Using Epsom Salts - How & Why They Work

[keljonma]

This came up in BeeKissed's journal, and I thought I would cross-post here also.

Using Epsom Salts

Health Usage Tips:
For compresses: Use 2 cups of Epsom salt per gallon of water for sore muscles, bug bites, sun burn and splinter removal.

For soaking: Add two cups of Epsom salt to warm water in a standard-sized bathtub. Double the Epsom Salt for an oversized garden tub. Popular for easing muscle pain and fading bruises. Bathe three times weekly, soaking for at least 12 minutes.

Foot bath: Add a cup of Epsom Salt to a tub of warm water as a popular balm for aching feet.

Laxative: follow directions on package

Health Benefits:
Studies show these benefits from the major components of Epsom Salt:

Magnesium:
Ease stress and improves sleep and concentration
Help muscles and nerves function properly
Regulate activity of 325+ enzymes
Help prevent artery hardening and blood clots
Make insulin more effective
Reduce inflammation to relieve pain and muscle cramps
Improve oxygen use

Sulfates:
Flush toxins
Improve absorption of nutrients
Help form joint proteins, brain tissue and mucin proteins
Help prevent or ease migraine headaches

Why It Works:
Magnesium- the key component of Epsom Salt -- performs more functions in more systems of the human body than virtually any other mineral, including regulating the activity of more than 325 enzymes.

Studies show that magnesium is:
An electrolyte, helping to ensure proper muscle, nerve and enzyme function.

Critical to the proper use of calcium in cells.

An aid in helping to prevent heart disease and strokes by lowering blood pressure, protecting the elasticity of arteries, preventing blood clots and reducing the risk of sudden heart attack deaths.

Medical research also indicates that magnesium may:
Increase the effectiveness of insulin, helping to lower the risk or severity of diabetes.

Reduce inflammation and relieves pain, making it a beneficial in the treatment of sore muscles, bronchial asthma, migraine headaches and fibromyalgia.

Although magnesium can be absorbed through the digestive tract, many foods, drugs and medical conditions can interfere with the effectiveness of this deliver method. Therefore, soaking in an Epsom Salt bath is one of the most effective means of making the magnesium your body needs readily available.

Epsom Salt also delivers sulfates, which medical research indicates are needed for the formation of brain tissue, joint proteins and the mucin proteins that line the walls of the digestive tract. Studies show that sulfates also stimulate the pancreas to generate digestive enzymes and help to detoxify the body's residue of medicines and environmental contaminants. Studies indicate that sulfates are difficult to absorb from food, but are readily absorbed through the skin.

 

[patandchickens]

Plus, if you have a cut/scratch/whatever that is starting to get infected, you can usually reverse it pretty quickly by soaking it every few hours or several times a day in water as hot as you can *possibly* stand with enough Epsom Salts poured in that it the last bit no longer dissolves despite stirring. If you're using a small container for this like a bowl for soaking a finger (something I really ought to do for my right thumb at the moment, in fact) it works best to let hot water sit in the container for a few minutes before dumping and refilling with the really hot water, otherwise the coolth of the container cools the hot water down too fast.

I was brought up this way -- dad was an army medic in India and Asia during WWII -- and it really does seem to work IME.


Pat, who needs to remember not to scrub out the flush holes in the toilet barehanded with winter-cracked skin

 

[Beekissed]

I'll tell you another neato use for epsom salts....my sister's and I used to make bath salts to sell along with our other products. She always kept a big batch at her tubside but found they kept disappearing! She questioned her hubby to find that he had been using them because they worked so well on his hemmorhoids!!! Inflamed hemmorhoids + epsom salts = ahhhhhhhhhh.....

Didn't they also use some epsom salts in the treatment of grass tetany in cows?

 

[keljonma]

Bath salts are for everyone!

Not sure about cattle, Bee; we have used Epsom salt soak for bumblefoot in chickens.

 

[patandchickens]

Dunno bout cattle but the largest supply of Epsom Salts here is out in the barn, for soaking horse feet to get abscesses draining/healing

Pat

 

[FarmerDenise]

I have also used epsom salts for my chickens. I have had several that had been beat up by our puppy or each other. If the wounds are somewhat superficial, like when the feathers have been pulled out and the chicken is somewhat bare, I will often give my chicken a nice warm bath in epson salts. Seems to help with the healing and the chicken seems to relax in the warm bath. But then I handle my chickens a lot. I don't know how well it would work, if your chicken is scared of you.
We also sprinkle epson salts around our roses as fertilizer. Makes the leaves nice and shiny green.