National Sleep Foundation website, 4/2006
Debra Wood, RN, “Hop in the Hot Tub--It's Good for Your Joints,” EBSCO Publishing; also published on website of Swedish Medical Center, Seattle, WA

Stress relief the West Coast Way- Hot Tubs and Spas:
Your Own Hot Spring Is Good for Your Health

Everyone enjoys the hot tub experience, whether it’s relaxed family time, a romantic date, or a fun party with friends in the crystalline warm water, bubbling with soothing massage jets. But not everyone realizes that hot tubs also offer health benefits to individuals and their families.

Low-Stress, Low-Cost Family Fun
Relaxation and stress reduction are essential to maintain healthy bodies, healthy emotions and healthy relationships. The hot tub (Jacuzzi®) is a perfect environment for the whole family to come together, relax and spend time together. “A refreshing family soak in a bubbling hot tub from Jacuzzi provides a peaceful, playful way to share the day’s events, talk over plans and enjoy jokes and stories,” said Grant Gislason of Vintage Hot Tubs, Victoria, BC.

The hot tub naturally gives kids a physically relaxing break from the TV, the computer, and the video games, while it nurtures family interactions and strengthens family bonds. “It’s a good idea to make it a health-enhancing, pleasurable family routine,” added Grant.

Does the Hot tub Experience Directly Benefit Health?
Stress is known to cause some ailments and worsen others. People tend to seek out the hot tub experience for stress reduction, as well as the pampering massage of water jets. The adjustable pressure of today’s advanced hot tub jets allow for a full range of therapeutic hydro-massage of muscles, joints and pressure points, from a gentle, caressing, stimulating experience to a powerful, deep-tissue hydro-massage muscle relaxation. It helps people sleep more naturally, too: a 15-minute soak in hot water can help a person to fall asleep faster, say sleep experts .

Time-Honoured Healing
The hot tub offers the ideal conditions for hydrotherapy, the time-honored use of water for healing. Immersion in warm water raises body temperature, causing blood vessels to dilate, which relaxes the individual with aches and pains and improves circulation, helping the body heal. The soothing warmth and buoyancy of hot tub immersion loosens joints and makes them easier to move and keep mobile. Heat from the warm water can make joint movement in the person with arthritis much easier, say rheumatologists specializing in the treatment of arthritis.

Hot Tubs Benefit Athletic Injuries
It’s no secret that hot tub hydrotherapy is commonplace among both amateur and professional athletes recovering from sports injuries. Once the acute inflammation has subsided, penetrating, moist heat from a hot tub can reduce muscle spasms, improve joint stiffness and make soft tissue more limber, thus speeding the recovery phase.

Other, beneficial hydrotherapies can easily be part of the hot tub experience.

Reflexology is a state-of-the-art hot tub’s powerful foot jets can target specific pressure points used in reflexology, a massage that relieves nervous tension through the application of finger pressure—especially to the feet, which contain more than 7,000 nerve endings.

Watsu is a form of traditional Japanese Shiatsu finger-pressure massage applied to the chi, the body’s energy channels. Performed by a skilled practitioner in the warm water of a hot tub, Watsu enhances the Shiatsu moves and stretches, yielding feelings of well-being and total relaxation.

Aromatherapy is known to be the healing power of therapeutic aromas and muscle relaxants derived from combined oils of plants. This is intensified using a hot tub that can infuse healing bubbles of aromatic air into the dancing water.

The relaxing warmth, and social fun of the hot tub experience can improve the health of many. Family bonding, improved circulation, better sleep, and fewer symptoms of arthritis and back pain are just a few of the added rewards gained by people who have discovered hot tubs. It’s always a good idea for people with chronic health conditions to check with their doctor.