Hydrotherapy treatment: Water is a source of life and a source of healing. Practitioners of hydrotherapy ensure that we can purify the body and alleviate various pains through the water. This ancient medicinal practice used across the planet encompasses a range of approaches using water at different temperatures and in different forms, baths, whirlpools, hot or cold packs, saunas, baths steam, and enemas. The addition of herbs and minerals designed to increase the therapeutic effect is common. This is a universally accepted way to reduce inflammation caused by injury and illness, relieve pain, relax the mind and body, tone muscles, and stimulate the immune system.
Hydrotherapy treatment: History
Hydrotherapy is a millennium. Different cultures used the hydromineral baths, hot springs, geysers, and sweat lodges; Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Chinese, Arabs, Turks, American Indians, etc. Hippocrates, a Greek physician who died in 337 B.C. prescribe hydrotherapy to treat rheumatism and especially jaundice. There were public baths in Greece and ancient Rome as in ancient Japan. Today, spas offering hydrotherapy activities for physical and mental fitness. This is a classic approach in sports medicine, physiotherapy, and naturopathy. It is present in many forms in care to oneself: hot and cold packs, humidifiers, misters, and spas.
Hydrotherapy treatment
There are three types of external hydrotherapy: hot water, cold water, and hot and cold alternating with several applications at a time. In hot baths, the body immersed in water at higher than body temperature. assigned a detoxifying effect: elimination of harmful products such as alcohol, drugs, and heavy metals stored in the body. In specific areas: low back and legs, and torso for sciatica for menstrual cramps for example. Icicles are useful in reducing acute inflammation from sprains and pulled muscles.
Hydrotherapy is done by contrast alternate application on the body of hot and cold compresses. used as a complementary therapy for various ailments: infections of the upper respiratory tract, asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, or arthritis. The internal hydrotherapy methods (enemas and colon irrigation) intended to relieve constipation and cleanse the bowel by stimulating elimination.
Hydrotherapy treatment is known to relieve pain
Baths, showers, sauna, etc., Hydrotherapy is a natural method that uses water in different forms – liquid, vapor, ice – and at various temperatures. The therapeutic properties of water, indeed recognized since ancient times, to purify, revitalize and invigorate the body, but also to relieve some pain.
Hydrotherapy treatment benefits
The water has effects on blood flow. These effects vary according to water temperature. The skin actually contains numerous nerve endings that transmit to the brain the signs of heat and cold. The brain then acts as a temperature controller to maintain body temperature at 37°C. The application of cold water on the skin leads to a narrowing of the capillaries. The information is immediately received by the nervous system, which signals the body to compensate for this cooling by immediately sending warm blood toward the skin. The caliber of the vessels increases to pass the blood: the vasodilation.
Conversely, hot water causes dilation of the pores and blood channels: also, more blood flows. To counteract this, the nervous system launch signals to the body so that it reduces the size of the vessels. Less blood reaches the skin surface: the vasoconstriction. This ability of water to change the blood flow is the basis of hydrotherapy. The hydro-therapist adapts the care of your personality, your sensitivity, your general condition, and, if necessary, to the pathology you have. it uses several techniques. Among the most common are the bathrooms, showers, wraps.
The benefits of exercises performed in water
When in the water, through the cancellation of gravity, muscle work reduced and the stress on the joints, minimum. The exercises practiced thus encourage mobility while relieving pain.
Even without performing the movement, dipping promotes deconditioning that allows relaxation. The interest of physical exercise in the pool is scientifically recognized in the field of rehabilitation (sprains, contusions, etc.) One of the indications of the therapy: muscular work and easing gently adapted to the elderly.
Healing through hydrotherapy
The action of the temperature of a bath or shower on the organism confirmed by numerous scientific studies.
If you suffer from rheumatic diseases (osteoarthritis, back pain, neck pain), hydrotherapy can soothe your pain. It also proves effective for relieving muscular aches and spasms, circulatory problems or venous insufficiency (dampers), or to treat the fracture. If you are nervous, overworked, under stress, it can soothe you. In hydrotherapy bath treatments practiced with spring water. Massage jet is especially indicated to fight cellulite.
Sauna and steam bath
Sauna and steam room are two techniques that use steam to provide a feeling of well-being and relaxation, to help combat anxiety and stress, to help eliminate toxins and dead cells. Heat can also relieve osteoarthritis. Inside the sauna cabins, the air is quite dry (between 3 and 20% humidity) and warm (80 to 90 ° C). Hammam, air, much less hot, saturated with moisture. A sauna session lasts about half an hour: you take a hot shower, you pat yourself, then you walk into the cabin to sweat; after each pass in the cabin – three in total – you rinse under a warm water stream and you lie down to rest. The last rest, longer, about twenty minutes.
Hammam, also plans a half hours, approximately, including a skin cleansing and resting for about twenty minutes. The sessions practiced before meals or after digestion, never before bedtime.
Please note, there are many medical contra-indications: venous insufficiency (heavy legs, varicose veins), phlebitis, cardiovascular disease, epilepsy, depression, low blood pressure, kidney stones, inflammatory or muscle diseases (arthritis), fever. In a sauna you should regularly moisten the stones of the brazier, heat source, to moisten the atmosphere. Hammam often has two parts. We start the session with the cooler to accustom the body.
Are the thermal bath and seawater the same? FALSE
If you do a spa, hydrotherapy uses the medicinal properties of spring water; thalassotherapy, she uses seawater. But in both cases, water is the centerpiece of care offered.
Balneotherapy
The spa includes all the treatment and care performed by the bathroom. It is mainly available in the thalassotherapy center or spa but practiced at home. The whirlpool bath is ideal for activating venous circulation. The orientation of the jets creates water currents after the venous circulation, and the anatomical distribution of nozzles practice reflexology skin. The spa, called bubble bath, massage is soothing. indicated if you are prone to edema and congestion, especially in areas affected by cellulite.
Alternating baths can relieve you if you suffer from circulatory disorders venous and peripheral arterial disease. According to the technique of the footbath, you soak the foot for three minutes in a hot bath, and then a minute into a cold bath, three times. Warning, this treatment is not recommended for heart patients.
Hydrotherapy treatment: More Follows
Salts, plants, and other natural substances in additives increase the therapeutic efficacy of warm baths. Epsom salt, for example, makes you sweat, relaxes muscles, and relieves joint pain. Oatmeal soothes itchy rash and soothes sunburn and other skin irritations. Chamomile is also a calming of the skin. Hydrotherapy is a simple, economical, and safe method to relieve the symptoms of a wide range of diseases such
- Digestive disorders and metabolic diseases
- Psychosomatic disorders
- Urinary disorders
- Skin problems
- Diseases of the mucous membranes
- Gynecological problems
- Cardio-artery disease
- Neurological problems
- Rheumatology
- Disorders of child development
- The respiratory problems
Hydrotherapy treatment: The cures proved
Faced with mistrust of the medical system, professionals Hydrotherapy appeal in recent years in many clinical studies. Hydrotherapy is particularly effective in the fight against:
- Obesity, more effective than a simple dietary guidance
- Very good results on knee osteoarthritis, the leading cause of functional disability.
- The anxiety disorders, where the comparative study Stop-Tag, published in 2008 shows 3 times more healing than with conventional care.
- Pain reduction for shoulder tendinitis.
- Promising results through treatments, let recent years by a protocol to help find the physical and mental shape to reintegrate into social and professional life, and reduce the risk of relapse after chemotherapy.
