hydrotherapy

Using Humidity Awareness to Create a Healthy Office during Cold, Flu and COVID-19 season

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This blog post is written by Marybetts Sinclair, LMT, author of Hydrotherapy for Bodyworkers

The seasonal cycle of respiratory viral diseases has been recognized for thousands of years, as annual epidemics of the common cold and influenza disease hit the human population like clockwork in the winter season. Studies have long shown the effect of temperature and humidity on viruses’ survival and transmission to others.” -Immunologist J. Moriyama

“When someone with COVID-19 coughs inside a room with dry air, virus particles stay in the air and remain on surfaces longer, and go deeper into the body, which increases the risk of contracting a virus and the severity of the infection.” –Engineer David Baird

The viruses that cause colds, flu and COVID-19 will thrive this winter partly because cooler temperatures cause us to be indoors more. As we crank up the heat to warm our offices and homes, the indoor air dries out, affecting your entire respiratory system.  The upper part of your respiratory system, including your throat and nose, is lined with moist membranes that capture dirt, dust, viruses and bacteria before they reach your lungs. Proper humidity levels help these membranes do their job. But if your home or office air is very dry, moisture is drawn from these membranes as well as many other parts of the body, and even the fluid that hydrates your bronchial tubes can quickly evaporate, making it easier for harmful particles to get into the sensitive areas of your lungs. Cilia do not work as well in dry conditions either, making it more difficult for them to pass virus and debris out of the lungs.

Signs you are breathing too much dry air include a scratchy sore throat that lasts for days, cracked lips, fingertips or heels, bloody noses, itching or flaking skin, chapped lips, even a feeling of tightness around joints. If you or one of your clients is contagious with a flu, cold, or COVID, even before that person even knows they are sick, dry air may help transmit it to the other person.

How to keep the room air at a healthy humidity.

Since too-dry air encourages infection and further illness and slows patient recovery, humidity is carefully controlled in hospitals. Humidity is typically monitored in schools as well, since too-dry air has long been identified as one of the leading causes of student and teacher illnesses.  Many hospitals and schools use steam-based systems with central boilers that can boil water like using a giant tea kettle and circulate this water into ventilation systems. Akiko Iwaski, PHD, an immunobiologist who researches how humidity is related to the spread of infections, recommends inhaling very moist air in the winter, using long hot showers or baths, steam baths or local steam inhalations. (Iwasaki, 2019).  Tell your clients about the benefits of healthy levels of humidity as well.

Here are some simple strategies when you are in in your therapy room or office this winter:

STEP ONE: 

Keep track of the moisture in the air with an inexpensive device called a hygrometer. You can buy one at your local hardware store or online. Keep it in your treatment room where you can see it easily. The air in your therapy office, as well as in your home, should sit somewhere between 40 and 50 % humidity. If it’s measuring below 30 percent, you may need to invest in a humidifier. (100% relative humidity means that the air is totally saturated with water vapor, not a good state of affairs)

 STEP TWO: 

Introduce moisture if the air is too dry.

1. Use hydrotherapy treatments in your sessions. Clients love them, especially when it is cold outside! A hot moist pack over a tight lower back to ease tight muscles, warm footbaths to warm the client’s entire body on a cold day, warm towels draped over an aching body part, a body scrub with warm water and an exfoliant, all moisten the air and treat your clients. If you are lucky enough to have hot tubs, warm baths or hot showers, so much the better.

2. Keep houseplants in your waiting room or office and spray them with water from a fine-mist spray bottle. They will like it and release water into the air.

3. Buy a small fountain for your waiting room or treatment room. Many clients find the sound of running water soothing.

4. Buy and use a humidifier. Some buildings have whole-house humidifiers that are mounted on furnaces, while portable ones with water tanks come in various sizes.

5. Tell your clients about the benefits of healthy levels of humidity.

“I feel my tension begin to melt away”: How water treatments increase the effectiveness of bodywork

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Written by MaryBetts Sinclair, author of Hydrotherapy for Bodyworkers: Improving Outcomes with Water Therapies.

           In combination with skilled touch, water treatments are perhaps the very oldest and most revered of all healing modalities. Pain from injuries, issues from damaged muscles and joints, circulation problems, chronic tension, chronic pain and emotional stress have long inspired healers to relieve suffering this way.

From ancient Rome’s great baths to Russian saunas, Indian Ayurvedic steams, Native American sweat lodges, Turkish baths and Japanese hot springs, peoples the world over use and love hydrotherapy and massage together. In Germany, the warm waters of Baden-Baden have been used for over eight thousand years, and in Bath, England, for ten thousand. 2800 years ago, Irish sweat houses made of sod and stone were used for rheumatism.

As a bodywork student or practitioner, you may be wondering what is the advantage of adding water treatments to your skill set. Here’s how it can improve your effectiveness:

*** Like massage, hydrotherapy can relieve discomfort and pain, stimulate the flow of blood and lymph, and make connective tissues more pliable and comfortable to the touch.

***Hydrotherapy is soothing and stress-reducing. The ancients realized the effect depression and stress can have upon a person, and over centuries, chronic depression was called everything from gloom or melancholia to neurasthenia or dysthymia. In ancient Greece, while warriors bathed to reduce fatigue and promote wound healing, warm baths were also ordered to relieve “dejection and low spirits.”  The founder of modern psychiatry, Philippe Pinel, (1745-1826) recommended warm baths to calm “overwrought nerves.”

In the 1800’s, many fashionably wealthy Victorians who suffered from depression spent their lives travelling to spas in hope of a cure, especially those diagnosed with mania, hysteria and other “nervous disorders”. For the first half of the twentieth century, hydrotherapy was a mainstream treatment for mental institutions, complete with bathtubs, steam baths and fomentation stations. Treatments were intended to make mentally ill patients more comfortable and compliant, and thus less likely to be violent. Fomentations were soothing, while hours-long baths calmed restless or agitated patients. But in the late 1940’s, even though the American Medical Association still affirmed the value of spa therapy for “nervous conditions,” the introduction of psychotropic medications put an end to the use of hydrotherapy and massage for sufferers.

So what is it about hydrotherapy that helps release stress and tension?

According to cognitive psychologist John Bargh, physical feelings of warmth are linked early in life to feelings of safety, and we subconsciously associate physical warmth with emotional warmth.  “Especially with animals that breastfeed their infants, the experience of being fed and held and protected goes hand in glove with feelings of warmth and closeness…the positive response to heat is hardwired into our brains.”  This helps to explain the deep enjoyment and relaxation our clients experience when we use any warm treatment before or during a session.

Whole-body heating has antidepressant effects because it activates specific brain areas that are important for the regulation of mood and body temperature and so a steam bath, sauna, or even a warm shower before a session will help the client calm and settle before the bodywork begins.  A simple warming body wrap can be made with blankets and the client’s head, neck and feet massaged while the wrap is in place. Partial-body treatments have that soothing effect as well. For example, a warm moist pack over the spine, a paraffin dip for arthritic hands, warm compresses over the face for TMD, a heat lamp or heating pad over a painful knee, and many other local heat treatments can help clients feel safe and relaxed and get the most out of their sessions. When clients arrive for sessions chilled, tense or uptight, a warm treatment is a great help and also a treat for them.

Because hydrotherapy is so beloved, new treatments are being invented all the time, such as flotation therapy for chronic pain, Watsu for relaxation, water exercise baths for tiny hospitalized premies, and special hyperthermia treatments for depression. With such a popular modality, likely more new water treatments will be brought forward as time goes on.

For a deeper dive into hydrotherapy and water therapies, click here to learn more about Hydrotherapy for Bodyworkers by MaryBetts Sinclair.

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