The Health Benefits of Salt Lamps

You may or may not have heard of them yet, I am of course talking about Himalayan salt lamps. If you haven’t, just imagine a chunk of rock salt hollowed out from the middle. Place a bulb in this newly carved opening and voila, light shines through the salt crystal, creating a glowing red orange salt lamp.

The benefits of salt lamps.

However salt lamps are more than just home décor items. They can provide multiple benefits to us if used correctly. So what are these benefits? Good question, firstly we must dispel some myths about salt lamps.

Some articles may claim that salt lamp can help diabetics and be used to prevent cancer or such, we recommend you take such statements with a grain of salt! Although salt lamps have some benefits they are by no means a replacement for conventional medicine. But what can pink salt and salt lamps do for you?

A calming colour profile!

Himalayan salt lamps are pinkish orange in colour because they contain trace amounts of iron oxide, which is basically rust. This gives them a pink/orange lighting profile when they are turned on.

Studies have shown that blue/violet light is disruptive to sleep while red/orange light helps stimulate relaxation and better sleep. Blue light is emitted by most of our hand held electronic devices, laptops and TVs. So introducing a little red light into the home is a great move for improving sleep.

Sleeping well is vital for recovering from injuries or simply performing at your best day to day, so introducing a salt lamp to the home as a night light or for better dim lighting is a great idea.

Improved breathing…

Whenever you are stressed or struggling, one of the first things we are recommended to do is to control our breathing. Deep breaths are a great first step to calm our thoughts and take control of our fight-or-flight response in stressful situations.

Breathing is essential to our health, so breathing difficulties, whether by chronic nasal congestion, or seasonal allergies can be detrimental to our health.

Salt lamps are a great remedy for this because they slowly clean out the air. Salt rooms and caves have been used by patients of lung illnesses for hundreds of years. The first recorded “salt room” was created by Polish Dr. Feliks Buczkowski in 1839 who discovered this effect accidentally.

It’s believed that the mechanism that allows this cleansing due to salt is related to salt’s hygroscopicity (attracting moisture). Salt draws moisture out of the air, and these tiny water droplets carry with them trapped pollen and dust particles.

Although salt lamps won’t have as powerful an effect as a salt cave, combining salt lamps with a pink salt inhaler can work wonders to help those with breathing difficulties, especially those related to air pollution and nasal congestion. And since we don’t have salt caves just around ever corner this makes a great alternative.

The downsides of salt lamps?

Are there any negative effects related to salt lamps? When buying or owning a salt lamp there are indeed a couple of things you need to be aware of.

A lot of pink salt and salt lamps now days are not authentic. With dyed selenite or simply colour salt being sold as pink salt. The easiest way to check your pink salt lamp is authentic is to look for a “made/sourced in Pakistan” mark somewhere on the packaging, as all real salt lamps only come from that same small region of the world.

Integrating Himalayan salt lamps and salt inhalers into your life could be very useful and is worth a try. The best way to know if something is a fit for you or not is to try it out and with the above tips you can’t go wrong!

Eddie Gillani
Pink Salt Enthusiast,
The Salt Lamp Shop

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