Sauna and Salt: How Innovative Spa Therapies Can Benefit Your Health

Sauna and Salt:

How Innovative Spa Therapies Can Benefit Your Health

BY TRACY WRIGHT

Sometimes a spa day is all you need for a day of relaxation, both physically and mentally. But some therapies actually can benefit other aspects of health.

Two popular therapies include visiting specialty rooms that may have health benefits by breathing in either heated or salted air. This includes the more traditional sauna rooms and the newer salt rooms.

Sauna rooms work by emitting heat—in temperatures ranging between 150 degrees to 195 degrees Fahrenheit— that penetrates the skin and works to relax muscles. A 2015 study published in JAMA Internal Medicine reported that regular visits to a sauna may be associated with lower death This is also anti-inflammatory rates from cardiovascular disease which makes salt therapy and stroke. Indeed, experts at great for people suffering with Harvard Health say that saunas allergies, asthma, COPD, cystic can lower blood pressure and fibrosis, sinus infections, etc. The widen blood vessels. particles are also so tiny they aid Sauna rooms may not be for eczema, acne, etc.,” said Megan everyone. Check with your Forcey, owner of Relax Salt doctor if you are planning on Rooms in Gainesville. using a sauna room especially if you have high blood pressure, Relax Salt Room features a salt heart problems, diabetes, room for adults with 17,000 are pregnant or may become pounds of imported Himalayan pregnant. If sauna rooms are salt on the walls and floor. Guests given the okay, people should visit for 45-minute sessions still be careful with how they use where they circulate the same sauna therapy. amount of salt in the air in 45 Harvard Health warns to stay being at the beach for 72 hours only for 10-15 minutes, cool straight breathing in the beach down gradually while ingesting air. A children’s salt room helps at least two cool glasses of water kids with breathing or skin issue. a day, and never visit a sauna These 30-minute sessions feature after alcohol use or while taking a room with beach toys they can medicine that play with in may prevent the salt. perspiration or produce SALT THERAPY Forcey overheating. CAN BE GREAT FOR does warn On the other PEOPLE SUFFERING WITH that people understand hand, salt ALLERGIES, ASTHMA, it’s not an rooms are a COPD, CYSTIC FIBROSIS instant fix. “relatively” new therapy & SINUS INFECTIONS “Just like to U.S. medication consumers and exercise, as they our bodies have begun to pop up in more are not just fixed by doing salt communities recently. In fact, therapy just one time. If a guest salt therapy is not new at all. has on going issues like severe The American Lung Association allergies or asthma, it may take reports that a 1943 Polish several sessions to get to a point physician observed that salt mine where they only need it weekly workers did not experience the or monthly,” Forcey said. respiratory problems or incidence of lung disease like coal miners. The American Lung Association Salt has been used in health beneficial by “pushing fine salt therapies for many years—in particles through the air that are scrubs, solutions and baths. inhaled, which fall on the airway The advent of halotherapy, salt linings and draw water into the rooms, began in Europe and has airway, thinning the mucus and spread worldwide. A salt room is making it easier to [break up], where a generator releases 99.9% thus making people feel better.” pharmaceutical grade sodium with skin issues like psoriasis, minutes that someone would get agrees that salt therapy can be chloride into the atmosphere in Just like with sauna therapy, the tiny microns. American Lung Association does recommend checking with your “Guests breathe in this salt which doctor before visiting a salt room then aids in breaking up mucus to make sure this therapy is right in the air ways and sinus cavities. for you.