Hot Tubs, Hydrotherapy and Sebastian Kneipp
Posted on June 29, 2009 - Filed Under Health, Health & Beauty, Home & Garden
Sebastian Kneipp was born in Bavaria in 1821. He came from a poor family, and followed for a brief time in his father’s footsteps becoming a weaver. On his days away from work he studied books, very much desiring to one day become a priest. He entered the monastic study with the help of a priest in his neighborhood, and studied for five years until he was struck with tuberculosis. He had been interested in the practices of hydrotherapy and began to experiment some of what he had learned on himself. In the winter time he would take hot baths a few times a week in the Danube River, then run home in the cold weather.
He began to feel the benefits of what is now known as a contrast type of bathing, the effects of going from hot to cold in a rapid manner that serves to open up the blood vessels, then constrict them in a manner that forces the healing fresh blood through the veins and arteries at a quickened pulse. His health improved enough over the year to allow him to return to school. While in school he continued to study water therapy, and evolved a manner that was much less drastic than the practices of the day.
He became a priest in 1880, and he began to practice on the poor population of his parish. People from other villages soon heard of the way he was able to treat the diseases of his own parish, and began to travel to his town to be treated by him. Soon, the wealthy were taking advantage of his knowledge as well. Throughout Germany his fame spread. He published a book, “My Water Cure”, and once the book was distributed his fame and reputation spread throughout all of Europe. Not only was Kneipp a proponent of cool water treatment and hot spa soaks in tubs such as those that can be purchased through choosehottubsdirect.com, he studied diet, and the negative effects of caffeine. His ideas were widely practiced and eventually made their way to the United States. His book and his papers have been translated into many different languages and his discoveries and philosophies are practice to this day, by all those who are health minded.
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