Shape House in California, which charges $45 for a single sesh, claims that sweating for an hour can make your skin glow. (Not only that, according to their website, an hour-long sweat fest can also burn you anywhere from 800 to 1,600 cals.)
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So…can sweating actually make you look more radiant? It turns out it can—along as you play it safe.
“Sweating is a natural way to detoxify the skin and one of the key mechanisms of detoxification for the whole body,” says Taz Bhatia M.D., a board-certified physician and founder and medical director of the nationally recognized Atlanta Center for Holistic and Integrative Medicine. When you sweat, you’re ridding your skin of pollutants, dirt, and impurities that could be dulling your complexion or causing clogged pores (which can lead to breakouts). Nice.
Still, you need to make sure you drinking plenty of H2O to recoup. “Sweating is only an issue if you are not hydrating your body and skin to make up for the loss of electrolytes and water,” says Bhatia.
But what about sweating in excess, a la the A-listers? Bhatia says it won’t wreck your skin or bod—as long as you can build up heat tolerance. “I would start in incremental steps (10 to 15 minutes at a time) to build-up endurance,” she says. “Heat exhaustion is a concern here, so you can try any of these, but hydrate and go slow.”
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Bhatia also advises using Epsom salt to help your body and skin recover faster from the high heat. Her go-to: Dr. Teal’s Pre Post Workout Pure Epsom Salt Soaking Solution ($5, amazon.com). “It combines the power of pure Epsom salt, active levels of cooling menthol and the healing properties of lemongrass for faster recovery,” she says.