연령별 족욕 선호도와 족욕이 인체 자율 신경기능에 미치는 영향 = Preferential Foot Bathing for Different Age Groups and the Effects of Foot Bathing on Human Autonomic Nervous System

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The survey of foot bathing behaviors and therapeutic effect of heat reactions present elementary data for development of a foot bathing system. However, there are few existing data for foot bathing behaviors and effects. Consequently, the survey were performed to know patterns of foot bathing. We investigated the activities of autonomic nervous system during foot bathing. The effect of foot bathing was evaluated for four subjects by observing the characteristic of heart rate variability(HRV) and bodily temperatures. The foot bathing was done with a commercial foot spa (Duches Co.) utilizing the four functional modes of the spa for two different temperatures of 35℃ and 40℃. The four functional modes were clam, vibration, air bubbles, and both vibration and air bubbles. The experimental results showed that the temperature of foot and that of face right after foot bathing were not that different from each other. But, for HRV, the activation of parasympathetic nerve showed distinctive increase at 40℃ of water temperature. In the analysis of HRV for different functional modes, the change was not distinctive for different modes at 35° of water temperature. However, at 40℃, the activation of sympathetic nerve showed distinctive increases with the increase in the complexity of functional modes.