What Is Heat Therapy?
Heat therapy has been around pretty much since heat has existed. Hippocrates was one of the first physicians to use heat therapy, and that was around 400B.C. Now, heat therapy is enjoying a comeback as an excellent way to reduce the severity of chronic pain. Heat therapy is actually a pretty simple concept. Any treatment that uses heat to help soothe pain, relax muscles, or ease stress can be classified as a form of heat therapy. Heat therapy is very popular because it can be done by pretty much anyone and for very little cost. If you have a bathtub or a shower, or even a hot facecloth, you can perform your very own heat therapy treatment. Recently, more complex forms of heat therapy, such as ultrasound and paraffin waxing, have come into the spotlight, and they are now being used in pain clinics, hospitals, and spas across North America and Europe. How Heat Helps Though it is usually a very simple form of treatment, heat therapy is actually quite ingenious in the way that it relieves
Heat therapy is a procedure that uses temperature in order to help alleviate pain and promote a cure to many common aches and pains. It can come in a variety of different methods, including using dry heat therapy, moist heat therapy, and infrared heat therapy. This type of therapy can be used in different situations and is one of the more common home remedies tried. Many have questions as to when therapy with heat and therapy using cold temperatures should be tried. In many cases, this may depend on the individual and what that individual seems to respond best to. However, there are some general rules of thumb to live by. Those include using heat therapy for chronic pain, not acute pain. Chronic pain is that which is persistent. It may come and go, but it is usually consistently the same when it is present, though it may be present in varying degrees. Acute pain is one-time pain that is often associated with an injury at the approximate time the injury takes place. It may only lasts a
All heat therapies generally have the same benefits: they open the body and relax muscles, help to rid your system of impurities and toxins and they help improve circulation and cardiovascular health. The main differences really lie in the experience. How you decide which to do is based on what is available and your personal preference.
