To cure any disease, people are ready to try any means - from patented expensive drugs to alternative medicine and conspiracies. What to say about thermal procedures, in particular, about the bath, which has long been tried by many generations and is accessible and popular for many.
The healing heat of steam rooms, hot baths, hot-water bottles, compresses, mustard plaster, etc., have long occupied one of the first places among the tools used for self-treatment.
But, alas, such manipulations are not as harmless as they seem. In many cases, such actions instead of relief bring deterioration, and provoke increased progression of the disease.
So, it is necessary to understand in which case heat can be beneficial, and when it is simply dangerous.
Benefit
It is warmly indispensable when it is necessary to relax - under its action blood vessels dilate, sweating is activated and metabolic processes are stimulated.
A warm bath, taken after a hard day, will perfectly help with tired muscles, and during arthrosis, heat will relieve pain in aching joints due to the rush of blood to them and stimulate the nourishment of cartilage tissues.
If you suffer from renal colic, will help as a sedentary bath, and dry heat.
If you catch a cold, a visit to the bath will quickly help to get rid of this trouble, but (be careful here) only in the first stage of the disease, say, a severe runny nose.
If the disease has progressed and has passed, for example, in bronchitis or pneumonia has developed, the steam room is strictly prohibited, it will only be worse.
Harm
First of all, heat exposure is contraindicated for any inflammations. For example, you can not warm up the aching joints, if there is redness and swelling around them - this means that there is an inflammatory process.
When there is a violation of blood circulation, there are skin diseases, vessels are not in order, injuries and bruises are present, you should not use heat procedures (blood, flowing to the bruises, will only worsen the matter).
Increased caution should observe pregnant women. Sometimes it's enough to just hover your legs (a simple and seemingly harmless action) to get a miscarriage.
Hot foot baths are harmful for people suffering from varicose veins and atherosclerosis of the legs - the vessels simply do not withstand the increased load. You can not be treated with heat and at elevated temperatures.
With cystitis, the bath will also have to be abandoned - her visit will only aggravate the inflammatory process.
When heat is the enemy
So, let's try to understand a little more in detail, under what diseases warming up can be dangerous.
When the nose is blocked or the throat is sore, it seems natural that the heat will be a blessing. Moreover, folk methods - breathing over a potato, putting a boiled egg to a sore spot, putting a warming compress, etc., have been used by many people a long time ago.
But there are some nuances here. For example, if you have not just a stuffy nose, but there is sinusitis or purulent sinusitis (inflammation of the nasal sinuses), if you have not caught a cold, but have sore angina, then any thermal effect very often leads to complications.
For example, by heating the nose, ear inflammation can be earned, and by putting an ordinary vodka compress on the throat - to get flux. All organs are interconnected and the impact on the diseased area immediately finds a response elsewhere.
Stones
A lot of people consider heat treatments, almost a panacea for problems with the liver and gall bladder. This is because the heat will really bring relief when warming up, but there is an important point: there should be no stones in the gall bladder.
Warming up the bladder with stones can lead to their movement and blockage of the bile ducts, which in turn will lead to surgery, and whether there are stones or not, you can only find out with the help of ultrasound.
Stomach
With abdominal pains, heat is beneficial for colic and gastritis, but again, there may be bad effects if abdominal pain is caused by appendicitis or gastritis.
By the way, if a woman is treated with thermal procedures on critical days, it only increases the bleeding.
Conclusion: before you do self-healing with the use of heat, you need to consult a doctor in order not to cause even more harm to yourself. Only a specialist can determine the feasibility of thermal procedures.
