Bath at a cold: good and bad

How do we usually start to treat a cold? We go to the bath? No, we drink as much liquid as possible - hot tea with lemon and honey, decoction of raspberry leaves and lime-colored - to properly sweat. So maybe, considering the last factor, it is necessary to begin treatment of a cold in a bath?

The development of acute respiratory diseases (ARI or ARVI), which in everyday life is called a cold, is provoked by a variety of viruses that enter our body - the mucous membranes of the upper respiratory tract. By binding to the receptors of the cells of the mucosal epithelium, the viruses penetrate into their cytoplasm, where they begin to multiply. Reaction to this invasion, initiated by immunocompetent cells of the body, leads to all those symptoms that we struggle with, including drinking  colds, hovering legs, putting mustard plasters, digging in your nose, etc.

Can I go to the bath for a cold?

Doctors say that you can, but not all and not always. Some therapists have questions: does the bath help with colds, and is the sauna useful for colds? - Answer positively. Others believe that to bathe in a bath with a cold or flu means to expose your body to unjustified risk. And the necessary hygiene procedures (in the sense, washing) should be done at home, for example, under a shower ...

The main reason for the use of the bath in the treatment of colds - but only at the very first stage of their development - is considered to be a factor in increasing sweating: with then out of the body come out viral toxins. Sweat is 99% water and contains very little salt, protein, carbohydrates, lactic acid and a byproduct of protein metabolism - urea. Intensive perspiration - the release of liquid through the skin during sweating - helps the body at the cellular level to be cleansed of metabolic waste and toxins.

But the main function of body detoxification is performed by the liver, whose macrophages (Kupffer cells) filter and destroy spent blood cells, bacterial and viral toxins trapped in the bloodstream. And sweat glands in the skin, according to dermatologists, are not designed to release toxins, and the skin only helps the kidneys in their work.

Sweating is a means of thermoregulation, since the evaporation of sweat from the surface of the skin gives a cooling effect. We can not control the process of sweat secretion: it is a physiological reaction controlled by the hypothalamus of the brain where thermosensitive neurons are located and regulated by the sympathetic nervous system through the cholinergic neurons with which the eccrine sweat glands of the skin are innervated.

What can be useful for bathing with a cold?

As you know, it is not necessary to bring down the temperature that jumped to + 38 ° C with the help of antipyretics, because with increasing temperature the body begins to produce intensively protective proteins of the cytokine class - interferons that inhibit viral infections and stimulate the entire immune system.

If the cold has not yet led to hyperthermia, and the temperature readings do not exceed + 37 ° C, when there are no obvious symptoms of malaise, then the bath with cold can become a heat stress for the body (during bath procedures the body temperature rises to 38-39 ° C) . Thanks to this, the metabolism is increased and blood circulation is accelerated with an increase in the volume of blood plasma and an increase in its inflow to the heart and muscles.

But most importantly, an artificial increase in temperature activates the immune system, "including" the mechanism of fighting viruses. And the inhalation of moist heated air - a kind of inhalation in a bath with a cold - causes the expansion of the blood vessels of the mucous membranes and promotes the flow of blood to the tissues, and, consequently, an increase in the concentration of protective cells (T- and B- leukocytes, lymphokines, macrophages) reproduction of viruses.

When is a bath with a cold contraindicated?

Absolute contraindications to the inevitably increase the body burden of visiting the bath for a cold include:

• body temperature above + 37 ° C (febrile state);
• a state of general weakness;
• headache;
• organic and inflammatory pathologies of the heart;
• aneurysms;
• atherosclerosis;
• arterial hypertension;
• thyrotoxicosis and any dysfunction of the thyroid gland;
• anemia;
• pulmonary tuberculosis;
• oncological diseases.

It should be borne in mind that the body of each person is individual with respect to reactions to the same stimuli. Therefore it is not surprising that the feedback on the effect of visiting a bath with a beginning cold is also different. Many are depressed by the fact that after the bath covers weakness, there are complaints of a sharp deterioration of the condition - palpitations.

So, you can go to the bath after a cold, and with the illness cope with the help of other  folk remedies for a cold.