Healing Waters: The Rise of Hydrotherapy Pools

from aquamagazine.com

Since the late 1990s, HydroWorx, a highly specialized manufacturer of rehabilitative aquatic environments, has developed systems designed to help people heal. Here, writer Angelique H. Caffrey takes a look at the power and importance of this growing trend with an eye on HydroWorx' efforts to make water a primary therapeutic venue in both institutional and private settings.

It's believed human beings first recognized the healing power of aquatic exercise and relaxation sometime prior to the height of the Roman Empire. Yet, ironically in many ways, turning to water as a therapeutic environment is considered something of a new trend in our modern world.

Whether relaxing, recovering, walking or even running underwater, people of all shapes, sizes, ages and abilities can harness the power of water to help themselves physically, psychologically and even socially. As a result, many homeowners and companies are choosing to fit their residences and commercial properties with variable-depth, high-tech, treadmill-and-resistant-jet inclusive private pools whether planning for new construction or renovation.

It's a trend that hasn't gone unnoticed among general contractors, architects and engineers who are increasingly asked by eager homeowners, clinicians, sports figures and facility managers to install pools that can heal the human body and mind.

Arthritis Relief

from poolspaoutdoor.com

The use of warm water therapy for physical ailments has been around since the establishment of the earliest civilizations. However, hydrotherapy, as it is currently referred to, did not make a lasting impression on the United States until the 1930s when it became public knowledge that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been using this method to help alleviate the debilitating symptoms of polio. Roosevelt considered hydrotherapy an imperative part of his rehabilitation therapy for the rest of his life.

Through the years, the introduction of technologically advanced hot tubs and spas further increased interest in warm water therapy. Today, hydrotherapy is a common part of physical therapy for many ailments, especially arthritis.

Sandra Wiggin, a registered nurse, understands pain-but not only because of her profession. Wiggin has osteoarthritis, which has spread throughout her spinal column.