Heat Treatments

One of the things I did daily when I was very ill was heat treatments. Just as a fever naturally helps the body kill infection, heat treatments can too.

Warning:
When using heat treatments, you should take extra b-complex vitamins, fluids, and electrolytes. Drinking a large glass of water and taking some salt before a hot bath can help improve its effectiveness and prevent excess dehydration and depletion of electrolytes. I also would sometimes have a banana or glass of orange juice beforehand for the potassium.

Please also note that raising your temperature above 106F is risky and above 108F can be deadly. Above 108F, the body cannot naturally cool itself any longer and requires outside intervention to cool it in order to avoid dying.

Hot baths

I took a hot bath almost every day for about three years while fighting for my life and trying to get well. At one point, I took an ear thermometer in the tub with me so I could check the temperature of both ears. I found that there was an optimal temperature range for me for successfully fighting infection without overstressing my body.

For me, that range was between 102F and 104.5F. Anything less than that did not do much for me. Anything more did not help more but did stress my system substantially more, which tended to undermine my efforts to get well because it was like "fighting a two front battle" -- the extra stress took energy away from my body's need to fight the infection.

I encourage you to check your own temperature regularly at first to determine for yourself what works best for you. My own "normal" temp runs low, usually below 98F. So what works best for me may not work best for you.

I also found that adding salt to the bath water helped prevent excessively dry skin. I later found that sea salt did an even better job of this. I had tried many things to combat the dry skin problem which developed from daily hot baths, including lotion, oil, and other bath additives. Nothing worked nearly as well as salt. I bought Kosher salt for a long time to avoid the extra chemicals found in table salt. But now I only use sea salt.

For maximum effectiveness, you should dunk your entire body -- head and face included -- under water to raise your body temperature as evenly as possible. Germs often gravitate to cooler areas of the body and can survive a hot bath in the ears and sinuses if you do not make special effort to target those areas. Afterwards, you can wrap up in a blanket for 15 to 40 minutes.

You should consider also covering your face -- but this may not be a good idea if the person doing this is a child due to the danger of possible suffocation. When I have used hot baths to treat my children, I was more conservative about the temperatures used and I encouraged them to wrap up to their neck in a blanket and watch TV for up to 30 minutes. In my experience, this wrap up period should be at least 15 minutes long in order to be effective but anything more than 40 minutes does not appear to have any additional benefit.

Last, I want to note that when heat treatments begin losing their effectiveness, it sometimes means that the germs in question have become resistent to the heat. Germs typically have a specific range of temperature in which they thrive and this is why heat can kill them.

However, you always have a few germs which are more tolerant to heat and those are the ones which survive the treatments. Over time, the entire population in your system can become more tolerant of the heat (similar principal to the way anti-biotic resistent germs develop). At such times, following a hot bath with a cold shower can dramatically increase the effectiveness of the treatment.

I hate cold showers and I think they are more of a shock to the system than a hot bath, so I use them more sparingly than hot baths. But it's basically the same principle.

Hot water bottles

I do not like using an electric heating pad or electric blankets. They make me tired when I use them and I think the electrical field they create is part of the problem, but there could be other factors (like an allergy to the materials) which is the real culprit.

However, I have had good results from hot water bottles, especially sleeping with them. I have often made one at bed time, wrapping it thoroughly in a large towel so that there are many layers of material between me and the boiling hot water, and then using it in place of a pillow or simply having it up against my torso (stomach, chest, back, underarm). It is not as intense a feeling of heat as some other methods but over the course of the night the long exposure to low heat can make a huge difference if I am not feeling well.

If you purchase a hot water bottle with a custom-fit cloth covering, this can substantially reduce the risk of accidentally burning yourself on the hot bottle. I still also added the extra layers of a folded up towel to further insulate the bottle, both protecting myself from burns and preserving the heat for a longer period of time. However, because of my allergies and compromised immune system, I made sure to wash the covering regularly so that the cloth covering did not become a source of health problems for me.

Hair Dryers

I have not done this in a long time, but I used to very often use a hand-held blow dryer to direct hot air on my ears, throat or other areas (not directly on my face, except sometimes my forehead, and being careful to not let it dry out my sinuses too much). This is a simple means of using heat and does not require the amount of preparation that hot water bottles and hot baths take.

Heated Rice Bag

From an e-mail list I am on (reprinted with permission):
"Fill a clean tube sock with rice (plus aromatics if desired -- I used lavender from the garden) and tie a knot in the top. Zap that in the microwave for 1-1/2 to 2 minutes and you have a heating pad that conforms beautifully to the back of your neck, across your forehead, over the sinuses, etc. It has been a lifesaver many times over for me."

Originally posted elsewhere many years ago. Slightly edited for readability.