A Healthy Dose of Salt Air

Today I noticed that my daily Groupon was for salt air therapy treatments at a new salt air spa. What? I had to take a look. I had never heard of this spa treatment before, so I googled it. Apparently salt air breathing is the new ancient ethnic thing that Western allergy sufferers will be spending their money on. One can also obtain a salt inhaler online, which claims that it is based on an "age-old" treatment for asthma, bronchitis, whooping cough, hayfever and colds. Whooping cough? Haven't heard of that in a while. But other websites give a much more scientific explanation of what salt air therapy is (a.k.a speleotherapy from the Greek speleos, meaning cave).

Apparently back in old Russia, if your Uncle Vanya came down with a case of whooping-cough, you would take him up to a cave in the local salt mine to take the cure. The Wieliczka Salt Mine in Poland was active from the 13th century until 2007, and today is a popular tourist destination because of the elaborate rooms that were added to various empty chambers of the mine. You can view splendors such as The Last Supper carved in salt. Just don't bring a horse with you.



But if you're too broke to make a trip to Poland, or too broke to afford spa treatmeants, you can obtain a salt inhaler, or as some saltier web purveyors call them, salt pipes.

Now the term "salt pipe" tends to put me in mind of an ancient, white-bearded, leathery-skinned fisherman standing on the dock regally after a hard day's labor, a plume of smoke rising in the misty Maine air from the tip of his weathered old pipe. Not so. A salt pipe (or inhaler) actually looks like this:



It doesn't look all that interesting, far less so than the Neti Pot. This lady isn't even smiling. She doesn't look excited about her salt pipe at all. She just looks like she's about to pump hand soap into her mouth. It has none of the freakishness of the Neti Pot. I purchased one a few years ago when everyone was obsessed with them, hoping to find relief from my frequent sinus infections. While even my doctor was plugging it at the time, I didn't notice any improvement. Pouring water into my nose only gave me the sensation that I was drowning. I still use it sometimes, but only when I'm desperate for sinus relief. The salt pipe looks a lot easier to use than a Neti Pot, but I still wonder why a salt crystal encased in a piece of plastic with a mouthpiece attached to it should cost $39.95.

Like most holistic health trends, salt air therapy claims to be derived from ancient wisdom, but I would rather get my salt air while sailing or lounging on a white sandy beach. Still, hanging out in a cave sounds appealing. Hanging out in a spa, not so much.

Here is a tangent that I think you will enjoy: I've never had a good experience at a spa. I'm not fond of the nail salon. Mostly it's because I'm impatient, but it's also because every time I go, I have a bad experience.

My aversion to nail salons stems from an experience I had as a ten year-old. The night before my parents' trip to Curacao, my mom was out getting a mani-pedi. I was at home when the phone rang. "Hello?"

A frantic voice greeted me in broken English. "Your mom... she have a hurt but... she okay, she okay!"

I had no idea what the lady was talking about. "Okay..." I said, and I hung up.

A couple of minutes later, another strange lady rang and asked for my dad. She was a patron at the nail salon who happened to be sitting in the chair next to my mother.. For a few hours I had no idea what was going on, but the story unfolded upon my mother's return from the emergency room.

My mom had been getting a pedicure. The nail technician was using a sharp instrument to remove the calluses from my mom's feet. She cut too deeply and my mom started bleeding. The water was red, and my mom quickly passed out. She awoke to a tiny Vietnamese man patting her hand and calling her name. The paramedics came in. There was tobacco on her toe where one of the salon employees had unrolled a cigarette upon it- some kind of holistic remedy. "Who put that shit there?" one of the paramedics barked. "She'll get sepsis!" A medic fit my mother with an oxygen mask. The air inside the mask was metallic and it made her feel sick. Her consciousness started to waver. One of the parademics checked the tank. "This tank is empty!" They loaded my mom up and took her to the hospital. Her toe was okay and she was able to go on her vacation the next day as planned, but she promptly found a new nail place upon her return. I, however, have never had a desire to put my toes at someone else's mercy.

One thing I used to permit at the nail salon was the simple waxing of my eyebrows. My eyebrows started to grow unruly when I hit puberty, so it was an easy solution, considering I was always waiting for my my mom at the nail salon anyway. By the age of 16 I was quite used to it. Then I washed my face one morning after getting a wax the night before. I was shocked to discover that a huge chunk of my left eyebrow was simply no longer there. The hair had somehow been smoothed with lotion to cover up the bald spot before I left the salon, but after scrubbing my face, there it was, a gaping hole in the middle of my brow. I had to fill it in with eyeliner for three weeks.

Then there was the en suite massage that came with our honeymoon package at our hotel in St. Lucia. It was the only professional massage I'd ever received, and it mostly felt good, except for the part that I remarked on afterward to my husband. "Did they, you know, massage your butt?" (They did.)

The worst spa experience I've had thus far, though, was the well-meaning gift of a facial a few years ago. It started with an electric gun-looking device meant to zap my zits. It felt like a bee repeatedly stinging me in the face. There was one stubborn pimple that hadn't yet formed a head at the crease of my nose, and the esthetician struggled to get it out. She couldn't, but she did manage to make it red, angry, and infected-looking for the next week. After submitting me to this torture, she smoothed my face with mud. Then she put on some form of Celtic Moods CD, rubbed my hands in goo, and stuck blistering hot mitts on both my hands. She left the room to allow me to relax for 20 minutes, but the table was hard, the mitts on my hands were nearly burning my flesh, and the mood CD was profoundly annoying. Yet for some reason, I waited there flat on my back, like a corpse, until my captor returned to free me from my bonds. She showed me a mirror. My face looked like a piece of raw meat. "Your skin is just glowing," she said. For the next week, my face blossomed with enormous zits. It was outrageous.

So you'll forgive me if I've been put off spas for life. I'm just not the type to find those type of things relaxing. I'm not about to pay $25 to get coated in salt air. But I'll imagine doing it and imagine it being relaxing, and I enjoy myself a lot more in my imagination.