The importance of wellness and recovery has continued to gain more awareness, particularly this past year during the pandemic. As part of overall wellness, never before have people been as focused on their respiratory health. The way we breathe — nose versus mouth — how we breathe, and what we breathe all make a significant difference in our well-being and physical performance. And as many clubs are getting into more self-care, touchless modalities, you are seeing more and more facilities getting salted not with just sweat but with dry salt therapy, AKA halotherapy.
By simply breathing in dry salt aerosol, inflammation is reduced in the lungs so more oxygen can flow and turn into red blood cells. Dry salt also absorbs the mucous and other foreign substances that we breathe in every day, and salt is antibacterial. Above-ground salt rooms have emerged over the past nine years with over 1,500 salt providers in the U.S. Salt rooms and salt booths have been appearing in resort and destination spas, med spas, country clubs, yoga centers, and dozens and dozens of health clubs around the country.
Why You Should Get Salted
Salt therapy has such a wide bandwidth of providing health and wellness benefits from the very young to aging seniors and everyone in between. Many people are getting salted regularly much like your average fitness club-goer and yoga enthusiast. Maintaining a healthy respiratory and lung system impacts so many aspects of our life — stress, sleep, performance and recovery. Dry salt therapy is a drug-free, safe and complementary treatment that has been shown to relieve symptoms from a variety of respiratory conditions such as allergies, asthma, COPD, bronchitis, etc.
Some of the most competitive athletes have been using dry salt therapy as part of their performance and recovery regime. Several college and professional football players, including San Francisco 49ers cornerback Jimmie Ward, use salt therapy during their off-season training at Above and Beyond Yoga in Mobile, Alabama, while the Gronkowski family is in the final build-out of their new NexGen Fitness franchise opening in Buffalo, New York, that will feature a six-person custom salt room.
Turn Salt into Revenue
Fitness club owners are getting salted with additional monthly revenue and incorporating salt therapy as a profit center. When it comes to square footage, simply installing a plug-and-play salt booth takes as little as three square feet. It’s a 10-minute touchless service that requires minimum labor and your consumable of salt costs just pennies a day. Julie and Jeff Cohen are getting ready to open their new Athletic Republic location in Boca Raton, Florida, and are incorporating a salt booth into their program of services for performance and recovery.
According to the Cohens, “Having experienced the benefits firsthand, it’s just a natural fit to have a salt booth installed. It provides great benefits for all types of people, it’s easy and it generates additional revenue.”
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Leo Tonkin is the founder and CEO of SALT Chamber, and the founding director of the Salt Therapy Association. He can be reached at leo@saltchamberinc.com.
