Hot Tubs and Hydrotherapy
If you’re installing a hot tub, most likely it’s because you simply want a wonderful place to relax in private or with your family, or because you want a new centerpiece for entertaining guests. However, your hot tub has healing properties as well, not only in relieving muscle and joint pains but in treating illness.
Hydrotherapy encompasses the use of underwater massage and pressure, both of which can be achieved through the jets on your hot tub. Mineral baths also have therapeutic properties. Hot water and water pressure, streaming through jets, generally stimulate blood circulation, and in achieving this can treat a range of aches and pains.
Various forms of hydrotherapy have been in use since the times of ancient Egypt, Greece, and then Rome. Egyptian royalty would bathe in water cleansed with essential oils and flowers; Romans provided communal baths for their citizens. Japanese and Koreans have relied on the healing properties of natural hot springs for at least the past two thousand years. The medical benefits of these early practices are difficult to pinpoint, though the persistent use of mineral baths and hot springs in ancient cultures around the globe would indicate that they provided at least some benefit to the people of those cultures.
In the early 1820s, Vincent Priessnitz, of Silesia in what was then the Austrian Empire, revived the practice of hydrotherapy. His work was enthusiastically received, and was expanded upon by Sebastian Kneipp and others in Austria and Germany throughout the 1800s. This knowledge was published and disseminated across Europe, and hydrotherapy centers sprang up across the continent and in North America.
This mid-1800s revival of hydrotherapy, however, focused on the use of cold water. The specific use of hot water was at the time associated with the Turkish bath; the practice of hot-water hydrotherapy was introduced in England by David Urquhart, who had traveled extensively in the Turkish Ottoman Empire and elsewhere in the East. The Turkish bath then became a public institution in England and elsewhere
Spa tourism soon developed as a major industry, as millions traveled to spas in the Alps and elsewhere to cure their various ailments. Mark Twain toured Europe in the 1890s and found that a bath of spring water at Aix-les-Bains helped soothe his rheumatism. He later wrote that the bathing was so enjoyable that, if he hadn’t already had an ailment that needed treatment, he would have “borrowed” a disease as a pretext for undergoing the treatment.
Your hot tub is most relevant as a means of hydrotherapy in that it allows for full submersion of your body in a whirling water movement. Full-body immersion tanks are routinely used by athletes recovering from injuries, or simply recovering from the exertion of an athletic competition. However, you don’t need to be an athlete to suffer from an ankle sprain or torn ligament. Such injuries can take considerable time to heal, and physical therapy is often recommended as a means of rebuilding muscles and ligaments. However, many physical therapists recommend hydrotherapy as a secondary means of healing. Sometimes, alternate soakings in cold water and hot water can most effectively increase blood circulation. And warm water increases buoyancy; especially if you have an ankle injury, taking weight off the ankle helps it heal up more quickly. Warm water will relieve tense muscles that surround an injury, and will relieve pain.
While water increases buoyancy, it also puts pressure on your wounded area, helping reduce swelling. In fact, water provides just the right amount of resistance to bodily movement, to allow us to exercise while submerged. We feel resistance and can gradually rebuild muscle tissue through underwater movements, but without the high impact of gym workouts, which can often exacerbate injuries. The resistance of water increases as our movements through water quicken; through such “graded resistance,” we can carefully calibrate our recovery. Various studies show that we can increase our range of motion, and experience decreased pain levels, when we engage in therapeutic exercise while submerged.
Likewise, submersion in warm water can increase joint mobility and reduce joint stiffness. Soaking in a hot tub is especially beneficial to people who suffer from arthritis or lower back pain. One can recover a normal range of motion more quickly. And soaking in a hot tub releases endorphins, which are protein molecules manufactured by cells in the nervous system and other parts of the body. Endorphins work with sedative receptors that are known to relieve common pain.
There are many good reasons to install a hot tub in your home; the fact that it can help relieve not only everyday aches and pains but also sprained ankles and twisted joints is just one more good reason.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
