When you take a steam bath - then you don't get old

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

Even 6 thousand years ago, clean Egyptian priests, committed to massage, baths and washed twice in the morning and twice at night, built baths, accessible to everyone - the first public baths. Egyptian doctors, who were considered the best at that time, did not do without water procedures in their treatment and encouraged bath days in every possible way.

The love of the ancient Romans for the bath was expressed even philologically: the equivalent of a question"

At the same time, baths appeared in Japan. Furo - an ordinary bathhouse is a wooden pool, which is located in the steam room. It is filled with water heated to 40-50 degrees, at the bottom there is a bench for the convenience of bathers. The torso should be above the water to about the heart and steamed. But ofuro is the respectful name for a Japanese bath, which is a barrel without a top, filled with cedar sawdust heated to 50 degrees. For the Japanese, the bathhouse is also a kind of club. There are expensive restaurants, cinemas and libraries at the bathing establishments. During elections, Japanese politicians spend evenings in the bathhouse, communicating with their constituents.

Turkish, or as it is sometimes called "oriental" bath, hammam spread in Turkey, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan. These baths are not much different from each other, except that in some they prefer a coconut loofah, in others - a loofah made of dry date stamens, and in others - from loofah. The traditions of oriental baths go back to the Roman Empire, whose rulers planted their culture in the occupied territories. Turkish baths are built according to the so-called "palm principle". The bathhouse is like five fingers. Figuratively speaking, each finger is a bath niche. It all starts with the "wrist joint" - changing rooms, dressing rooms, where on average 20-30 people can be accommodated. The beginning of the bath procedure is in this room with a temperature of 28-34 degrees. Here they begin to warm up, then move to hotter rooms. The point is that when you move from one niche to another, you feel a gradual rise in temperature. Approximately 70 to 100 degrees. Directly from the dressing room, as if in the middle of the palm, there is a fairly spacious room, where there are heated stone loungers, which are called "chebek". They lie on the chebek and sweat, purifying the body and soul. When a profuse sweat appears, a massage begins, as a result of which the body becomes flexible, the skin smooth, and the mood is joyful. After such a massage, it is the turn of washing and rinsing in pools with water, the temperature of which gradually decreases.

Few people know that there was also a steam bath in America. In Spanish, the steam baths of the Mexican Indians are called temazcal - from the word temascalli, which consists of the words theme - to bathe, wash and calli - house. Love for cleanliness was characteristic of all segments of the population of ancient Indian cultures. The Aztecs specially taught their youth to be clean - young people were raised in the middle of the night and forced to wash in the cold water of a lake or spring. The Aztecs did not make soap; instead, they used various plants.

Cleanliness was and remains one of the most vital conditions in the life of the Mayan Indians. Arriving home, an ordinary Mayan farmer first of all took a warm bath. The wives were already waiting for their husbands with heated water, a wooden trough and clean clothes. According to the old custom, a husband had the right to beat his wife if she had not prepared a warm bath for bathing by the time he returned home.

As for steam baths, they first appeared in Mexico no later than the beginning of our era in the form of buildings specially designed for this purpose. In the classical era of the Mayan civilization, only a few of the palaces of the rulers were equipped with gutters and steam baths. In the center of the steam room there was a large hearth, which was surrounded by three low stone benches. There was nothing else inside. Water infused with aromatic herbs was poured onto the red-hot stones of the hearth, and the ruler, sitting on a bench, steamed. Water in the bathhouse, as in other rooms of the palace, was carried in large clay pots from a neighboring reservoir by slaves. According to the ancient and modern Maya, the steam bath is an irreplaceable healing procedure that helps with many diseases.

The time has come to talk about the Finnish and Russian baths - the most common types of baths in our country. The main difference between these types of baths from those described above is that both Russian and Finnish baths are a shock effect on the body with hot steam. It is often said that the difference between a Russian bath and a Finnish sauna is that the Russian bath is heated "in black", and the Finnish sauna is heated "in white". What are the differences between similar methods of heating a bath? The whole difference is in the heating mechanism. The main element of the difference between the two methods of heating a bath is the presence of an impenetrable partition between the hearth of the firebox and the inner space of the steam room. If there is a partition, and smoke flies out into the chimney without getting into the room, then this is a white bath. If the smoke during the heating process envelops the steam room, which does not have a pipe at all, this is a smoke sauna. So, real smoke saunas are quite rare nowadays because the uniqueness of a smoke sauna session is highly dependent on the user. Heating, preparation and steaming in such a bath require aerobatics level from the bathhouse attendant. And there are not so many high professionals in any industry.

And finally, I would like to mention the scientific and technological progress and its connection with bath procedures. For thousands of years of the existence of baths, man has learned to live not only on Earth, but also in space. And at the orbital station an inveterate bather without a bath is sad! He makes certain sacrifices, refusing the Russian bath, the cosmonauts found a way out and arranged a sauna in zero gravity. I must say that in this very weightlessness, unthinkable things happen - water, for example, does not flow. How to be? After all, it is known that in order to enjoy the shower, you need a tight stabbing stream. In a state of weightlessness, they tried to achieve this by using a strong directional air flow, but all ten liters of water that are allocated to the astronaut for the bath procedure scatter in lumps throughout the shower, almost without reaching the goal. Moreover, having “washed”, the cosmonaut needs to drive the same ten liters of dirty water into the sump. In such a situation, it is not surprising to get dirty again, catching the lumps of water alternately flying around the cabin. Naturally, our man could not come to terms with this and made a cunning decision that would hardly occur to an American or anyone else. The cosmonauts set up a real orbital sauna from the shower cabin. How they arranged it is their trade secret. But as a result, at a temperature of 70-80 degrees, you can sweat perfectly and get literally unearthly pleasure. It got to the point that transport ships into orbit along with food, letters, etc. began to send fragrant birch brooms. Say what you like, a Russian person and a Russian in space - he can't do without a bath and a broom!