Salt lamps. The Positive Effects of Negative Ions

Have you ever felt tired and uncomfortable inside a big office building? Do you remember feeling relaxed and energized standing near the ocean or by a waterfall? There’s a scientific reason for how you felt those days and it has nothing to do with work waiting to be done or the promise of a nice vacation.

The air all around you is made up of molecules, all of which have an electrical charge on them. Depending on how many electrons circle a molecule, everything in this world has either a positive charge or a negative charge. Inside buildings or inside closed vehicles, the molecules often have a positive charge. And unfortunately, most air-borne allergens and pollutants also have a positive charge. Out in nature, especially by water, the air molecules have a negative charge, which makes them nice to breathe and to be around.

Salt Lamps, A Natural Negative Ionizer

Negative ions are good for you! They bring oxygen to your brain, boost your immune system, and lift your mood. Studies show they even help lessen depression and cure Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). For your indoor air environment, you can get negative ions by buying a natural air ionizer, not a man made machine—a less expensive and very beautiful alternative, a salt lamp from The Salt Lamps Store.

Tested and researched to produce negative ions, salt lamps are well known in Europe, are being used in hospitals and centers, and most people will feel the difference in the air quality right away.

Salt Crystal Lamps are mined from salt caves deep below the Earth's surface at the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains, this is Salt in its purest, most Natural form.

After it is removed from the mines in large pieces, we have the rough rocks of natural salt Crystal hand shaped, etched and carved to our specifications in order to highlight the multitude of colors found in Nature…from Oranges, Red Purple, Pink and Peach and white. Each lamp is unique with no no two lamps ever be exactly the same.

History of Negative Ions

Since the early 1950s scientists have suspected that ions play an important role in how the body functions and, consequently, in how we feel. Research has shown that an abundance of negative ions in the air we breathe is highly beneficial, while a lack of ions or a higher ratio of positive to negative can cause physical harm. The role played by ions in everyday life has become intensely topical among researchers in the medical profession. (Read The Ion Effect by Fred Soyka for an excellent discussion on the use of negative ions in medicine.)

An ion is simply a molecule with an electric charge, either positive or negative. Ionization, or ion formation, occurs when enough energy acts on a molecule to cause it to discharge an electron. Because electrons carry a negative charge, the molecule stripped of an electron has a greater positive charge and becomes a positive ion. The lost electron scoots around loose until it attaches itself to another molecule which causes the new molecule to become negatively charged--a negative ion.

Radioactive substances in the earth's crust and cosmic rays cause most ionization. But fire, crashing water (like water falls and surf), and plants during photosynthesis can produce negative ions as well. Europeans take ion depletions seriously and simple negative ion generators have been installed in many businesses, banks, hospitals, and passenger cars and even airliner cockpits. Furthermore, in this country, Europe and the Soviet Union, negative ion therapy has been used in treatments to help burn victims heal faster, to cure respiratory diseases, to rid the body of general infections, and even to check the spread of some cancers.

Conversely, scientists have found that if the air is charged with too few negative ions and too many positives, we become anxious, fatigued and tense. This condition is known as "pos-ion poisoning," and often occurs as the result of weather disturbances, central air conditioning, smog, and driving too long within the confines of an automobile. Pos-ion poisoning has, in fact, been linked to heart attacks, aggravated asthma, migraine headaches, insomnia, rheumatism, arthritis, hay fever, and most allergies.

The effect of negative ions on sweat bathing was discovered when researchers were trying to account for the tremendous popularity of sauna wood burning stoves over electric stoves. Subjective reasons, such as the fragrance of burned wood, did not fully explain why Finns felt so refreshed after time in a wood heated sauna and quite dulled, from certain electrically heated saunas. Tests showed that the practice of splashing water on super-heated rocks produced an abundance of negative ions. Many electric stoves, it turned out, were not getting the rocks hot enough and the glowing metal heating coils were spurting more positive ions in the air.

Researchers learned that if the rocks were properly heated in electric stoves, the positive ions, being larger and less mobile, would ground out on the hot stones. The buying habits of the Finns, perhaps the most sophisticated of sweat bathers, has forced many Finnish electric stove companies to pay particular attention to their sauna stove design. Researchers also cited poor ventilation in modern saunas as a cause of positive ion buildup; but, for a discussion of the proper climatic conditions for a sauna please refer to the appendix material on construction and use. A more detailed study regarding ions and saunas can be found in Sauna Studies, published by the Sauna Society of Finland, 1977.