Detox - A Path to Improved Health and Wellness - continued
Spa Therapy and Detoxification Has a Long History
For thousands of years both Eastern and Western cultures have believed strongly in spa therapies for the removal of toxins from the body and the rejuvenation of health.
By the time of Hippocrates (460-370 BC), bathing was considered beneficial for most diseases. Hippocrates proposed the hypothesis that the cause of all diseases lay in an imbalance of the bodily fluids. To regain the proper balance a change of habits and environment was advised, which included bathing, perspiration, walking, and massages. Influenced by the Greeks, the Romans built their own thermal baths at mineral and thermal springs.
In Rome, with the introduction of aqueducts, the public baths developed into huge and impressive edifices (thermae) with a capacity for thousands of people. During the heyday of the Roman bathing culture, the inhabitants of Rome used 1400 liters of water per person per day, mainly for bathing. The Roman legions, far away from their homeland, built their own baths at mineral and thermal springs in the newly conquered lands. Examples remain today all over Europe.
Spa treatments in both Greece and Rome consisted of application of water to afflicted parts of the body, immersion of the whole body in the water especially for rheumatic and urogenital diseases, and drinking excessive quantities of water.
During the Renaissance, spa therapy was increasingly prescribed under medical direction. The first attempts to analyze the waters for their mineral components were made, although the results were often controversial. It was equally important to recognize the quality of each mineral and its effect on the body, to understand which parts of the body might be influenced by taking the waters. In 1553 an encyclopedic work, De balneis omniae qua extant, was published, containing an overview of ancient and modern literature on the use of medicinal water. In 1571, Bacci published De thermis, in which he taught the art of the baths from Galen and the Aristotelians.
Beginning around 1800 further attempts to analyze the mineral water were made, aiming at improving its use in medicine, and at preparing mixtures of water identical to those mineral waters famous for their curative properties. Many physicians were convinced that for each disease Mother Nature possessed an appropriate medicinal spring, which could be discovered through chemical analysis of the waters. Individual treatments were prescribed, based on the composition and temperature of the water. Also, combinations of treatments were developed consisting of hot and cold baths, herbal baths, mud packs, active physical exercises, massages, and diet.
In the past decades, a large change in the use of mineral water for the treatment of several diseases has taken place in continental Europe. The medical significance of bathing is now acknowledged, especially by many rheumatologists and dermatologists, and this aspect is considered more important for a number of spa resorts than prestige and leisure. Bathing is usually combined with many other treatments, such as physical exercises, hydrotherapy, mud packs and diet.
Ancient Roman Spa at Bath, UK
It is now well documented and understood that high rates of paralysis from lead intoxication (colica pictonum) in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries were the result of the widespread use of lead in household ware, cosmetics, food colorants, wine and salts for medicinal use. Spa treatments at Bath in the UK were known to have very high curative rates for this problem. This is now understood in part to be attributable to diuresis from sitting in warm water with a resulting increase in excretion of sodium, potassium, calcium and also lead. Additionally, the good food, exercise and removal from the source of the lead and large quantities of water rich in calcium and iron contributed to over a 90% cure rate for this form of paralysis from treatments at Bath.
So we see that removal of toxins and heavy metals from the body has a long and well understood history of documented use and success in improving one's general wellness and restoring health.