Currently the Pacific Northwest is experiencing a record setting heat wave…if you’re here, you know it! And for those that don’t live here, know that the vast majority of people in this area are incredibly UNDER-prepared for a heat wave of this measure. We all know how important it is to maintain adequate hydration (especially in a heat wave), and that is truly an article all its own. But today I’d like to discuss a different way that water is so crucial to our well being.
The notion of using water for treating a variety of medical conditions is not a new one. In fact, hydrotherapy (or Balneotherapy as it is sometimes called) dates back to Ancient Rome, Greece, and even Egypt.
More recently, Father Sebastian Kneipp and the naturopath Vincent Priessneitz rediscovered the healing properties of water, and began to utilize them and develop them into many of the hydrotherapy techniques used today.
The act of using water on our skin (whether by submerging in a tub or pool, or spraying it on our bodies with a hose or shower) allows for many different physiological changes. To break it down, you can use different temperatures of water to effect different changes in the body.
So this weekend, for example, with the blistering heat, we can utilize cold water to cool the body down. Conversely, during the colder winter months, a nice hot bath can help to keep us comfortable.
When we think about what our bodies do in different temperatures, we can use those as temperatures of water to target different bodily processes that we want to affect.
Let’s say energy is our target goal, because who doesn’t need more energy to get everything done in the day? When we are warm, but more stationary/sedentary, we get dilation of the blood vessels, with not a lot of blood circulation. This usually leads to a feeling of fatigue and drowsiness, even brain fog. We all know how cozy and “nappy” we feel when we are warm, so logically we can conclude that we need to look for a cold application of water to snap us out of that fog and wake us right up!
So when these feelings of fatigue and brain fog arrive, we need to encourage more blood flow and circulation. So a quick way to do that is to use cold water to induce constriction of the blood vessels and pump out that stagnant blood.
Something as simple as submerging your forearms in a bucket of cool water is usually enough to encourage more blood flow throughout the body. We don’t need to keep them under the water all that long, anywhere from 15-30 seconds is enough to trigger the vasoconstriction and get the blood pumping again.
So the next time you start feeling drowsy in the middle of the day, and that 2pm slump starts to hit you hard, before you reach for another cup of coffee, go submerge (or run) your forearms in cold water for 15-30 seconds and see if that doesn’t give you just enough of an energy boost to clear the brain fog and help you get through the rest of your day!
Stay tuned for more easy and at-home hydrotherapy tips!