Thermo-therapy in your shower

Image by hegtor via Flickr

A hot sauna visit followed by a cold winter dip is effective thermo-therapy.

Using alternating temperatures can create amazing results to your health and well-being. It can help with aches and pains, strengthen the heart and circulation, support the lymphatic and immune systems, as well as increase your energy levels and ability to deal with stress. In short, daily thermo-therapy is good for you.

Not everybody has access to hot saunas and cold snow to do thermo-therapy. Luckily, there are several things that anyone can do at home, provided they have hot and cold water.

The easiest thing to do is an alternating shower. It’s easy and quick and can without problems be implemented after the normal morning shower routines.

Alternating shower is good for the heart and overall relief of pain.

• Take a long hot shower and make sure you feel over heated
• Turn on the cold water, as cold as you can stand it
• Pour cold water from hip to ankle on the outside of the right leg, and go back up on the inside of the leg
• Repeat on the left leg
• Pour cold water from shoulder to wrist on outside of the right arm, and go back up on the inside of the arm
• Repeat on the left arm
• Pour cold water from hips to neck on the front side of the body and down the back from neck to hips
• Pour cold water over face and head
• Repeat this entire procedure three times, overheating and application of cold 

When done, step out and dry off. If you did it correctly you’ll be sweating.

If this seems a bit too much to start on, just start with the legs and slowly as you get more and more used to doing alternating showers, you can add more steps. Just doing the cold application on the feet and lower legs can make a big difference. Just keep in mind that you don’t overheat the areas where you will not be pouring cold water.

How hot and how cold the water has to be fully depends on you. Make sure you go to the extremes, but not so much that it’s intolerable and feels really bad.

More self-treatment suggestions next week.

Related articles:
The effects of hot and cold, Why cold stones, Geothermal Deep Stone therapy, Benefits of Stone Massage by Mary Nelson