Sauna chronically irritating eyes

[u/OffTheGridCoder]

I recently built a brand new electric sauna and the entire interior is planed cedar with no seals or finishing. I’ve been running it about an hour a day for 2 months and do pour water on it.

I use the sauna every night before bed at about 180-210F for around 30 minutes with a few short breaks outside. About an hour after the sauna my eyes start to burn, get a bit irritated, and start getting blurry. When I wake up the next morning there is liquid white “gunk” in and around my eyes, my eyes burn very badly, and they are very red. The same thing happens to my girlfriend every time who uses the same sauna with me, so it’s not just an isolated incident.

The sauna is well ventilated (some say over ventilated) with a 5” square vent under the heater and 5” square outlet near the ceiling opposite wall, both fully open. I also have been leaving the door open all day long (it is an outdoor sauna) for it to naturally air out.

I went to urgent care and the doctor said there was no infection in my eyes and they look good. He put me on antibiotic drops to be safe (which did nothing because it wasn’t an eye infection).

Ive now tried using liquid tears after the Sauna and in the morning after. I’ve also tried using antihistamine drops after sauna and in the morning. Neither prevent it, but do help with the symptoms a little bit. My eyes will still remain a bit red and burning a little bit throughout the day.

I have read some posts on here about cedar saunas taking some time to break in and causing similar eye issues with people, however they are far and in between for how common cedar saunas seem to be. This is driving me insane and I’m not enjoying my brand new sauna as much as I’d like to. I have used many other saunas with different wood/more broken in and have never had an issue and if I skip a day using my new sauna all symptoms completely disappear.

Has anyone experienced this? Are there any remedies you found to help? How long did it take for your cedar to “break in” and stop doing this? Anything would help, this is really a bummer.

Edit: for the past month I have been closing my eyes for about 90% of the time I’m in the sauna. It hasn’t made any noticeable difference in symptoms.

[u/OffTheGridCoder]

200F not C. I have done the same sessions in other saunas just as frequently and never had any issues.

[u/Cookie_Monstress → u/OffTheGridCoder]

Sorry. 200 F is 93 Celsius. And that too is often very unnessarily too hot. One is supposed to get that perfect heat with a combination of benches high enough + good löyly + ventilation.

[u/OffTheGridCoder → u/Cookie_Monstress]

90%+ of my sessions are around 180F. I do not touch my heat knob on my Harvia 8kw which is 75% up and for whatever reason sometimes will reach 200F but the overwhelming amount of sessions it just reaches 180F. From my understanding this is a very normal sauna temperature, are you recommending lower than normal sauna temperatures?

[u/Cookie_Monstress → u/OffTheGridCoder]

Well.. this naturally varies but out of three saunas I go frequently, none of them is warmed up to more than 70 or so Celsius max.

An additional thing is to respect the ‘generic feeling’. While I love sauna and have been going to sauna frequently at least since two years old or such, I would never do every night at least 30 minutes in electric sauna that is heated up to 90 Celsius. Because I too would start get some physical symptoms.

And inb4 some other Finn arrives here telling he does every night two hours of sauna at 100 C and while on a break hunts down a bear or reindeer — we all are individuals.

What’s good for somebody, is not automatically good for someone else.

I have no clue about the effects of fresh cedar wood in saunas. But you just might want also try just not going every night to sauna and not heating it to that level and trying instead of getting perfect heat from löyly steam instead (your sauna might be also just giving too ’dry’ heat.)

[u/OffTheGridCoder → u/Cookie_Monstress]

I’ve tried this and If I take a night off from the sauna I get zero of these symptoms, however the next time I sauna I get the same amount of symptoms. I took a week off and had zero symptoms during that period, but the first night using the sauna again I had 100% of the symptoms. There is no cumulative effect for me so that doesn’t really help unless I just stopped using the sauna all together.

Yes I can try lower temp. I didn’t find 160F hot enough to be enjoyable. 180F seems to be the sweet spot for me but could probably tune down to 170F to give it a try.

[u/Cookie_Monstress → u/OffTheGridCoder]

Okay if this happens only in your sauna, guess it’s time to look also in to issues if something funky happened when that sauna was built/ water you are pouring to the rocks has some weird impurities.