Health Benefits of Hot Tubs Compel Baby Boomers to Make Water Immersion Therapy a Way of Life

Soaking in a hot tub is a great way to relieve stress, relax, and connect with family and friends under the stars and in the comfort and tranquility of your own backyard. But did you know that soaking in a hot tub also offers documented health benefits?

As people age, maintaining health and overall well being takes center stage. Now, research makes clear that soaking in a hot tub supports that goal. For centuries, people have turned to immersion and exercise in water as a way to heal injuries and illnesses and to promote physical and mental well being.

For more than 30 years, Dr. Bruce E. Becker, medical director at St. Luke's Rehabilitation Institute in Spokane, Wash., and a clinical professor at the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Washington's School of Medicine, has studied the effects of a range of aquatic activities among athletes as well as those recovering from injuries and other physical ailments.

"What many people don't realize is that simply by sitting in water up to your neck, you experience huge benefits," Becker reports in the 2006 publication of WaterShapes. "When immersed in water, for example, the volume of blood in your chest cavity and in your heart dramatically increases. This is due to the hydrostatic pressure on your body and the effects of being in a buoyant state: Your heart's ability to pump blood goes up, while at the same time, your heart rate goes down. Your cardiovascular system becomes far more efficient, and that affects just about every function of the human body."

Becker adds, "The ultimate purpose of the heart as an organ is to pump blood in response to physiologic demand, so its best measure of performance if volume of blood pumped per unit of time," he observes. "Submersion to the neck increases cardiac output by more than 30 percent in a sedentary individual. The implications of that single fact are so broad that medical science has not caught up with them."

Dr. Becker and other researchers report that similarly dramatic benefits of simple immersion extend to the pulmonary, musculoskeletal, renal, and endocrine systems. "There's a great deal of research that remains to be done," he notes "but it's fair to say that the science is in at this point: immersion in water produces a range of effects that are dramatically and uniformly beneficial."

If you've been considering the purchase of a hot tub, now you can add health benefits to the top of your list of reasons to act now. The weather is turning warmer, offering inviting circumstances to enjoy the beauty of your backyard from the comfort of a new hot tub that you and your family can enjoy in good health for many years to come. Now, all you need to decide is which hot tub to purchase and where within your backyard would be the best place to install it to get on your path to feeling better than ever, starting today.