A Case For HOT Baths

Every spa has various variations of the same treatments. There are facials, massages, microdermabrasions. Each place has different treatments, but the same ideas support each one. If you’re like me, you’ve only been to the spa a few times in your life. Not because you don’t like it there, but mostly because you’re broke — very broke.

The last time I went, which was several years ago, mind you, I tried a treatment that was essentially… a very, very, very hot bath.

I laid there, in the soak, my skin burning off, realizing I could have done this for myself at home.

There were a few add-ons, ones I could choose, and I chose lavender and olive oil.

As I lay there, I thought of all of the ways this was something I could do at home. It was literally the hottest bath they could possibly give me, and, to me, someone who was broke, it seemed like a complete waste of time and money.

Now that I look back, it was actually the best type of ‘learn by doing’. I did the treatment, and I learned how to copy it at home. Turn your bath as hot as it can go, climb in as the tub is filling up, add a good olive oil, maybe a few sprigs of lavender, and there you have it: the same type of treatment that I got at the spa.

This is not a ‘don’t go to the spa, you can do it at home’ article. 

There are many treatments you can only do at one of these institutions. You can’t give yourself a good massage, you can’t give yourself a good microdermabrasion, you can’t give yourself a facial, even though you can do many other types of things like that at home, and you can’t give yourself many other treatments you can find there. You can, however, take a cue from them and make cucumber water. Easy water infusions are one of the best gifts of cooking.

Even though this is not a ‘don’t go to the spa, you can do it at home’ article, you can do one thing at home that they do: a super, super hot bath.

Why would you want to this?

Every day, we hold onto fluid. There might be those days where we’re less bloated, but, for the most part, we live our lives filled with lots of water. The better you eat, the less inflammation your body will be hanging onto. The more water you drink, the more the water can flush your system of inflammation. Most foods are inflammatory, for the mere fact that it takes our body a certain amount of energy to break down the nutrition from them, leading to uncomfortable bloating.

One way to get rid of it is to sweat it out. Most of us don’t have a sauna at home. If you do, you’re lucky, and I’m jealous. If you don’t, I’m less jealous. A lot of us take hot showers to help with the inflammation, and if you’re like many people, that hot shower can make you less bloated because of the steam and because of the water, which clings to the fluid cells in your body, allowing you to lose much of the bloating.

But, some people don’t do well with hot showers. Some people become more bloated from them because of how their cells are clinging to the steam and the water.

This is why the hottest baths on Earth can help.

If your body clings to the fluid cells in your body as you’re surrounded by the hottest water you can stand, it’ll help flush out said fluid by clinging to the water in your bathtub.

I know this sounds like magic, not science, but next time you take a hot bath, or a super hot shower, try it out and compare them. See whether the steam from a shower, or the water from a bathtub, helps you better. Sometimes, your shower can work just like a sauna, which helps as long as you don’t mind wasting water.

I don’t.

I love hot showers, and water gets recycled.

If one doesn’t work for you, try the other. That, or you can spend the one to two hundred dollars at a spa, having their soak in their hot bathtub. Whatever suits you, especially if you can add olive oil and lavender to your own tub. Either way, we all love finding ways to make ourselves less bloated. Bloating is uncomfortable, and makes us go, ‘Aw, man!’ when we look in the mirror. As most foods are naturally inflammatory, because digestion and energy, I hope you find either a hot shower or bath to help you.

They both have a spot on my ‘self-care chart’ that I keep in my mind, or write about.