Water as a healing source

The healing power of water already knew about our ancestors. Sebastian Kneipp hydrotherapy brought in the 19 Century a renaissance. Although the benefits of individual applications is demonstrated, a holistic effect, however, can prove difficult.

Sebastian Kneipp in the 19th Century after the famous German Bismarck. He turned the village of Bad Woerishofen within ten years in Europe, a well-known health resort. Although he was not a doctor, his name in medicine is rooted so deeply that few others. It did Father Kneipp (1821 to 1897) mainly one thing: He preached water. He took hundreds of thousands of followers.

Charlatanism or healing? – Wondering, given the rapid rise of the Allgauer range of university doctors and even the Vatican. Even today, the opinions differ on the 120-year-old Kneipp therapy. In times of tight budgets in the health care system, the question is: Is it an underestimated natural medical procedure or a clever marketing strategy?

Water softens typical diseases of old age

The Kneipp Medical Association, one still alive of the parish priest, founded the association is convinced that the therapy is a “bright future” ahead. Their main application areas – cardiovascular diseases and joint problems – are typical diseases of aging and are increasing in our society. Even the prevention, the “actual domain of the Kneipp therapy,” gains in the face of skyrocketing health care costs is becoming increasingly important, says Heinz Leuchtgens, president of the Kneipp Medical Association.

Skeptical judges, Stiftung Warentest. She refers in her studies of alternative medicine that the effectiveness of the Kneipp therapy medicine as a whole “not proven” was. However, the testers see evidence of positive effects of individual applications – especially in the treatment of vascular disease and improving the immune system.

Related Posts

• Herbal medicine