반신욕이 여성의 하체 체형관리와 혈중지질 농도에 미치는 영향

Abstract

As people's living standards improve, the obese population increases together with various diseases. Thus, modern men are more concerned about their health, while diverse therapies are applied. Now when people are more concerned about their health, an alternative therapy called 'lower body bathing' has been spotlighted since its introduction through mass-media some time ago. Lower body bathing is known to have some positive effects on relief of sensibility of cold, prevention of various diseases, relief of obesity and even mental health conditions. The purpose of this study was to review the effects of lower body bathing on women's body shape and health management. For this purpose, those women aged between late 20's and early 40's in Seoul and Kyonggi-do were sampled. They were sufficiently briefed on this experiment, and thereby, 10 volunteers who were perceived to be faithful to the experiment were finally selected. The experiment was conducted everyday for 8 weeks from September 12 through November 14, 2004. The subject women were pre-tested for body sizes, body composition, in-blood lipid concentration and blood pressure. After the experiment, their body size, body fat ratio and dropsy index decreased significantly, while abdominal fat ratio decreased slightly and insignificantly. Such indices of in-blood lipid concentration as total cholesterol, LDL and triglyceride lowered but insignificantly. However, HDL conducive to prevention of respiratory diseases increased significantly. As shown in such findings, lower body bathing was found effective in women's body shape and health management. After the experiment, 10 subject women were surveyed with a questionnaire. As a result, they responded that lower body bathing seemed to be effective on weight loss, reduction of lower body size, relaxing and health management, while they were generally satisfied with the efficacy of lower body bathing. Since this study may be limited in terms of sex, age, classification of obesity and experiment period, while not controlling the effects of exercise or dietary life, it is hoped that this study will be followed up by future studies which will surmount such limits. Furthermore, it is also hoped that this study will be followed up by future studies which will test the combined effects of lower body bathing and massage therapy at skincare room on relief of obesity or use diverse bath oils and creams with lower body bathing and thereby, determine their combined effects.