HYDROTHERAPY

HYDROTHERAPY

Hydrotherapy [Hydropathy] involves the use of water for pain relief and treating illness.

Hydrotherapy is not to be confused with water cure torture – a form of torture in which a person is forced to drink large quantities of water.

Approaches and terminology vary and overlap significantly. One such overlap pertains to spas.

According to the International SPA Association (ISPA), hydrotherapy is the generic term for water therapies using jets, underwater massage and mineral baths (e.g. Balneotherapy, Iodine-Grine therapy, Kneipp treatments, Swiss shower, and thalassotherapy).

It also can mean a whirlpool bath, hot Roman bath, hot tub, Jacuzzi, cold plunge and mineral bath.

These treatments use physical water properties, such as temperature and pressure, for therapeutic purposes, to stimulate blood circulation and treat the symptoms of certain diseases.

THE USE OF HEAT

Hydrotherapy, especially as promoted during the height of its Victorian revival, has often been associated with the use of cold water, as evidenced by many titles from that era. However, not all therapists limited their practice of hydrotherapy to cold water, even during the height of this popular revival.

The specific use of heat was however often associated with the Turkish bath. This was introduced by David Urquhart into England on his return from the East, and ardently adopted by Richard Barter.

The Turkish bath became a public institution, and, with the morning tub and the general practice of water drinking, is the most noteworthy of the many contributions by hydropathy to public health.

Until around 1840, hydropathy was not common in the United States although it was popular in Europe in the 19th century. But in "Nature's Cures", Michael Castleman wrote that hundreds of 'water-cures' were located on the countryside during the American Civil War.

HYDROTHERAPEUTIC MECHANISMS & MODERN MEDICINE

Modern medicine's successes, particularly with drug therapy, removed or replaced many water-related therapies during the mid-20th century.

Nowadays, water therapy may be restricted to use in physical therapy, and as a cleansing agent. However, it is also used as a medium for delivery of heat and cold to the body, which has long been the basis for its application.

Hydrotherapy involves a range of methods and techniques, many of which use water as a medium to facilitate thermoregulatory reactions for therapeutic benefit.

While the physiological mechanisms were initially poorly understood, the therapeutic benefits have long been recognized, even if the reason for the therapeutic benefit was in dispute.

Example: In November 1881, the British Medical Journal noted that hydropathy was a specific instance, or "particular case", of general principles of thermodynamics. That is, "the application of heat and cold in general", as it applies to physiology, mediated by hydropathy.

In 1883, another writer stated "Not, be it observed, that hydropathy is a water treatment after all, but that water is the medium for the application of heat and cold to the body". Thus, the "active agents in the treatment (are) heat and cold", of which water is little more than the vehicle, and not the only one".

With improved knowledge of physiological mechanisms, practitioners wrote specifically of the use of hot and cold applications to produce "profound reflex effects", including vasodilatation and vasoconstriction.

These cause changes in blood flow and associated metabolic functions, via physiological mechanisms, including those of thermoregulation, that are these days fairly well understood, and which underpin the contemporary use of hydrotherapy.

Although standard anatomy and physiology textbooks make only passing reference, if any, to hydrotherapy, some of the best descriptions of the underlying physiology upon which hydrotherapy relies, are to be found in such textbooks.

Example: One of the best succinct descriptions of blood redistribution (which is fundamental to the above-mentioned reflex reaction), quoted below, is from a standard textbook.

“...by constricting or dilating arterioles in specific areas of the body, such as skeletal muscles, the skin, and the abdominal region, it is possible not only to regulate the blood pressure but also to alter the distribution of blood in various parts of the body”.

EXAMPLES OF HYDROTHERAPY APPLICATIONS

Before World War II, various forms of hydrotherapy were used to treat alcoholism, and it is used today in alternative medicine. For instance, the basic text of the Alcoholics Anonymous fellowship, Alcoholics Anonymous, reports that A.A. co-founder Bill Wilson was treated by hydrotherapy for his alcoholism in the early 1930s.

The use of water to treat rheumatic diseases has a long history. It continues to be used as an adjunct to therapy, including in nursing, where its use is now long established.

It continues to be widely used for burn treatment, although shower-based hydrotherapy techniques have been increasingly used in preference to full-immersion methods, partly for the ease of cleaning the equipment and reducing infections due to contamination.

HYDROTHERAPEUTIC MODALITIES

The appliances and arrangements by means of which heat and cold are brought to bear are

Ø  Packings

§  Hot and cold

§  General and local

§  Sweating and cooling

§  Hot air and steam baths

Ø  General baths

§  Hot water and cold water Baths

Ø  Sitz (Sitting)

§  Spinal, Head and Foot Baths

Ø  Bandages (or compresses)

§  Wet and dry

Ø  Fomentations

SUBMERSIVE HYDROTHERAPY

Hydrotherapy which involves submerging all or part of the body in water can involve several types of equipment:

§  Full Body Immersion Tanks ("Hubbard Tank")

Whirling water movement, provided by mechanical pumps, has been used in water tanks since at least the 1940s. Similar technologies have been marketed for recreational use under the terms "hot tub" or "spa".