Steam Shower Health Benefits

If you’ve ever had a steam bath in a luxury spa, you will know just how blissful an experience it is. You might even have started wondering if you should have one outfitted at home.

A steam generator is used to create water vapor at high levels of humidity. The heat and humidity may bring health benefits ranging from aiding stress relief, to body cleansing, to soothing aching muscles or arthritis. Different research and user studies show that the benefits of steam showers are numerous and may aid your bodily health.

Many cultures and traditions have used steam therapy to help improve physical, emotional and cognitive wellbeing. From Native American sweat lodges to Scandinavian lakeside saunas, steam has long been valued and venerated for its cleansing and healing abilities.

In this article you can read about the benefits of a steam shower and see if it’s worth the cost and effort. Here are the core benefits of having a steam shower right in your bathroom.

Physical Health

Good for heart health

Steam showers offer many benefits to physical wellbeing. Steam therapy increases the heart rate naturally as the body responds to the rise in temperature. This gives your cardiovascular system a swift, sustainable workout, ensuring your heart and lungs are working to their optimal capacity.

Increases metabolism

The pick-up in heart rate kicks your metabolism up a gear, meaning that, while it will never replace a sensible diet and exercise plan, a steam shower can be a good addition to a weight-control regime.

Improves respiratory health

According to a study by the Institute of Medical Balneology and Climatology at the University of Munich, steam baths alleviate respiratory conditions like bronchial asthma and bronchitis. Steam therapy works to draw mucus away from the sinuses and lungs, helps improve breathing, and offers a soothing and natural way to effectively relieve blocked sinuses. Steam therapy is proven to provide relief from colds and headaches.

Ideal for post-workout

Pretty much everyone works out at home these days even if it’s just a 10-minute session of crunches and a little spot jogging. Exercise is good for you, but hard on your muscles.

That achey fatigue you feel after a workout? For that you can thank lactic acid, a waste product that gets released from muscle fibers during exertion. Steam therapy draws lactic acid out of the body through the lymph system, so a steam shower will help alleviate the pain that precedes exercising’s gain.

Relieves muscle pain and arthritis

Steam showers also provide relief to people who experience muscle or joint pain whether caused by arthritis or a physically demanding job. As natural and soothing pain relief goes, you can’t beat a steam shower.

Promotes sleep

Studies have shown that steam baths are beneficial for insomniacs and other people with sleeping problems. As the body releases endorphins during steam therapy, stress levels in the body drop thus relaxing you enough to fall off to sleep faster.

Sleep quality is also reported to improve. Less tossing and turning during the night!

Emotional Health

Soothes the mind

We all need to feel pampered from time to time – it’s what restores our emotional balance and enables us to carry on despite the toll everyday life takes on us.

When we feel warm and safe, our brains release oxytocin – one of the core “happy” chemicals. Oxytocin is also released when we cuddle with a pet or a human partner. While you may live in an apartment that isn’t suitable for pets, and finding a suitable human partner can seem to be on a par with turning lead into gold, having a steam shower in your home is something that’s achievable for everyone.

Improves mood

Taking care of your emotional health helps you build resilience making you less vulnerable to drops in mood caused by difficult circumstances. It also improves your self esteem, self confidence, and ability to see positive potential outcomes. This improved outlook means you’ll be more likely to go after the things you really want in life and start to create your own happiness.

Relieves stress

Stream therapy is a great natural way to relieve stress. Prolonged stress impacts on your brain’s ability to handle complex cognitive tasks – it’s why you struggle with a workload you’d normally sail through when you’ve been experiencing a lot of exhausting, unreasonable demands, or are going through a difficult life situation.

Beauty Benefits

More youthful-looking skin

With steam therapy, it is a natural progression that your skin will become more beautiful, radiant, and glowing. This side effect is due to the combined action of toxins flushed from the body, enhanced circulation, development of more collagen, and the increase of happy hormones in the body.

If you’re looking at the mirror now and seeing a pasty and tired-looking person reflected back, with proper rest and some pampering sessions with a steam bath, your reflection will be looking back at you more hydrated, relaxed, and renewed.

Reduce cellulite

Sessions with steam are just as effective as body wraps in reducing the appearance of cellulite in the body. This is due to the short duration of time that your body temperature is raised. In the process, the skin becomes more hydrated, elastic, and flexible.

Summing Up

By ensuring you need do nothing more than sit and relax, by soothing aches and pains, and by boosting your cardiovascular health, a steam shower helps reduce stress, and boosts the brain’s available oxygen supply. Both of these things, in combination, mean that a steam shower can help you think and act smarter.

So – you’ve seen why you should invest in a steam shower. The next step is window shopping for the best steam shower according to your budget.