Epsom Salt Baths: What Dissolves in the Water and What Does Not

The carton usually sits on the bottom shelf of the pharmacy, priced like a bag of flour, promising nothing and somehow implying everything. Sore back? Epsom salt. Rough week? Epsom salt. Your grandmother swore by it, your physical therapist mentions it with a shrug, and half the internet insists it pulls toxins out through your pores.

Here is the honest place to start: chemistry. When those coarse crystals hit warm water, they vanish, genuinely, completely. The more interesting question is what happens next, at the border between the water and your skin. That border turns out to be far less porous than the marketing suggests.

None of this means the bath is worthless. It means the credit may belong somewhere other than the salt. Sorting out which is which is worth twenty minutes of your time, about the length of a good soak.

What Is Epsom Salt, Exactly, and Why Isn't It Salt?

Despite the name, Epsom salt has nothing to do with the shaker on your table. Table salt is sodium chloride. Epsom salt is magnesium sulfate, a naturally occurring mineral compound named for Epsom, a town in Surrey, England, where it was first identified in the waters of a mineral spring in the early 1600s. Farmers noticed their cattle refused to drink from the spring, the water was bitter, but people bathing in it reported that scrapes and rashes seemed to settle. A spa town was born, and so was a remedy that has outlived nearly four centuries of medical fashion.

The ‘salt’ label sticks because of the crystal structure: both compounds form the same kind of ionic lattice, the orderly grid of charged particles that gives salts their glassy, crunchy texture. Chemically, though, they behave differently in the body. Sodium is the mineral most of us get too much of. Magnesium is one many adults run short on, national dietary surveys suggest a large share of Americans consume less than recommended, according to the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements.

That shortfall is exactly why Epsom salt marketing works so well. Magnesium matters: it participates in more than 300 enzyme systems, including ones governing muscle and nerve function. The leap the marketing makes, that a bath can top up your levels, is where the evidence gets thin, as we’ll see.

What Happens When Epsom Salt Hits the Water?

Pour a scoop into a warm tub and swish. Within a minute or two, the crystals are gone. This is true dissolution, not suspension: water molecules pry the lattice apart, and magnesium sulfate splits into two separate charged particles, a positively charged magnesium ion and a negatively charged sulfate ion, each one wrapped in its own shell of water molecules.

Water is remarkably good at this. A standard tub could dissolve far more Epsom salt than any bath recipe calls for, so if you see grit at the bottom, the water is likely just cold or the crystals need stirring, not saturated. Warmth speeds the process, which is one practical reason to add the salt while the tub is filling.

It helps to keep the resulting concentration in perspective. A typical bath holds roughly 40 gallons, about 150 liters. Two cups of Epsom salt weigh around a pound. Dissolved, that works out to a solution of roughly 0.3 percent, about ten times more dilute than seawater. You are not floating in the Dead Sea; you are sitting in very slightly mineralized bathwater.

So the first half of this article’s title has a clean answer: everything dissolves. The crystals disappear, the ions disperse evenly, and the water looks and feels almost unchanged, perhaps a touch silkier. The second half, what does not dissolve its way into you, is where honesty gets more interesting.

Does Magnesium Really Absorb Through Your Skin?

This is the claim the entire Epsom salt industry leans on, and it deserves a straight look. Your skin’s outermost layer, the stratum corneum, exists specifically to keep water and dissolved substances out. It is a stack of flattened dead cells sealed in lipids, dermatologists compare it to brick and mortar. Charged particles like magnesium ions are precisely the kind of thing this barrier blocks best, because ions cannot slip through fatty membranes the way small oily molecules can.

What does the research say? A 2017 review published in the journal Nutrients, indexed on PubMed, examined the evidence for transdermal magnesium and concluded that claims of meaningful absorption through intact skin are not supported by rigorous data. The studies most often cited in favor were small, unpublished in peer-reviewed form, or methodologically shaky, some measured magnesium in sweat or on the skin surface rather than in the bloodstream. Hair follicles and sweat glands offer a theoretical shortcut through the barrier, but they cover roughly 0.1 to 1 percent of skin surface, too little plumbing to matter.

If your goal is genuinely more magnesium, the reliable route is the one your gut evolved for: leafy greens, nuts, seeds, legumes, and whole grains, per NIH guidance. A bath is many pleasant things. A mineral delivery system, on current evidence, is not one of them, and a wellness article that tells you otherwise is repeating marketing, not medicine.

What Does Soaking in an Epsom Salt Bath Actually Do?

Quite a lot, actually, just mostly through the water, not the salt. Warm water between about 92 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit sets off a cascade of well-documented physiological effects. Blood vessels near the skin widen, improving circulation to muscles and joints. Muscle tissue itself becomes more pliable when warmed, which is why stiffness eases within minutes of sinking in. Heat also modulates pain signaling: warmth activates skin receptors whose input can partially crowd out pain messages traveling to the brain, the same principle behind a heating pad.

Buoyancy pulls its weight too, literally. Submerged to the chest, your body bears a fraction of its usual load, giving compressed joints and a tired lower back a temporary vacation from gravity. Anyone who has stood all day on concrete knows this relief is not imaginary.

Then there is the part hardest to measure and easiest to underrate: the ritual. Twenty minutes with the door closed, no phone, warm water up to your shoulders: that is a structured relaxation practice by any name, and deliberate downtime measurably lowers markers of stress arousal.

Does the dissolved magnesium sulfate add anything on top? Possibly a slightly softer water feel, and some people find soaks help loosen rough or flaky skin. Beyond that, controlled evidence separating salted baths from plain warm ones is essentially absent. My editorial read: the tub is doing the work, the salt is doing the marketing, and the bath is still worth taking.

How Much Epsom Salt Should You Put in a Bath?

There is no clinically established amount, because there is no clinically established effect that scales with quantity. What exists instead is convention: most package directions suggest about two cups for a standard-size tub, dissolved under warm running water. Cleveland Clinic’s guidance lands in the same range. More is not better: it simply makes more expensive bathwater and leaves a heavier mineral film on your skin and the tub.

Soak type	Typical water volume	Common amount	Notes
Foot soak (basin)	1–2 gallons	About ½ cup	Water warm, not hot; check temperature by hand first
Sitz bath	3–4 inches in tub or basin	A few tablespoons, optional	Warmth is the active ingredient; salt is tradition
Standard bathtub	~40 gallons	About 2 cups	Add while filling so crystals dissolve fully
Deep or soaking tub	60+ gallons	Up to 3 cups	Proportional, not escalating

A few practical notes. Choose plain Epsom salt labeled USP, which indicates it meets pharmaceutical purity standards, rather than heavily fragranced blends if your skin is reactive, added dyes and perfumes are a far more common cause of bath-related irritation than the mineral itself. Stir until you see no crystals. And keep the water comfortably warm rather than hot; heat that reddens your skin is dehydrating it, not healing it.

How Long Should You Sit in an Epsom Salt Bath?

Twelve to twenty minutes covers what a warm soak can offer. The physiological benefits, vasodilation, muscle warming, the shift toward a calmer nervous system state, arrive within the first ten minutes or so and then plateau. Nothing extra is earned by staying until the water goes cold, and a few things are lost.

Long, hot soaks strip the skin’s natural lipids, the same reason dermatologists advise short, lukewarm showers for people with dry skin. Past the half-hour mark you may notice pruning, tightness, or itch afterward: your skin’s polite complaint. Hot water also pulls blood toward the surface and away from your core; stand up too fast after a long soak and the head-rush is real. People taking blood pressure medications or prone to lightheadedness should treat the tub’s edge like a curb: pause, then rise slowly.

Timing can matter as much as duration. Researchers who pooled results from more than a dozen studies on bathing and sleep found that a warm bath or shower taken one to two hours before bed helped people fall asleep roughly ten minutes faster on average. The mechanism is elegant: warming your skin accelerates the natural evening drop in core body temperature that cues sleep. Note what carried that effect, water temperature and timing. The studies did not require, or credit, anything dissolved in the water.

A sensible routine: fill the tub warm, add the salt if you enjoy it, set a timer for 15 minutes, and keep a glass of water within reach.

What Happens If You Don't Rinse Off After an Epsom Salt Bath?

Nothing dangerous, but possibly something itchy. As bathwater evaporates from your skin, the dissolved magnesium sulfate cannot evaporate with it. It gets left behind as an invisible mineral film, the same way a dried puddle of ocean water leaves a white crust on rocks. On skin, that residue can act as a mild drying agent, drawing moisture outward and leaving some people feeling tight, powdery, or itchy an hour later.

Whether that matters depends on your skin. If yours is oily or unbothered, you may towel off and never notice. If you have dry skin, eczema-prone patches, or you are past the age when skin holds moisture easily, the residue is more likely to announce itself. Winter makes everything worse, since indoor heating is already pulling water out of your skin around the clock.

The fix costs sixty seconds: a quick lukewarm rinse in the shower after you drain the tub, then pat, don’t scrub, dry, and apply a plain moisturizer while your skin is still slightly damp. That last step matters more than the rinse itself; damp skin locks in applied moisture far better than dry skin does.

One myth worth retiring here: leaving the salt on your skin does not extend any benefit, because, as covered above, the magnesium was never meaningfully passing through in the first place. Rinsing off washes away residue, not results.

Do Epsom Salt Baths Help Sore Muscles?

Warm baths genuinely help sore muscles; whether the salt adds anything is the unproven part. Let’s separate the two claims, because they usually arrive glued together.

Heat therapy for muscle soreness has decades of support. Warmth increases blood flow to fatigued tissue, relaxes muscle spindles, improves the stretchiness of connective tissue, and dampens pain perception. For the garden-variety ache after a hard workout, a long hike, or a weekend of yard work, a 15-minute warm soak is a legitimate, evidence-aligned comfort measure: the aquatic cousin of a heating pad, with buoyancy thrown in for free.

The magnesium claim rests on a specific chain of logic: muscles need magnesium, cramps can accompany low magnesium, therefore soaking in magnesium fixes sore muscles. The first two links hold. The third breaks at the skin barrier. No well-designed trial has shown that an Epsom salt bath outperforms a plain warm bath for muscle soreness, and the transdermal absorption required for the theory to work has not been demonstrated in rigorous research.

Here is the honest framing: if your post-workout soak feels better with Epsom salt in it, keep the ritual: the cost is trivial and the harm, for most people, is nil. Just don’t let the bath substitute for the things that actually change soreness over time: gradual training progression, adequate protein and overall nutrition, hydration, and sleep. A tub is recovery’s dessert, not its main course.

Can an Epsom Salt Bath Calm Stress or Improve Sleep?

The bath, yes, with better evidence than most wellness rituals can claim. The salt, unproven.

Warm-water immersion reliably nudges the nervous system toward its parasympathetic, rest-and-digest mode. Heart rate settles, muscle tension drops, and the enforced stillness interrupts the mental churn that a phone in hand keeps feeding. This is not mystical; it is thermoregulation and behavior working together, and you can feel it happen somewhere around minute eight.

The sleep evidence is more specific. Warming the body in the evening triggers heat loss through the skin of the hands and feet afterward, which accelerates the drop in core temperature that signals the brain it is time for sleep. Pooled research on passive body heating found that baths or showers around 104 degrees Fahrenheit, taken one to two hours before bedtime, shortened the time it took to fall asleep by about ten minutes on average. For a habit that costs nothing and doubles as hygiene, that is a respectable effect.

Where does magnesium fit? Oral magnesium’s relationship to sleep is itself an area of ongoing, mixed research, and that is magnesium that actually reaches the bloodstream. Bath magnesium, which largely does not, cannot reasonably claim credit. Some people describe Epsom baths as uniquely calming, and the honest explanation is probably expectation plus ritual: you have marked this bath as special, so your mind treats it that way. That effect is real in its own right. It just belongs to you, not the crystals.

Is an Epsom Salt Bath Good for a Bartholin Cyst?

The warm water is the recommended part; the Epsom salt is optional tradition. Bartholin glands sit on either side of the vaginal opening, and when one becomes blocked, fluid backs up into a cyst, often painless and small, sometimes tender or noticeably swollen.

For a small, uninfected cyst, the standard first-line home measure recommended by major medical centers is the sitz bath: sitting in a few inches of warm water several times a day for three to four days. Mayo Clinic notes this can help a small cyst rupture and drain on its own. The mechanism is warmth, improved local blood flow and softened tissue around the blocked duct. NHS guidance similarly centers on warm soaks and simple comfort measures. Neither recommends Epsom salt specifically, and no clinical trial shows salted water outperforms plain warm water for this purpose. If adding a few tablespoons makes the routine feel more purposeful, it is unlikely to hurt intact skin; just skip fragranced blends near sensitive tissue.

Know when home care is not enough. See a clinician if the cyst is painful, growing quickly, or making sitting and walking uncomfortable; if you develop fever or the area becomes hot and intensely tender, which suggests an abscess needing medical drainage; or if you are over 40, when a new lump in this area should be examined to rule out rarer causes. A sitz bath is a reasonable first step: it should not become a weeks-long substitute for an exam.

Are Epsom Salt Soaks Safe for Eczema, Psoriasis, and Rough Skin?

Sometimes soothing, sometimes stinging: it depends heavily on the state of your skin barrier. People with psoriasis and eczema have long reported that mineral soaks help soften scale and loosen flaky plaques, making moisturizers and prescribed topical treatments easier to apply afterward. Warm water alone does much of that softening; the salt may contribute a mild exfoliating, scale-loosening effect that some find worthwhile.

The caution runs the other way when skin is cracked, raw, or actively flaring. Anyone who has swum in the ocean with a fresh scrape can predict what salted water does to broken skin: it stings, and it can further dry an already compromised barrier. Dermatology guidance for eczema generally favors short, lukewarm baths followed immediately by moisturizer, the soak-and-seal approach, and any additive that leaves skin tighter or itchier afterward is working against that goal.

A sensible protocol if you want to try it:

• Test first with a brief soak, ten minutes, modest amount of salt, and judge how your skin feels three hours later, not just in the tub.
• Keep water lukewarm; heat that flushes your skin worsens itch for many people with eczema.
• Rinse off, pat dry, and moisturize within three minutes while skin is damp.
• Skip the soak entirely over open cracks, weeping patches, or any area that looks infected.

If you are under a dermatologist’s care, mention the habit; soaks can complement a treatment plan, but they should not quietly replace one.

Can an Epsom Salt Bath Help You Lose Weight or 'Detox'?

No, and this claim deserves a firmer hand than most bath myths. Start with weight loss. A hot soak makes you sweat, and sweat has weight, so the scale may dip a fraction of a pound afterward. That loss is water, and your body will reclaim every ounce with the next glass you drink, as it should, since that fluid is doing essential work. No mechanism exists by which sitting in magnesium sulfate solution burns fat, alters metabolism, or shrinks anything other than your fingertips.

The detox claim is more persistent and equally hollow. The pitch says toxins exit through your pores into the water, sometimes ‘drawn out’ by the salt. Physiology says otherwise. Your liver chemically neutralizes unwanted compounds; your kidneys filter roughly 150 quarts of blood per day and export the waste as urine. Sweat is overwhelmingly water and electrolytes, it is a cooling system, not a waste chute, and skin is designed as a barrier in both directions. Nothing about dissolved magnesium changes that architecture. If the water looks cloudy after a soak, you are seeing skin cells, oils, and soap residue, not extracted toxins.

Why does this matter beyond pedantry? Because detox framing quietly teaches people that health is something you flush out in an evening rather than build through unglamorous fundamentals, food, movement, sleep, not smoking. A bath can absolutely support those fundamentals by lowering stress and improving sleep onset. Let it be what it is. It does not need a fake job description.

Why You Should Never Drink Bath Epsom Salt

The carton in your bathroom is for the tub, and it should stay there. Magnesium sulfate taken by mouth has a long history as a laxative: it draws water into the intestines, which is exactly why swallowing it casually is a bad idea. Bath-grade products may include fragrances, oils, or dyes never intended for ingestion, and even plain USP-grade Epsom salt taken orally is something to discuss with a clinician first, not improvise from a wellness post.

The larger safety issue is magnesium overload. Healthy kidneys clear excess magnesium efficiently, which is why dietary magnesium from food carries essentially no toxicity risk. Swallowed magnesium salts are a different story: in large amounts, or in anyone whose kidneys are impaired, magnesium can accumulate in the blood. According to the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, elevated magnesium levels can cause nausea, flushing, low blood pressure, muscle weakness, and, at high concentrations, dangerous heart rhythm disturbances. Older adults and people with kidney disease face the most risk because clearance slows.

Children add another layer of caution. A carton of white crystals in the bathroom looks unremarkable, which is precisely the problem; store it as you would any other product you would not want a toddler sampling, and call Poison Control immediately if a child swallows any.

None of this makes the bath itself risky, soaking is not swallowing, and the skin barrier that blocks magnesium from getting in is, for once, working in your favor. The rule is simply this: the tub, not the mouth.

Who Should Skip Epsom Salt Baths, or Ask First?

For most healthy adults, a warm Epsom soak is about as low-risk as home remedies get. A handful of situations call for more caution, and they mostly involve either the skin, the kidneys, or the heat.

• Open wounds, severe burns, or skin infections. Soaking broken skin in a shared tub invites irritation and, in the case of infection, can worsen matters. Wait until skin is closed, or ask your clinician how to cleanse the area instead.
• Diabetes, especially with foot involvement. Prolonged soaking softens and can break down skin, and reduced sensation may hide water that is too hot. Many diabetes care guidelines specifically discourage routine foot soaks; check with your care team before making them a habit.
• Kidney disease. The bath itself poses little magnesium risk, but any oral use of Epsom salt is off the table without medical guidance, since impaired kidneys cannot clear excess magnesium.
• Heart conditions, low blood pressure, or medications that lower blood pressure. Hot water shifts blood toward the skin; lightheadedness on standing is the classic result. Keep water warm rather than hot, and rise slowly.
• Pregnancy. Warm baths are generally considered fine, but water hot enough to raise core body temperature is discouraged, particularly early in pregnancy. Aim for comfortably warm, not steaming, and confirm specifics with your obstetric clinician.
• Very young children and frail older adults. Thinner skin, faster overheating, and fall risk all argue for shorter, cooler, supervised soaks.

When in doubt, the question costs nothing: mention the habit at your next appointment.

When to See a Doctor

A bath is a comfort measure, and comfort measures have a shelf life. The moment a soak becomes something you are using to postpone an appointment, the calculus has flipped. Reach out to a clinician if any of the following applies.

• Muscle or joint pain that persists beyond two weeks, keeps returning without an obvious cause, or comes with swelling, warmth, redness, or fever, signals that point beyond ordinary soreness.
• Pain with numbness, tingling, or weakness, especially radiating down an arm or leg, which suggests nerve involvement that warm water will not address.
• A Bartholin cyst that is painful, enlarging, or accompanied by fever, or any new genital lump if you are over 40. Abscesses need medical drainage; sitz baths alone will not resolve them.
• Skin that worsens with soakingspreading redness, weeping, crusting, or streaks extending from a wound, any of which can indicate infection.
• Frequent muscle cramps or twitches, which can occasionally reflect an electrolyte or medication issue worth checking with bloodwork rather than treating from the tub.
• Dizziness or palpitations during warm baths, particularly if you take heart or blood pressure medications.
• Any swallowed Epsom salt in a child, or symptoms such as nausea, flushing, or weakness after intentional oral use, contact Poison Control or seek care promptly.

None of this is meant to make a tub feel hazardous. It is meant to keep the bath in its proper role: a pleasant supporting act, never the whole treatment plan.

The Bottom Line: Keep the Bath, Lose the Mythology

Strip away four centuries of folklore and a modern wellness industry, and the Epsom salt bath resolves into something refreshingly simple. The salt dissolves fully, chemistry keeps that promise without fail. The magnesium, by the best available evidence, mostly stays in the water, blocked by a skin barrier that spent millions of years learning to keep dissolved minerals out. And the warm water quietly does nearly everything the salt gets credit for: loosening muscles, easing joint load, settling the nervous system, and, timed an hour or two before bed, helping you fall asleep measurably faster.

That is not a debunking so much as a reassignment of credit, and it comes with practical upside. You can stop worrying about brands, quantities, and premium blends, because the tub was the therapy all along. You can spend two cups or zero and get essentially the same physiological result. You can rinse off afterward without fear of washing away benefits, because the benefits were never sitting on your skin.

My honest recommendation, for what a health writer’s opinion is worth: keep the ritual if you love it. A weekly fifteen-minute soak behind a closed door, phone in another room, is one of the cheapest legitimate stress interventions available, and the faint mineral silkiness of Epsom water makes the habit easier to keep. Just hold two ideas at once: the bath is real medicine of a modest kind, and the salt is mostly ceremony. Ceremony has its place. It just shouldn’t write the health claims.

Frequently asked questions

What does soaking in an Epsom salt bath do?

It relaxes muscles, eases joint load, and calms the nervous system, effects that come mainly from warm water, not the salt. Heat widens blood vessels and softens muscle tissue, buoyancy takes weight off joints, and enforced quiet lowers stress arousal. The dissolved magnesium sulfate has not been shown to absorb through intact skin in meaningful amounts, so treat the salt as a pleasant ritual rather than the active ingredient.

What happens if you don't rinse off after an Epsom salt bath?

Nothing harmful, but a mineral residue stays on your skin as the water evaporates, and it can leave dry or sensitive skin feeling tight, powdery, or itchy. People with eczema-prone or aging skin notice it most, especially in winter. A sixty-second lukewarm rinse followed by moisturizer on damp skin solves it. Leaving the residue on does not extend any benefit, since the magnesium was not passing through your skin anyway.

How long should you sit in an Epsom salt bath?

Twelve to twenty minutes is plenty. The circulation, muscle-relaxing, and calming effects of warm water arrive within the first ten minutes and then level off, while longer hot soaks strip skin oils and can leave you pruned, itchy, or lightheaded on standing. Keep the water comfortably warm rather than hot, drink water afterward, and rise slowly from the tub, especially if you take blood pressure medications.

Is an Epsom salt bath good for a Bartholin cyst?

Warm sitz baths, a few inches of warm water, several times daily for three to four days, are the standard home measure and can help a small cyst drain on its own. The benefit comes from warmth; Epsom salt is optional and has no proven added effect. See a doctor if the cyst is painful, growing, or accompanied by fever, or if you are over 40 and notice any new lump in that area.

How much Epsom salt should you put in a bath?

About two cups for a standard 40-gallon tub is the conventional amount, added under warm running water so the crystals dissolve fully. A foot basin needs roughly half a cup; a deep soaking tub up to three. There is no clinical dose because no effect has been shown to scale with quantity, more salt just means more residue. Choose plain, USP-labeled Epsom salt over fragranced blends if your skin is reactive.

Does magnesium from an Epsom salt bath absorb through your skin?

Not in any meaningful amount, based on current evidence. A 2017 review of transdermal magnesium research found the supporting studies were small, unpublished, or methodologically weak, and skin’s outer barrier is specifically built to block charged particles like magnesium ions. If you want more magnesium, food is the reliable route, leafy greens, nuts, seeds, legumes, and whole grains, with any supplement questions directed to your clinician.

Can an Epsom salt bath help you lose weight or detox your body?

No. Any weight lost in a hot bath is sweat, water your body promptly reclaims, and no mechanism exists by which soaking burns fat. The detox claim also fails physiology: your liver and kidneys remove waste, sweat is a cooling fluid rather than a waste route, and skin is a barrier in both directions. A bath can genuinely lower stress and support sleep, which are real health contributions that need no invented ones.

Can you drink Epsom salt dissolved in water?

Don’t do this without medical guidance. Swallowed magnesium sulfate pulls water into the intestines and acts as a laxative, bath-grade products may contain additives never meant for ingestion, and excess oral magnesium can be dangerous for people with kidney disease, causing nausea, low blood pressure, weakness, and heart rhythm problems at high levels. Store the carton away from children and call Poison Control if a child swallows any.

Are Epsom salt baths safe during pregnancy?

Comfortably warm baths are generally considered fine in pregnancy, and the salt adds no known risk to intact skin. The real caution is temperature: water hot enough to raise your core body temperature is discouraged, particularly in early pregnancy. Keep the bath warm rather than steaming, limit soaks to about 15 minutes, rise slowly, and confirm any bathing questions with your obstetric clinician, especially late in pregnancy.

Do Epsom salt baths help eczema or psoriasis?

Some people find soaks soften scale and make moisturizers and prescribed treatments easier to apply, but salted water can sting and further dry cracked or flaring skin. Test with a short lukewarm soak, judge how your skin feels hours later, rinse afterward, and moisturize within three minutes while damp. Skip soaks over open, weeping, or infected-looking areas, and tell your dermatologist about the habit so it fits your treatment plan.

References

• Bartholin's cyst, NHS
• Magnesium in diet, MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia

This article is for general information only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult a qualified doctor about your individual situation.