Enter the World of Water Cure

After having understood some basic properties of water, we are ready to take one step further to explore the world of “Water Cure” - hydrotherapy. Water is available right in your own home just by a twist of the tap. Hence, it is logical that hydrotherapy is easily available to everyone at home, economical, convenient, safe, and easy, we only need to know how to apply it, in some instances, simply change our daily routine habits will achieve excellent results in maintaining our health almost with no extra effort.

Water is an ideal medium between our body and external energy sources – thermal, sound, light and mechanical, this is because water is extremely malleable, it can be made to contact almost every part of the surface of body as well as inside, and let these energies interact directly with the body start from the skin. You can imagine the difference walking outside in a cold country with temperature of 5 ºC and soak in water with the same temperature. With this we open the first topic of hydrotherapy – reflex effects.

A reflex is a reaction in response to a stimulus that is applied to the skin of the body but connected in a deeper structure through the mediation of the central nervous system (CNS). These are programmed reflex responses to adapt to the CNS’s perception of the intent of the stimulus, for example to increase/decrease glandular activity, alter blood flow into the structure, and so on. These reflex patterns can be used therapeutically to stimulate the body surface and produce desired effects in deeper structures, since treating the skin in a reflex area can address the related organ. Often the section of skin that overlies an organ is the reflex area for that organ.

Below is an illustration to show how reflex effect takes place when stimulation is applied on the skin surface.

Stimulation applied to the reflex zone on the abdomen surface can promote increased digestive activity.

You may be familiar with foot reflexology and briefly understand how it works if you have not tried one, not many people are aware that our body also have reflex effects on the circulation of distant areas or organs, and water is the ideal medium to introduce stimulations to those parts. Let us look at some reflex connections:

• The skin of feet and hands: circulation to the head, chest and pelvic regions (especially the bladder and reproductive organs, including prostate in men).
• The skin of the lower breast bone: kidneys.
• The skin of the face: blood vessels of the head.
• The skin at the base of the neck: mucous membranes of the nose (you may stop nose- bleed by placing cold towel on the back of the neck).
• The skin overlying spinal regions: internal organs (upper spine – lungs and heart; middle spine – stomach and liver; lower back – bowels and abdominal organs).
• The skin of the thighs, lower back and buttocks: genitor-urinary organs.
• The skin of the lower inner thighs: prostate and uterus.

These reflex areas have various uses in hydrotherapy, and because of water property, we can effectively make use of temperature and water pressure (massage therapy) to act as stimuli to achieve the reflex effects for various internal parts of our body.

These are the few methods that we can apply at home: - Affusions – use stream of water with or without pressure direct on various parts of the body (knee, leg, full body, arm, face, chest, neck, lumber, etc. It can be cold, warm and alternate temperature. - Showers – cold shower, hot shower, neutral shower, alternate hot and cold shower, Swiss shower and Vichy shower require special installations and not usually found at home. - Water treading – can even be done when seated. With bare legs, “stork walk” by lifting leg out of water with each step. - Bath – we shall look into this form of hydrotherapy in the next article, this is the most effective, therapeutic and comfortable form of home hydrotherapy and it is commonly known as “spa”. Water immersion with alter human physiological responses and other effects, this is an interesting area whereby we should explore in depth and details.

Hope to see you in the next article in Yebber.com.

Wish you good health.

- Gerald Yeh