Spa days

Every Wednesday I go to the thermal spa. Yes, it is a luxury and yes I will miss it greatly when I return to London and the price to visit a spa quadruples.  And so it is for this reason I set about researching the health benefits of this little luxury so I can justify forking out a little extra cash for it on our return.

Well it turns out the spa is more than just a relaxing place to chill out for an hour or so before I hightail it back home to what is very likely to be a hungry little boy waiting to eat. Not a surprising fact – why else would the Romans have built an entire city around a hot spring and called it Bath? I’ve found it is actually an investment in your health, as much as if not more than some other exercise options. Here are some examples of how, which I found while starting to build my case for further visits to the spa.

The sauna: Sitting (or lounging to be accurate) in these little heated rooms after you’ve splashed some essential oil over yourself does more than just relax you. It causes your body temperature to increase and this has a few helpful benefits. One is that toxins and waste are expelled from your body through sweat and apparently not only from your skin but also from the metabolism of your organs. Sounds scary but basically means you get a deep cleanse of your whole body. Also when you’re in there your body is tricked into kind of thinking it has a little fever because your skin temperature has risen and it reacts to this by boosting your immune system which can help you avoid the coughs and colds of winter – ahem, Londoners…this is our perfect excuse!

The water stuff: So my spa has two pools, one is a jacuzzi and the other is a larger pool with a series of pressurized water jets for the various parts of your body. Essentially you are having an underwater massage. There are countless health benefits from massage itself but one of the biggies is stress reduction. Now I can’t claim to be under a large amount of stress here on the island but we are building a case for when I return to work in London remember. Warm water massage releases endorphins and increases blood circulation which help our bodies deal with pain, stress and emotional issues – hence the stress relief but this also helps with headaches and general aches and pains of which I can assure you I have many! Carrying around a seven kilo little guy all day means you crawl into bed each night with a certain dull ache in your back. And that’s supposedly another benefit of the water – better sleep!

I’m also told that the pressure from the water jets can do wonders for cellulite but I think I’ll need to commit to the spa every week for a few years before I can be the judge of that particular benefit!