Does salt therapy actually work?

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Whether you suffer from asthma or other respiratory problems, a treatment listed as natural, safe and effective sounds like the perfect fix.

Spas across North America are offering halotherapy, a treatment dating back to the 1800s in the caves and mines of eastern Europe. It involves the inhalation of a fine, micronized mist of salt to clear your airway.

The session involves you sitting in a cave with Himalayan salt crystals coating the ceiling, walls and floor. The salt chambers are essentially meant to mimic the real caves in Europe. As you lounge in a chair and listen to therapeutic music, you’ll supposedly feel your lungs clearing due to the salty mist.

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The Speleotherapy Clinic in Toronto hails halotherapy as a “100% natural, safe and drug free treatment.” The centre claims “the clinical condition improves and symptoms disappear or significantly ease” following the course of treatment.

An Oakville spa lists their Himalayan salt cave as a relief for “congested airwaves, coughs and sleepless nights due to asthma attacks and other symptoms.”

It all sounds quite tempting, especially since a single session in a salt cave will only cost you $35.

(instagram/saltcaves_)

Even with all the great advertising, physicians are reluctant to recommend the salt treatment.

Dr. Matthew Stanbrook is a respirologist at the Asthma and Airway Centre at the Toronto Western Hospital. He says halotherapy should be classified in the same category as “all other miracle treatments being promoted by spas.”

“I would never recommend it or encourage it, certainly not as a replacement for the conventional treatments we have for respiratory conditions for which there is good evidence,” says Stanbrook.

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With no science behind it, why are salt caves becoming so popular?

Besides it being an affordable method, Stanbrook says it’s also an alternative to drug therapy.

“They gravitate to things like this in the belief that they’re more natural and less harmful and presumably could provide a similar degree of benefit, but the evidence for that benefit is really not well founded at the present time because the studies have not really been done to document whether they are beneficial or not.”

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His biggest concern is someone choosing the alternative therapy over a medical one that is proven to work.

“I would actively discourage them from doing that. If someone came to me and wanted to do this in addition to everything else I would recommend them to do, I wouldn’t oppose them doing it.”

Stanbrook says there are certain situations where patients are given salt as a test or a clinical treatment, just not in the same way. An individual will be given a form of salt water that’s more concentrated, instead of a mist. The liquid is given to someone who has been really sick and has a clogged airway.

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Cystic fibrosis, which causes your body to produce thick mucus and leads to blockage, is one such condition. Stanbrook says the salt water can be used to induce coughing, hence clearing the airway.

Although there’s no major risk with halotherapy sessions, Stanbrook suggests there could be a theoretical one.

“Sometimes it makes people worse to breathe in a salt mist if they have a lung condition where their lungs are more reactive. It could actually induce more reactivity and actually temporarily make their symptoms worse.”

(instagram/thewholetori)

Stanbrook says doctors need to now determine whether the condition changes in the days and weeks following the halotherapy session.

“I think that it’s possible it could have an effect if someone wanted to take the trouble to prove it. It’s not biologically implausible but that’s not hardly sufficient for a recommendation. We would have to wait for such studies to be done before we could recommend it.”

While it may sound like a miracle cure for your respiratory condition, halotherapy still has a long way to go before it’s accepted by the medical community.

Have you tried halotherapy? Let us know what you think by tweeting @YahooStyleCA.