What Is Hydrotherapy?

Hydrotherapy is a technique in which water is used to treat a disease. Hydrothermal therapy also utilizes temperature effects such as saunas, hot baths and wraps.

Let’s take a look at how it started. Hydrotherapy and hydrothermal therapy are conventional methods that many cultures have used to treat injury and disease. Even the Chinese, Japanese and ancient Romans have used these forms of treatment. Water therapy also has been in use for hundreds of years. In ancient Greece, therapeutic baths were common. In the Native American and the Chinese traditional healing systems also, water has been an essential ingredient.

Father Sebastian Kneipp, a Bavarian monk, was responsible for re-popularizing the use of water for therapeutic purposes in the 19th century. Currently there are many different applications for hydrotherapy including douches, saunas, packs, baths and wraps.

Here’s how it works. The healing and recuperative properties of hydrotherapy stem from its thermal and/or mechanical effects. It uses the reactions of the body to cold and hot stimuli, to extended heat application, to the pressure that water exerts and to the sensation that it results in. Impulses that are felt at the skin are carried by the nerves deeper inside the body and these stimulate the immune system, invigorate digestion and circulation, lessen sensitivity to pain, influence stress hormone production and encourage the flow of blood.

As a rule heat helps to soothe and quiet the body. It slows down the activity that is carried out by the internal organs. By contrast, cold invigorates and stimulates and increases internal activity. If there is any tension in the muscles or anxiety caused by stress, a hot bath or shower is what you need to calm you down. However if you  are feeling stressed out and tired, what you need to do is take a warm bath or shower and follow that with a quick, short cold shower, which will help in stimulating your mind as well as your body.

Your body experiences a sort of weightlessness when you are submerged in a pool, whirlpool or a bath. It gets relief from the otherwise constant pull that it feels from gravity. Also, water has a hydrostatic effect. You feel like you are getting a massage as your body is gently kneaded by the water. When water is in motion, the touch receptors that are present in the skin get stimulated and this boosts circulation of blood and tight muscles are relax.

When should this line of treatment be resorted to? Hydrothermal therapy and hydrotherapy are mainly used for toning up the body, for stimulating the immune system and for circulation and digestion and also for pain relief.

Water also appears to possess special powers for rejuvenating our body and providing stress relief. It calms the heart, lungs, endocrine system and stomach by stimulation of the nerve reflexes that are present on the spinal cord. Its efficacy has been proved. Proof has been acquired through numerous controlled studies as well as case reports and other observational studies.

Of the 40 participants at University of Minnesota, about 85% said they would give whirlpool baths a preference over a still bath. They claim that the whirlpool was the only one that was effective in lessening their reaction to stress, but the whirlpool as well as still baths effectively reduced anxiety.