First, they were public baths, then bathhouse, Spa, thermal treatments, and now Spa. Since time immemorial, water has been a symbol of purification and renewal of the body and spirit, a fountain of youth, as evidenced by the fact that water therapy, or thermal cure, is one of the oldest practices performed by the human being.
Over the years, some of these old establishments have disappeared. Still, fortunately, many others have been rehabilitated or built with a new plant, offering in addition to their original treatment services through the properties of their waters, new offers more in line with the times and with the desires of the current clients, in most cases with magnificent hotel facilities and appetizing gastronomic proposals.
Some of the things needed to know about the spa and spa maintenance includes:
- Steam Shower: The steam jet directed to the body’s parts indicated by the doctor causes an immediate dilation of the vessel and favors the transcutaneous passage of the active elements of the thermal water.
- Scottish Shower: A shower of alternating temperature, hot and cold, applied over the entire body. The hot-cold alternation is done two or three times.
- Filiform Shower: Water projected through magnificent holes projected at tremendous pressure.
- Horizontal Shower: A shower receives a patient lying on a stretcher using a device that makes a waterfall along with the same, Vichy.
- Mud therapy: Treatment based on muds.
- Hydromassage: Bath in a bathtub equipped with bubbles and pressure jet circuits.
- Hydrotherapy: Bath with different jets of air and pressurized water lasting approximately 15 minutes. Also, Therapy with tap water to which a series of additives can be added.
- Spa Hydrotherapy: Therapy with mineral-medicinal waters. It can only be administered in Spas or Thermal Centers. It is one of the oldest traditional therapeutic procedures, and its beneficial properties are currently being demonstrated with scientific studies.
- Jacuzzi: Bathtub or swimming pool with hydromassage.
- Sludge: Mud that is formed by mixing earth with mineral-medicinal water.
- Vichy massage: General massage practiced under a shower that is received on a stretcher.
- Sauna: It is a very high-temperature heat bath that produces rapid and abundant sweat, which is taken for hygienic and therapeutic purposes.
- Finnish sauna: Application of dry heat in a room at high temperature (80-100º C) alternating with cold hydrotherapy applications.
- Spa Center: Its name derives from the acronym that means ‘Salus per Aquam.’ They are centers that deal with aesthetics, stress, or obesity. Still, the element that these establishments use for treatments is running tap water or mixed with certain additives, hydrotherapy. The main difference with the spas is that the latter perform and Hydrotherapy, Medical Hydrology.