Heat Therapy

A Quick Look at Thermotherapy

Osteoarthritis is one of the most common conditions affecting humans today. It’s a debilitating disease that is characterized by severe pain. People with osteoarthritis often experience such a severe pain and stiffness in their joints that they are often kept from doing their activities of daily living. Relief for people with osteoarthritis comes in the form of thermotherapy.

What is thermotherapy?

Thermotherapy relies on the use of heat to relieve symptoms of pain, either acute or chronic pain, particularly those that stem from muscle tension and muscle spasm. It alleviates pain by dilating the blood vessels and increasing the blood flow to the affected area, thereby, helping the muscles relax and reduces muscle spasms. Research has also shown that thermotherapy also helps block the body’s pain receptors.

Thermotherapy is used in a variety of health care settings. It is used in hospitals, mainly as a pain reliever. It is also widely used by physical and occupational therapists since their exercises mainly involve a lot of strenuous effort that may cause severe pain. The ways by which heat is administered include warm compresses and hot packs, heating pads, heat creams, ointments, paraffin dips, whirlpool baths, diathermy, and ultrasound therapy. Thermotherapy is usually used in conjunction with other forms of therapy such as cryotherapy.

Thermo Therapy for Pain Relief

Thermotherapy is also widely popular for personal use at home. Most people use it to treat their headaches, backaches, and stomach aches.  Some women also use it to relieve their menstrual cramps or when they have dysmenorrhea. Pain from sprains is also relieved by thermotherapy. People also use thermotherapy to relieve stress and to alleviate the pain from strained and overused muscles. They do so by soaking in a warm bath.

t is also a popular for the relief of aching joints, such as in the case of osteoarthritis. Pain from other forms of arthritis, such as juvenile arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, gout, and reiter’s syndrome are also relieved by thermotherapy.

Thermotherapy does not heal the disease, per se. But it does relieve the pain that accompanies the disease.

The very innovative use for thermotherapy is in treating cancer. Cancer cells are more susceptible to heat than normal cells because they are usually underdeveloped and incomplete. Because of this, thermotherapy can kill some of these cancer cells or at least weaken them and make them more vulnerable to radiation therapy.