Getting in the habit of taking a weekly Epsom salt bath can do wonders for helping you reduce your stress, provide pain relief from sore joints and muscles as well as aid your body in detox. Epsom salts are primarily composed of magnesium sulfate and can be a great transdermal way to supply your body with much-needed magnesium.
How an Epsom Salt Bath can help your Body Detox:
Detox can be a controversial word as it seems to be thrown around a lot and not always associated with the most beneficial methods. Detoxing your body, in reality, is a simple common sense practice of helping your body eliminate what is bad for you while filling your body with more things that are beneficial for you. Your body has several different organs that aid your body in detoxification and elimination. Skin is the largest elimination organ in the body.
Epsom salt baths help aid your body in detox by stimulating the skin through the heat and salts in the bath helping draw toxins away from your body while in return adding beneficial and needed minerals like magnesium back into the body.
How Epsom Salt Baths help Reduce Stress:
Most people would agree that a long hot bath is a very effective stress reliever. The additional stress-reducing benefits of adding Epsom salt is due to the magnesium entering your body helps promote a feeling of calm and relaxation. Considering stress drains the body of magnesium and the magnesium from the Epsom salts are absorbed into the body during the bathing process an Epsom salt bath can be a great way to rebuild up your magnesium levels during stressful times as magnesium helps regulate stress response.
How Epsom Salt Baths help with Aches and Pains:
A hot bath on its own can help you recover from aches and sore muscles as the hot water can help relax muscles and loosen stiff joints. Epsom salts aid in this process because when magnesium enters the body it helps flush lactic acid buildup from the muscles and joints. Lactic acid usually builds up in your body after a period of strenuous exercise and is the primary culprit for soreness.
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How to take an Epsom Salt Bath:
Taking an Epsom salt bath is as easy as filling your bathtub with hot water and adding 1-3 cups of Epsom salts to the bathwater and letting them dissolve. Once the salts have dissolved in the hot water (you may need to mix them around) you can adjust the bathwater to the temperature of your liking. Soak for a good 20-30 minutes to experience the full benefits.
Should you take Epsom Salt Baths?
While doing this post on Epsom Salt baths I did do an internet search to see what articles were already written covering the topic. I had to laugh at how many articles were published trying to debunk the Epsom salt bath “myths”. Most sources stating that there is no scientific evidence to back them up but there are also no scientific studies to discredit the claims either. There is, however, this scientific report on the Absorption of Epsom salts across the skin concluding bathing in Epsom salts is a safe and easy way to increase sulfate and magnesium levels in the body. Considering the evidence-based magnesium health benefits this seems like a pretty good step in the right direction.
Here are my concluding thoughts on taking Epsom salt baths. Epsom salts are inexpensive, safe and easy to find. They can be purchased online or most of your local grocery, drug, and big box stores carry them as well. The only cautions with taking Epsom salt baths as indicated above is to speak to your doctor first if you have hypertension and to also make sure your skin does not have an adverse reaction to the salts.
Why not try an Epsom salt bath out for yourself? If you experience benefits from the baths great keep taking them, if not then don’t.
I personally have experienced many wonderful benefits from taking Epsom salt baths and can tell the difference the weeks I don’t take them. Even if it turns out to be a placebo effect I will take a relaxing bath as a placebo any day!
– Elizabeth Hemmings, author of Easy Green Cleaning
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