aquatic therapy

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Millions of people die a year from chronic heart failure. Chronic heart failure is when the heart does not pump blood throughout the body at the rate that it is supposed to. Instead the blood is circulated at a much slower power. Without the blood being distributed at the right level the body cannot meet all of its needs to function sufficiently. This is where the benefits of aquatic therapy come in. Aquatic therapy is a subcategory of physical therapy, where the exercise and rehabilitation takes place in the water. It can be used for many things, from obese people with knee pain to those that suffer from lower back pain. This type of therapy is important because it can alleviate some of the symptoms of chronic heart failure without having to rely on medication.
Aquatic Therapy Background Information
Aquatic therapy is beneficial because being in water allows more flexibility and buoyancy, as well as applies pressure to the body. According to Katharina Meyer, “with water immersion, gravity is partly eliminated, and the water exerts a pressure on the body surface” (90). The warm water can cause a change in the blood volume. This, along with the pressure of the water, can cause more blood to be moved to the heart. (Meyer 90) The warm water also causes widening of the blood vessels. The widening of blood vessels a larger amount of blood to be pumped throughout the body at a greater velocity. Since people diagnosed with chronic heart failure pump blood at a much slower rate, this water immersion technique greatly reduces this symptom.
Water Immersion Experimentation
The process varied from experiment to experiment, however, a few things were kept constant; there was an average of ten to twenty patients and all participants were abov...

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Bente Gruner Svealy, Asa Cider, Margareta Scharin Tang, Dimitris Kardassis, and Bert Andersson. “Benefit of warm water immersion on biventricular function in patients with chronic heart failure.” Cardiovascular Unltrasound. 7.33 (2009): Web. 15 Feb. 2014.
Jean-Paul Schmid, Markus Noveanu, Cyrill Morger, Raymond Gaillet, Mauro Capoferri, Matthias Anderegg, and Hugo Saner. “Influence of water immersion, water gymnastics and swimming on cardiac output in patients with heart failure.” Heart Journal. 93 (2007): 722-727. Web. 15 Feb. 2014.
Katharina Meyer, and Marie-Claude Leblanc. “Aquatic therapies in patients with compromised left ventricular function and heart failure.” Clinical Investigative Medicine. 31.2 (2008): E90-E97. Web. 15 Feb. 2014.

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