INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND ON SPELEOTHERAPY AND HALOTHERAPY.

CHAPTER 1
Nowadays powerful development of pharmacology and industrial production of medicines encouraged growth of treatment by medication. Simplicity of application, availability and rapid effect provided priority of pharmacotherapy. However, together with therapeutic effect, medicines can cause pathologic conditions that are connected with side effects.

Many allergic conditions and autoimmunal processes are caused by medicines. Furthermore treatment by medication does not restore the own defense mechanisms of the body. This point of view makes physicians turn back to the experience of natural healing factors and carry out investigations in order to find medication-free treatment methods.

Halotherapy ("halos" in Greek means salt) is one of such methods. Halotherapy is the mode of treatments in a controlled air medium that simulates a natural salt cave microclimate.

Treatment in natural salt cave (speleotherapy) has been known for a long time. The efficacy of speleotherapy is associated with the unique cave microclimate. The natural dry sodium chloride aerosol is the major curative factor of the cave microclimate. It is formed by the convective diffusion from salt walls. Other factors such as comfortable temperature and humidity regime, the hypobacterial and allergen-free air environment saturated with aero ions enhance the therapeutic effect.

A suggestion that it is the air saturated with saline dust that causes the main curative effect in the speleotherapy of patients with respiratory diseases was first formulated by a Polish physician F.Bochkowsky in 1843. Salt mines are known to be used for therapeutic purposes in many countries, such as Austria (Solzbad-Salzeman), Rumania (Sieged), Poland (Wieliczka), Azerbaijan (Nakhichevan), Kirgizia (Chon-Tous), the Ukraine: Solotvino, (Carpathians); Artiomovsk (Donietsk region) and others.

Speleotherapy has been acknowledged as a highly effective medication-free treatment method. It is assumed that during the treatment, the organism adapts to the specific features of the microclimate and alters all its functional systems.

However adaptation of the patients who came from different climate areas, travel and transport problems, and limited number of beds kept back its wide spreading. So HT has been worked out.