Moist heat therapy

Moist heat therapy provides natural pain relief and otherwise may soothe skin and underlying body parts. Common forms include taking a hot bath, a hot shower, wrapping a hot towel around a strained or painful muscle and using electric or other heating pads for relief. The use of hot springs or more formal bathing places has given mankind relief for thousands of years, with Roman baths perhaps the most famous of these. Native Americans resorted to hot springs. When, in 1847, the first Anglo-American Mormon pioneers reached the Salt Lake Valley of what would become Utah, they learned the Indians wintered near a high-flow hot spring, Wasatch Warm Spring, at the base of the mountain at the northern tip of the Valley.

Application of moist heat therapy at home has in recent decades become more convenient but should be used with care.