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Clinical and anti-aging effect of mud-bathing therapy for patients with fibromyalgia

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Abstract

Spa bathing is known as a medical treatment for certain diseases causing chronic pains. Spa water contains mineral components which lower the specific heat of the water, resulting in a higher efficiency to warm body-core temperature. This phenomenon yields pain-relieving effect for rheumatoid arthritis, low back pain, sciatic neuralgia, fibromyalgia, etc. Here we introduce medical and biological effects of mud-spa-bathing therapy for fibromyalgia other than pain relief, the changes of blood examination data, and the telomere length of circulating leukocytes. The enrolled 7 patients with fibromyalgia syndrome were hospitalized and were subject to daily mud bathing at 40 °C for 10 min for about a month. Then, their subjective pain was reduced to about a quarter in average. They also showed lowered serum triglyceride and C-reactive protein level, maintaining the levels of aspartate transaminase and creatine phosphokinase, and increases of the red blood cell count, the serum albumin level, and the serum LDL-cholesterol level in comparison with cases without mud-bathing therapy, suggesting that mud bathing prevents inflammation and muscle atrophy and improves nutritional condition in fibromyalgia. In addition, the analysis of telomere length of peripheral leukocytes revealed a trend of negative correlation between telomere shortening and laboratory data change of hemoglobin and serum albumin. These telomeric changes can be explained hypothetically by an effect of mud bathing extending life-span of circulating leukocytes.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the 2012 Health and Labor Sciences Research Grants Comprehensive Research on Life-Style Related Diseases including Cardiovascular Diseases and Diabetes Mellitus and a Grant-in-Aid from the Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture of Japan (#15K08919).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Department of Internal Medicine, Kyushu University Beppu Hospital, 4546 Tsurumihara, Beppu, Oita, 874-0838, Japan

    Toyoki Maeda, Takahiko Horiuchi & Naoki Makino

  2. The Department of Rehabilitation, Kyushu University Beppu Hospital, 4546 Tsurumihara, Beppu, Oita, 874-0838, Japan

    Yoshihiro Kudo

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  1. Toyoki Maeda
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  2. Yoshihiro Kudo
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Correspondence to Toyoki Maeda.

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Maeda, T., Kudo, Y., Horiuchi, T. et al. Clinical and anti-aging effect of mud-bathing therapy for patients with fibromyalgia. Mol Cell Biochem 444, 87–92 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11010-017-3233-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11010-017-3233-4

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