I’ve written this article for the benefit of the millions of people who suffer back pain, muscle pain, fibromyalgia, arthritis and other types of joint or muscle pain. Back in 2001, I had a dramatic recovery from debilitating sciatic pain thanks to floatation therapy.
This pain caused by a pinched nerve in my lower back had been getting progressively worse for 6 years. I tried chiropractic care, massage therapy, hydrotherapy, acupuncture and pills. None of them gave any long term relief and the chiropractic care I received actually made the problem worse. Surgery seemed inevitable.
I really dodged a bullet in finding floatation therapy when I did because at the time, I was bedridden and barely able to feed myself. I’d only slept a handful of hours in the previous week because lying down was so painful. Getting in and out of a car was the most painful thing I could do, so I wasn’t able to go to work, which meant I was eating up my sick days and vacation days. After a week of this, there was no relief in sight so I feared I would lose my job and health insurance benefits.
The thing with sciatic pain is that once you get locked into a sciatic pain episode, it’s a downward spiral because your muscles tighten in anticipation of the pain, which causes muscular pain and stiffness – adding insult to injury. Considering all of this, it should come as no surprise that I was barely able to get myself to the local floatation center. Within 45 minutes of my 1 hour float session, I went from a 10 on the pain scale to a 1. The extreme buoyancy caused by the dissolved epsom salt and the epsom salt itself did two very important things:
1) It took all the pressure off my body. You’re far more buoyant in a float tank than in a swimming pool. You’re so buoyant that you’re actually pushed up out of the water slightly. This is the same thing that happens when you float in the Dead Sea in Israel. This extreme buoyancy is why float tanks are enclosed – you need an enclosed pool to control the air temperature to keep the top of your body warm, otherwise you won’t relax and there are no benefits.
2) Magnesium sulfate (epsom salt) is a natural muscle relaxant that caused my tight, spasming muscles to relax very quickly and for an extended period after I got out of the float tank. This is an important contrast to hydrotherapy which gave me relief only while I was in the pool. All of the pain returned as soon as I got out of the pool, even after a week of several-hour sessions.
The benefits of floating are cumulative. After 3 days of float sessions, I returned to work 100% pain-free. I didn’t float again for 9 months. From that time on, if I get the beginnings of stiffness or back pain, I float for an hour and I’m all good. I float once or twice a year out of necessity, but I float much more often for the other benefits, relaxation, stress relief and even creative problem solving, thanks to the extended theta brain state that floating causes. Compare these long term benefits with any other therapy and I’m sure you’ll agree that floatation therapy is well worth considering.
I’ve tried to make it easy for people to get educated about this underutilized therapy by doing a lot of research on the subject and compiling the best information I found in one website. That website is www.floatforhealth.net. I started this blog as a complement to www.floatforhealth.net because I wanted to make it easy for people to comment on this information and have easy ways to share it.
In closing, I’d like to quote some of the research that has been done on the effects of floatation therapy on pain. Nobody argues that floating has been greatly beneficial to me, but some people doubt that these benefits are common. If you know someone who could benefit from this information, I encourage you to pass it on.
Flotation Rest and Pain Management
An in depth examination of the role of Flotation REST in the management of pain can provide us with a clear picture of the psychophysiological nature of the treatment. Pain programs are generally used as a last referral resort for patients whose intractable pain has not responded to the traditional medical treatments. Biobehaviorally based pain management utilizes counseling and behavioral medicine techniques such as relaxation training, meditation. biofeedback, guided imagery, and self-hypnosis. The goals of such treatment are the development of pain avoidance skills, the establishment of routines for optimal fitness within the limitations of a disability, the reduction or elimination of pain, when possible, and/or the patients acceptance of some level of pain.
Flotation REST can have an important role at several stages of the pain management process. By reducing both muscle tension and pain in a relatively short time and without effort on the part of the patient, flotation provides a dramatic demonstration of the benefits of relaxation. Relief is immediate and, although temporary, offers promise of further relief from REST and other relaxation-based strategies. Symptom reduction gained from flotation can increase a patient’s motivation and interest in the remainder of the therapy plan. Pain patients generally come into treatment feeling suspicious and skeptical, requiring a clear demonstration that they can be helped. Flotation can be the vehicle for that demonstration.
The relaxation following flotation can be used to facilitate relaxation training. In the treatment reported here, training in relaxation and other psychological pain control strategies occurred during the flotation REST sessions as well as in counseling sessions. Specially prepared audio programs introduced patients to breathing techniques, progressive muscle relaxation, autogenic training, guided imagery and hypnotic suggestions for pain reduction while they floated. Training and practice in those same techniques followed in counseling sessions and at home.
The most common etiologies of pain in this group of patients were from motor vehicle accidents, work accidents, or chronic illness. Most had endured their pain for longer than six months and had also suffered various levels of anxiety, anger, and depression. These emotional problems must be considered in the treatment of chronic pain patients. The first data are pre-post pain ratings from 16 patients who floated from one to 16 flotation sessions. Each patient reported on up to four body areas, providing a total of 253 pre-post , measures. The average percentage of relief, as measured in decrease from the pre-session value, was 31.3% for all sessions and all measures. To determine whether flotation REST provides more pain relief to some parts of the body as opposed to others, these measurements were examined by body area. Pain reduction in most body areas was close to the overall mean of 31%, except the upper back, which showed a 63.6% pain reduction, the arms which showed a 48.2% reduction, and the legs, which showed a 15.3% pain reduction. The duration of relief varied from two hours to seven days.
A second set of data came from a survey mailed to patients who had completed the program. The questionnaire asked patients to assess how much pain relief they received from the various components of the pain program (Flotation, relaxation training, and counseling) and from other treatments they had received medication (pills and shots), physical therapy, chiropractic, and surgery. Short-term pain relief, long-term pain relief, relief from anxiety or stress, and relief from depression were indicated separately. Additionally, they were asked whether each treatment improved their outlook and/or helped them cope with their pain.
All 27 respondents had received treatments other than those from this pain program: 81% had used pain medications; 56% had had some form of pain injections; 70% had received physical therapy; 59% had received chiropractic treatment; 22% had undergone surgery. These patients reported more short-term and long-term pain relief from flotation than from the other therapeutic modalities.
For non-pain symptoms, the comparisons were even more striking. Patients reported far more relief from anxiety and stress from flotation than any other modality. For depression, flotation was equal to counseling at near 70%, with relaxation training at 53% and physical therapy and medication at 20%. Patients also claimed to have reaped a variety of other benefits from flotation, reporting improvements in sleep (65%), mental concentration (77%), energy (46%), interpersonal relationships (54%), ability to work (35%), ability to cope with pain (88%), ability to cope with stress (92%), and feelings of well-being (65%) resulting from flotation REST.
In answering the question, "Did this treatment improve your outlook toward your pain?" 96% responded positively for flotation, 100% for counseling, 100% for relaxation training, 50% for physical therapy, 24% for pain pills, 17% for pain shots, 15% for chiropractic. To the question, "Did this treatment help you cope effectively with your pain?" 96% responded positively for flotation, 92% for both relaxation training and counseling, 50% for pain shots, 44% for pain injections, 38% for physical therapy, and 17% for chiropractic. It is clear that flotation was rated on average as more effective than other treatments with respect to pain, anxiety and depression relief.
Excerpt from Flotation REST in Applied Psychophysiology by Thomas H. Fine, M.A. and Roderick Borrie, Ph.D.
Thomas H. Fine is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry of the Medical College of Ohio. He began his research and clinical work with Biofeedback in 1975, and, with John Turner, initiated the Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy research program at MCO in 1978.
Roderick A Borrie, Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychologist at South Oaks Hospital, Amityville, New York. He began his exploration of therapeutic uses of Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy at the University of British Columbia with Dr. Peter Suedfeld, and continues to use it in current work with patients suffering chronic pain and illness.
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