aaron and Connie Zak.
2:44
Actually, it came about because, not because they thought, hey, this was a good idea back 25 years ago on its own, but actually Connie's brother had a condition where he suffered from mercury poisoning, actually.
2:59
So he had high levels of chronic fatigue and his dentist said, was quite pioneering back then and advised him to use an infrared sauna, which would help him with this chronic fatigue that he was experiencing.
3:14
Long story short, he went down this path and had an incredible recovery.
3:20
And so Connie and Aaron were working in pharmaceutical at the time, and they decided to actually leave that and start working with Connie's brother, who at that point had started Sunlighten.

11 MINS LATER

SammyHOST
14:32
So how can consumers be confident that infrared saunas are safe? And how do they distinguish between high quality and low quality products in the market?
AndyHOST
21:02
So is there good times? Am I just a bit of an anomaly? But how's infrared helping with sleep too? Yeah.
21:09
Yes.
21:10
So we surveyed our customer base and we had a 70% rate of people coming back and saying the sauna has positively impacted sleep.
21:21
And it's something that we've anecdotally known for years when people report back their aura and their wearable conditions.
21:30
results and it's directly correlated.
21:33
Use the sauna, you have deeper sleep and longer sleep.
21:37
And look, it's a multifaceted kind of reason as to why sauna affects our sleep so significantly.

46 MINS LATER

AndyHOST
67:37
EMFs?

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