Improve Your Health With Water-Sun-Mud Therapy

By Rajeev Sharma

Nature has provided mankind with a gamut of fruits, vegetables, dairy products and other sources to maintain a healthy lifestyle. These natural sources of food are rich in vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates and other essential nutrients. Moreover, they have numerous unexplored healing powers. Through this series, we have made a sincere attempt to unfold the various benefits of these foods. You will find a cure for every big or small disease in this invaluable series, and will discover what treasure nature holds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diamond Books
• Release date: Dec 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9788128822681

Book preview

1

HYDROTHERAPY: USES AND EFFECTS

Hydrotherapy is a branch of healing system that deals mainly with the management of diseases, such as headache, constipation, high blood pressure, etc., by using water, either as an external application, taken internally, or both.

Water is used for hydrotherapy because of three main reasons:

It has immense power for absorbing and communicating heat;

Water is a universal solvent. This means that majority of the substances can dissolve in water; and

Water can be easily frozen to a solid state as ice or heated to a gaseous form as vapour.

Uses of water in management of diseases:

Water is used in various forms for maintaining health and management of several diseases. These include:

Temperature: Different temperatures of water are used for different health problems. For example, cold water, warm or neutral water and hot water.

Packs: Water is used as cold packs, hot packs, whole body packs and partial body packs.

Baths: Nature cure treatment normally includes four main types of baths. These include:

Immersion bath, in which the entire body is immersed in water;

Sitz bath, in which only the buttocks or hips are immersed in water or salt solution;

Sweating baths, such as vapour bath or hot air bath;

Medicated baths, such as brine bath, sulphur bath, foam bath, etc.

Douches: Water is also used as jet sprays and douches. Douche is a procedure in which medicine or cleansing agent mixed with warm water is introduced into the vagina under low pressure.

Drinking: Drinking water also plays an important role in the management of health and diseases. Drinking naturally cold water has tonic effect while application of ice cold water on the body is used to reduce fever. Drinking water is like having a bath for the internal organs of the body. It helps in purifying and diluting the blood. As mentioned earlier, it also increases the output of urine by activating the kidneys to remove waste products from the body. Drinking large quantities of water helps the blood to carry the energy-giving and nutritive parts of the digested food to the relevant parts of the body. It also increases the blood and lymph circulation and helps in maintaining normal functions of most glands of the body.

When should you drink more than normal quota?

In addition to the health problems discussed above, it is desirable that you should drink large quantities of water in the following conditions:

Hydrops: Drinking about two to three litres of water at a particular time in the morning and evening is recommended for those who have hydrops. This is a condition in which there is abnormal collection of clear and watery fluid in some parts of the body. Hydrop was earlier called dropsy. Drinking very large quantities of water increase the volume of accumulated fluid also. It is important to remember that in case of dropsy, water is not recommended during the day, irrespective of the food you eat. This is to increase the specific gravity which helps to remove water from the kidneys and skin very rapidly.

To increase volume of blood: You need to drink large quantities of water to increase the blood volume. It is desirable that you drink a maximum of three-fourth to one cup of water at a time as often as possible during the day. This amounts to about one hundred and thirty to one hundred and eighty millilitres of water at a time.

Fever: You need to drink at least one glass of water every hour during fever in order to compensate the water lost from the skin during evaporation. Evaporation promotes loss of heat from the body and therefore; keeps it cool. It also reduces the metabolic rate in the body and therefore; decreases the production of heat and increases the rate of elimination of waste products from the body.

Urinary tract infection: Drinking more water during urinary tract infection increases urine production. It therefore; helps to ‘flush’ out the infection faster.

Rheumatism: This is a general term used for a large number of conditions with inflammation of joints, muscles, lining of the joints, etc., that result in pain, limited movements and degeneration in the structure of the affected muscles and/or joints. Drinking large quantity of water in rheumatism dilutes the blood and therefore; decreases the uric acid level in it. Uric acid is a by-product of the metabolism of the proteins present in the blood. It is excreted in the urine.

The Effects of Cold Water

Cold water can be applied on the skin either directly or as compress (cloth dipped in cold water) or ice. Application of cold water on the skin has tonic and stimulating effects on it. The effects of cold water are in two phases: (a) action, which takes place immediately after