Aquatic Therapy with Endless Pools to treat Diabetes
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Judith has a trenchant way of describing
her decision to purchase an Endless Pool, which
she has been using in her Arkansas home for more than
a year.
“It was a prescription,” she says, noting
that her physician had suggested looking into aquatic
therapy as a means of treating Judith’s diabetes.
The disease’s harmful effects had included the
degenerative restricted use of her limbs, so much so
that she had feared confinement to a wheel-chair. Now
age 60, though, Judith’s Endless Pool workouts
have produced “immense benefits in terms of building
up arm and leg strength.”
That workout – which Judith plans to
increase incrementally in duration – consists
of 30 minutes, three to four times per week, divided
into roughly equal segments devoted to water aerobics
and walking or swimming against gentle current. Target
temperature is 84 degrees; and like many Endless Pool
devotees, she has been pleasantly surprised by the unanticipated
advantages of the warm water treatment. She cites, for
example, pain relief for a hand injury, achieved simply
by “massaging” the sprained area with the
flow of water from one of her pool’s propulsion
jets.
The subject of the effects of exercise on preventing
and controlling the effects of diabetes has generated
a spate of recent clinical research, and Judith’s
observations are both anecdotal and empirical.
Not only is she able to achieve motion that would
be impossible out-of-water, she knows that a
session in her Endless Pool will lower her blood glucose
level some 100 to 150 points, back to normal.
“Applying water to virtually any injury seems
to be therapeutic,” Judith observes. “Tangible
benefits aside, though, it’s a wonderful feeling
when you’re in the pool,” who counts control
of water temperature and purity, as well as privacy,
as the chief advantages of the Endless Pool over other,
public hydrotherapy facilities. “In fact, the
toughest part of using the pool is getting out,”
she says, noting that an adjacent soft-heat sauna eases
the transition.
Also like other Endless Pool owners, Judith
finds it amusing how quickly the unit, located next
to the basement den, has become a standard fixture of
the house. Ironically, her family’s original
plans called for a different type of poolroom –
one devoted to billiards rather than aquatic exercise.
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