Medical Explanation

Clinical research among patients suffering from various types of respiratory diseases has shown significant improvements in their health, especially among children, helping to reduce dependency on prescription medications.

The efficacy of Speleotherapy is associated with the unique microclimate found in salt mines, which is a natural dry sodium chloride aerosol. This aerosol is formed naturally, through the convective diffusion from the salt walls. Other factors such as comfortable temperature and humidity regime, the hypo-bacterial and allergen-free air environment, also enhance the therapeutic effect. There are hundreds of Speleotherapy facilities located throughout eastern and central Europe, and this natural complementary therapy is becoming known in the rest of the world.

Clinical trials have mainly been carried out in Russia and these have shown the efficacy of Speleotherapy as a treatment of chronic bronchitis and asthma, but it is also effective as a main or complementary therapy across the entire range of upper and lower respiratory tract diseases, and potentially also against systemic diseases.

Clinical studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine (2006) report: “Inhalation of hypertonic saline produces a sustained acceleration of mucus clearance and improved lung function. This treatment may protect the lung from insults that reduces mucus clearance and reduces lung disease”. The Journal of Aerosol Medicine (1995) reports significant improvements in patients with various types of respiratory diseases (bronchial asthma, chronic obstructive and non-obstructive bronchitis, bronchiectasis, cystic fibrosis) who were treated with halotherapy in a placebo-controlled clinical trial.