What is Hydrotherapy?
Hydrotherapy, is a part of alternative medicine that involves the use of water for pain relief and treatment. Body’s weight reduces when immersed inside water and load of exercise reduces on body parts such as foot, knee, hips and back. It’s extremely beneficial specially for people finding it difficult to do exercise over ground and get tired quickly.
How does Hydrotherapy Work?
The healing properties of hydrotherapy are based on the thermal and mechanical effects of the water.
- Warm water relaxes muscles and relieves pain
- The experience of weightlessness relieves the body of much of the stress of gravity.
- The hydrostatic effect of the water pressure increases blood circulation.
- The movement of the water has a massage effect.
- The buoyancy effect of the water assists movement or can provide resistance to movement (depending on what is required).
In addition because water has heavier resistance than air, by doing exercise in the pool can make the same exercise more challenging. This can lead your muscle to work more power fully and burn more energy amount at the same time. Aerobic exercises in pool get your heart to work hard and increase your health and wellbeing and also increases your strength, endurance and flexibility.
Who can benefit from Hydrotherapy?
Acute & Chronic Pain: The hydrotherapy pool is the perfect environment for treating:-
- arthritis, rheumatism, poor circulation,
- sports injuries
- back and neck injuries
- shoulder and upper limb injuries
- hip and lower limb injuries
- balance
- neurological conditions
Strengthening exercises can be performed in a low gravity environment. Exercises that would be too painful to perform on land are easily achieved in the water. The exercises strengthen muscles and result in improved mobility on land.
Back & Neck Injuries: Excellent for core muscle strengthening after injuries to the back or neck.
Post –Op Rehab: Gait re-education can be started earlier in orthopaedic patients due to the buoyancy of the pool providing a ‘low gravity’ stress free environment. This is especially useful in the case of Total Hip and Knee Replacements, Total Knee Replacements and other fractures, especially involving the ankle.
Do you need any special equipment?
Our therapist brings with them the equipment you need to use for your exercises such as: wrist or ankle weights , foam dumbbells, hand paddles or resistance gloves, kickboard and buoyant belt.
Just remember to bring with you A towel and your swimwear.
We do our hydrotherapy sessions in different pools close to you. Some of the pools we use are as following:
- Guildford heated pool (Guildford)
- Ryde Aquatic Centre (Ryde)
- Ripples Hydrotherapy Centre (St Marys)
- Fairfield Leisure Centre (Fairfield)
- Blacktown Leisure centre (Stanhope Gardens)
Before you start exercises in water, your physiotherapist will check and make sure that water exercises are safe for you. Here is couple of points to remember:
- Water shoes are useful to prevent slipping inside the water
- Water level should be between your waist and your chest level
- Slow movement makes less resistance than fast movement
- Make sure you stay hydrated and drink enough water.
Am I able to do hydrotherapy? Common concerns and contraindications.
One of the concern for you might be not being able to swim. We usually use pool in the depth between 1.2-1.4 m that water shouldn’t go higher than chest level. We usually start from shallow depth for clients to gain their confidence and then go into deeper water. Therapist is going to be always next to you, in case you loose your balance and need some help.
Most of the pools have lifter for patients to get in to the pool and get out. All you need to do is , sit on a chair designed for this purpose and usually lifeguards operate that and move you inside the water, if use of ladder or steps are hard for you. Therapist gets in water before client to help them to come off the chair.
If you have any of the followings or if you are not sure if hydrotherapy is right for you, please ask your physiotherapist :
- Open or infected wounds
- Skin infection
- Cold/flu or infectious disease eg gastro
- Incontinence
- Uncontrolled heart condition
- Heart disease
- Uncontrolled high blood pressure
- Kidney disease
- Uncontrolled epilepsy
- Recent chemotherapy
- Recent DVT or PE
Related words :
Hydrotherapy in Merrylands – Physiotherapist in Merrylands – Physiotherapist in Parramatta
Physio in Merrylands – Physio in Parramatta – Physio in Auburn – Laser therapy in Merrylands – Physio in Granville – Physiotherapist in Auburn – Physiotherapist in Granville – Shockwave therapy in Merrylands – NDIS physio in Merrylands