Benefits of Routine Therapeutic Massage

massage therapist rubbing a clients back with forearm

Learn How Regular Massages Can Help You

Therapeutic massage offers many potential health benefits including increased blood flood and circulation, decreased tension in the muscles, and increased endorphin levels. These benefits are helpful in the healing process by bringing nutrition to muscles and easing anxiety to reduce pain and speed recovery. However, one session of therapeutic massage may not be enough. Routine therapeutic massages can have significant additional benefits.

Benefits Of Massage Therapy

Massage can combat the negative symptoms stress can cause in our lives. The physical changes massage brings to your body are not limited to increasing relaxation and decreasing anxiety, lowering your blood pressure, increasing circulation, improving recovery from injury, helping you to sleep better, and increasing your ability to concentrate. Learn more about the benefits of massage on your mind, body, and soul.

Massage Is Great For Athletes & Surgery Patients

Prevent Injury

Massage can be a very powerful asset for preventive care. By seeing a massage therapist regularly, you can prevent minor skeletomuscular injuries from becoming major problems that could lead to loss of mobility or flexibility later in life. Therapeutic massage specifically works to lengthen muscles that are stuck in a pattern of chronic shortening. If you’re worried about the cost of regular massage sessions, consider how costly prescription drugs, doctor visits, and surgeries would be. The cost of prevention may be better than the cost of a cure.

Reduce Recovery Time

Massage helps recovery from soft tissue injuries such as sprains and strains. Tissue growth and repair are accelerated by efficient circulation and appropriate stimulation, making massage a great option for injury recovery and treatment.

Make Your Workouts More Effective

Massage can increase endurance, speed up recovery time, control fatigue, and help people feel better when used as part of a regular health program. By helping rid your body of waste, massage enables more productive training, with longer, more effective workouts. Massage helps prepare for strenuous workouts and eliminates subsequent pains of the athlete at any level.

Make Surgery Recovery Easier

Massage reduces post-surgery adhesions and edema and can be used to reduce and realign scar tissue after healing has occurred. Massage can also improve range of motion and flexibility, aiding in the recovery process. For those with a restricted range of motion, massage provides exercise and stretching for atrophied muscles and reduces muscle shortening.

How Massage Can Improve Your Overall Health

Improve Posture

Poor posture often develops over time as a compensation related to joint and muscle discomfort. Routine therapeutic massage combats this by loosening muscles. Massage provides relaxation for joints, allowing the body to return to its natural position.

Promote Circulation & Lymphatic Flow

Massage increases lymph circulation. Lymph is a fluid that rids body tissues of impurities and waste, and is dependent on the squeezing effect of muscles. An active person has better lymph flow than an inactive person.

Therapeutic massages help blood, lymph, and other essential body fluids to flow throughout the body, affecting your largest organ: the skin! Blood carries oxygen and nutrients to organs and muscles within the body for optimal functioning. A regular massage routine could help lower blood pressure, potentially preventing chronic illnesses. Massage also stimulates the flow of lymph, the body’s natural defense system, against toxic invaders. For example, in breast cancer patients, massage has been shown to increase the cells that fight cancer.

Naturally Strengthen Your Immune System

Therapeutic massages can help boost your immune system by increasing the activity level of the body’s defensive cells. Routine massage treatments promote the body’s ability to naturally fight bacteria and infection. If you are always getting sick, or just tend to feel “under the weather” more than most people, a regular massage routine might help you bounce back.

Treat Migraine With Massage

Endorphins, the body’s natural painkiller, is used in chronic illness, injury, and recovery from surgery to control and relieve pain. Targeted massage techniques, including TMJ massage therapy, help alleviate muscle tension and reduce pressure associated with migraines. By focusing on the neck, shoulders, and jaw, targeted massage therapy can address common migraine triggers at the source.

Massage For Pregnant & Elderly Patients

Shorter, Easier Labor For Expecting Mothers

Massage can shorten labor for expectant mothers, as well as lessen the need for medication, reduce the chances for postpartum depression and anxiety, and shorten hospital stays. Targeting common discomforts like back pain, swelling, and fatigue, and promoting relaxation, pregnancy massages can help you feel more comfortable as your body adapts.

Massage Is Great For Older Adults

Massage knows no age limits. It works wonders on young, old, and in between. It can be helpful to the elderly who are looking for relief from the physical effects of aging which can include: thinner and drier skin, reduced tissue elasticity, loss of mobility, slower nervous system response, decreased bone mass, sleeplessness, constipation, and a less efficient immune system.

Five Gold Medal Reasons Olympic Athletes Get Massage Therapy

Man-getting-a-massage-on-his-back

During the Rio Olympics, there was a lot of discussion about massage therapy and how many Olympic athletes incorporate regular massage as an integral part of their hard work and training. What do they know that keeps them strong and healthy through all their years of practice?

Sports Massage is their “Secret Weapon”

Research shows that massage therapy can benefit athletes of all fitness levels, and Olympic Athletes are no exception. So how can a massage strategy keep both the Olympic and average athlete strong and pain free?

1. Reduce DOMS

DOMS is Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness which is an ongoing problem for every athlete. Inflammation is one of the reasons an athlete’s overused muscles ache 48 hours after strenuous activity. Massage will increase the blood flow to the muscles to speed healing and reduce toxins. Combine this with gentle, low-stress activity and the pain goes away.

2. Increase Agility

Agility, the ability to move quickly in another direction, is part of most Olympic Athletes’ requirements. And this agility can be improved with a massage focused on critical stress points, both before and after the action. In fact, some studies have shown that a shorter massage on only the specific muscle groups was more effective than the longer, more relaxing Swedish Massage.

3. Injury Prevention

Injuries are often prevented with a short, pre-activity Sports Massage, tailored to the particular muscle group that will be stressed. Tendons and ligaments are relaxed and more likely to stretch than tear, while blood flow keeps the harmful chemicals from building as fast.

4. Speed Healing

The human body is an amazing machine with the ability to heal itself when provided with the right tools. Massage improves circulation which allows this fast healing while carrying away the chemicals that cause muscle damage. Combine massage with healthy eating which provides the proper fuel, and this human-machine runs (and heals) smoothly and quickly.

5. Reduce Inflammation

Inflammation is the body’s immune response to injury, infection, or toxic chemicals. It’s the localized buildup of white blood cells, dead red blood cells, and bacteria, which cause that area to redden, swell, become hot, and is often painful. It’s a sign that something is wrong (both good and bad), and will usually clear up over time. However, a massage after strenuous exercise will reduce the inflammation quickly, and allow the healing to occur sooner.

So take advantage of the secret Olympic athletes know and include the Sports Massage benefits as part of your personal workout plan. You’ll get better results and enjoy your activities more than ever. That’s a gold medal reason to incorporate massage therapy into your routine.

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