Terrenkur or metered walking: who invented it and why?
Terrenkur - dosed walking, one of the methods of resort rehabilitation of patients with diseases of cardiovascular, nervous, digestive, musculoskeletal systems. There are other indications for prescribing this method, but we will tell you more about them a little further on.
History of terrenkur
Let's start the article with a brief historical and etymological excursion. The word "terrenkur" is of German origin: Terrainkur literally translates as "treatment by the territory" or "treatment by the terrain". Initially, terrenkur was the name of the treatment method itself, but in time, it became the name of the therapeutic walking trail itself. It is difficult to say who was the first in history to discover and prove the healing properties of hiking, but the founder of the term "terrenkur" is considered to be the German physician and innovator Max Joseph Oertel.
Dr. Oertel studied the research and works of Drs. Harting, Werber, Schweninger and proposed to the scientific community a new method of fighting obesity - "Oertelsche terrenkur" (Oertelsche Terrainkur). In 1884, Ertel published Therapie der Kreislaufstörungen (The Treatment of Circulatory Disorders), a paper on terrenekur, developed on the basis of his own observations and Pettenkofer-Feutschen's metabolic studies of 1882. There he described a method of preventing and treating obesity and heart disease by means of dosed walking with changes in speed, duration of walking and angle of inclination of the path.
Action and indications for the appointment of terrenkur
Terrenkur is similar to running, cycling and skiing in its effect on the human body - it is primarily a training of the cardiovascular system. Therapeutic trails are always laid out away from transportation and industry, most often in the mountains and dense forests, so it has a positive effect on the nervous and respiratory systems. Dosed walking (under the supervision of a doctor!) develops endurance, strengthens different muscle groups of the legs and back, oxygenates the blood, normalizes the psycho-emotional state, maintains the level of motor activity and cognitive function in sick and elderly people.
Terrenkur is less demanding to the level of human endurance than Nordic walking, and also does not require special equipment or special technique of movement. During the first sessions, you start walking on flat terrain with an increase in the angle of inclination up to 5°. By the end of the course, the pace increases (from 60 to 100 steps per minute and more), ascents in small areas become steep (up to 30 °), the length of routes increases from a few hundred meters to 3 kilometers and more. The doctor or instructor should explain the norms of proper breathing through the nose. Usually it is 1 breath for every 2-4 steps and exhalation for 3-5 steps. When walking uphill, the breathing rate increases: 1 inhale for 2-3 steps and exhale for 3-4 steps. More details you will be told by experts at the resort.
So, indications for terrenkur are:
- diseases of the respiratory system;
- diseases of the cardiovascular system, including arterial hypertension;
- diseases of the musculoskeletal system;
- metabolic disorders;
- diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, especially those associated with impaired peristalsis;
- rehabilitation after injuries, surgeries, prolonged illnesses;
- maintenance of muscle tone during normal pregnancy;
- maintenance of general tone and cognitive function for the elderly.
The best European resorts with terrenkur
Historically, terrenkur did not take root in Europe, but it became a part of the program of the spa-resort treatment in Soviet health resorts, and then it migrated to the newly formed after the collapse of the country. For example, dozens of kilometers of terrenekurs laid in the picturesque forests of the Carpathians: in Truskavets, Morshyn and Skhidnitsa.
If we talk about Europe, a lot of therapeutic trails have been preserved in Germany, Austria and Switzerland since the XIX century. Famous terrencourts were laid in 2018 in the vicinity of the Parchines waterfall, in northern Italy. In Estonia, terrenkurs are very popular; according to the data of recent years, more than 1100 kilometers of groomed trails have already been laid, some of them even have the possibility to produce artificial snow.
Speaking about the resorts presented on the sanatoriums.com portal, in addition to the therapeutic trails of the Ukrainian Carpathians, there are terrenkurs in Czech Karlovy Vary (more than 100 km), Marianske Lazne ("Goethe's Path", etc.), Frantiskovy Lazne (so-called "Heart Routes"), Lithuanian Birstonas, Jurmala, Rimske Toplice, Ischia, Sarvar, Naftalan. There are healing trails in most seaside and climatic resorts, ask at your hotels!
