ABSTRACT
Purpose<br>Half body bathing is popular among young women as well as elderly people. As a matter of fact, it is reported that half body bathing has a smaller burden than whole-body bathing from the point of physical influence. To clarify the relation between bathing habitude and health maintenance, that is, as an approach to general understanding the physiological effects by repeating bathing stimuli, the physiological changes by continuing half body bathing were studied.<br>Methods<br>Half body bathing was repeated for 4 weeks in healthy female subjects (N=10, age: 30.1±4.8, height: 160.4±6.1cm, weight: 55.6±7.0kg, body mass index: 20.9±1.6kg/m<sup>2</sup>, mean±SD).<br>Bathing was performed for 30 minutes and 3times a week, with a level of epigastrium without immersing arms. Changes of blood flow and energy expenditure were measured during bathing at 0W and 4W.<br>Results and Discussion<br>By continuing bathing, blood flow increased more rapidly and higher during bathing, in addition, resting energy expenditure increased by 200kcal/day with a significant difference.<br>From these findings, it is assumed that repeated half-body bathing enhances the increase of blood flow through repeating thermal stimuli, which leads to elevated basal metabolism.
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: Nowadays half body bathing (H-bath) became popular with increasing interests of health and well-being. H-bath is expected to be beneficial and safe as well as conventional whole body bathing (W-bath). However, there has been no formal report on the safety and effectiveness of H-bath. Therefore, this study tried to evaluate and compare the cardiovascular response during H-bath and W-bath in patients with or without cardiovascular disease. METHOD: 17 subjects with at least one cardiovascular risk factor and 15 subjects without any cardiovascular risk factor took H-bath while 22 healthy control group without any cardiovascular risk factor took W-bath. Changes of skin and oral temperature as well as hemodynamic responses (systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, heart rate) were measured. RESULTS: Increasing of systolic blood pressure and heart rate in H-bath was statistically lowered compared to W-bath as time goes by in bathing (p<0.05). There were no significant difference in patients with and without cardiovascular disease. CONCLUSION: Heart rate, temperature, systolic blood pressure showed a more gradual increase during H-bath than during W-bath. We propose that H-bath could be a more safe and compliant method of cardiac rehabilitation in patients with cardiovascular disease.