Posts Tagged ‘hot’

Sauna and Steam Baths – what are different health benefits?

The use of a steam room or sauna is a health practice with numerous health benefits. Saunas and the steam rooms are the rooms designed for the treatments with the use of heated air, which is of a temperature that varies between 800 and 1000 degrees of Celsius.

Difference between a sauna and a steam room?

Sauna air is heated by hot, porous rocks that emit a long-lasting heat. Because the humidity in a sauna is low, saunas are usually made of softwoods. In a steam room, the water vapor carries the heat. The wall construction is typically acrylic, tile, marble, or other stone. Steam rooms are much cooler than saunas although they often feel warmer.

Steam Bath Benefits

A steam room is an enclosed room which is made warm and humid by use of a heater and steam.
- they have high moisture content.
- the condensed moisture relieves pressure in the sinuses and lungs, which helps to counteract conditions such as asthma and allergies.
- steam baths or rooms give us relief from muscle soreness, relief from stiff joints, immune system enhancement, lymph detoxification, blood circulation improvement and sinus congestion relief.
- people with respiratory ailments often prefer the benefits of the steam room to those of the sauna.
- steam helps in the enhancing the speed and intensity of the metabolism of our body, in turn leading to weight loss.

Sauna Benefits

A sauna is a low humidity chamber that uses hot rocks (or even infrared rays) to create a high, dry heat.
- cleaning and detoxifying your skin.
- increases blood circulation.
- improves immunity system.
- sweating in sauna helps eliminate bacteria and viruses from inside your body.
- heart pumps harder which is an aerobic workout in itself.
- the heat also helps in stimulating production of white blood cells, exactly what your body needs to fight off illnesses.
- sauna bath has been proven to help in weight loss.

NOTE : One must be careful, since the excessive exposure to the hot air may cause some severe burns. Because of that, it is very advisable to take a lot of water, both, from the inside (by drinks) and from the outside.

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Relaxation Exercises : Progressive Relaxation

Progressive relaxation will help to relax the entire body. It will help you to create a mental image of this relaxed state that can be recreated instantly whenever it is needed.
This exercise can be done while lying in bed, face up and arms at your sides.
- Make fists with both hands. Clench your fingers although not so tightly as to be uncomfortable. Your wrists should feel tight and even in the forearms. Hold this tension for few seconds and then relax. You will feel heaviness and limp in your hands.
- Like in the previous example, make your fists tensed again, such that the muscles start quivering. Now relax. This should make your hands feel more warm and heavy, and this would extend to your lower arms.
- Now concentrate on your upper arms. Focus on your biceps, making them tense, and your hands should remain relaxed and heavy. Quivering will start, and then relax again. Now do this again, tense, hold and then relax.
- Now that you have a hang of this, this process of tensing, hold, relaxing should be done for as many muscle groups as possible. Once you are done with your arms, do the same for stomach, buttocks, thighs, calves, feet, chest, shoulders, neck, jaw and eyes.
- Once you have started doing this a couple of times, one of the prime advantages you will learn from this is being able to get relaxed. Without doing much of these relaxing, you will be able to easily distinguish between muscles that are tensed or relaxed, and be able to focus on the tensed muscles.

Helpful Hints for avoiding problems…

Prevention is better than cure. People get careless when their back is not hurting and they start doing all the things that they should not do to avoid back ache.
Precautions that you should take are :
- Your neck is best ruined when you hold the phone between your head and shoulders to avoid using your hands. Use a mouthpiece or else get a speaker phone to avoid this situation.
- People who say that in order to lift something, always bend your knees and crouch down to pick up something from floor level are not wrong. You should avoid leaning over from the waist to grab it. It creates a stress on the lower vertebrae.
- Driving for a longer time and in a wrong posture can create bad back ache. Take frequent breaks to get out and stretch. Keep your knees elevated and for that keep your seat as far forward. Keep doing neck exercises and shoulder lifts while you drive.
- Do not continue sitting in the same posture for longer periods. Take breaks to exercise and stretch your neck and upper back. Place a stool to elevate your knees and feel comfortable. You will feel comfortable if the lower part of your buttocks or lower back are pushed against the back of the chair.
- If the body is not prepared for active sports, then you should avoid playing active sports over the weekend. If you are planning to play a cricket match over the weekend with a gang of friends, spend a few extra minutes with the routines for the whole week preceding the get-together.
- Always turn to either of your side with knees close to the edge of bed to get up instead of keeping the legs flat on the bed, and straining the muscles of your lower back.