One of the earliest recognized therapeutic methods is massage. Many ancient societies, including the Greeks, Egyptians, Chinese, and Indians, believed that massage therapy had healing properties that could be used to treat a variety of ailments.
It is a method for enhancing someone’s health and wellbeing by kneading or working with their muscles and other soft tissue. This manual therapy involves gripping, manipulating, and applying pressure to the muscles, tendons, ligaments and tendons, and fascia.
In addition to standard therapy, massage therapy is becoming beneficial for an increasing range of medical conditions. The advantages of massage therapy for health will be discussed in this article.
Varieties of massage
There are numerous ways to apply pressure, touch, and intensity during a massage. Long, flowing strokes, kneading, deep circular motions, vibrating, and tapping are all used in the gentle Swedish massage technique. It is both invigorating and comforting.
A deep massage is a type of massage that concentrates on the connective tissue and muscles at their lowest levels. It is frequently used to alleviate muscle damage following an injury.
Sports massage focuses on the unique needs of athletes, as opposed to standard Swedish massage, which treats everyone. Trigger point massage targets tense spots in your muscles that may result from overusing them or from an accident.
Lymphatic fluid eliminates waste and preserves body fluids. Soft pressure is used in lymphatic massage to enhance lymphatic flow. Those with inflammation, particularly those with mastectomies and arthritis, benefit from lymphatic massage.
Massage therapy’s health benefits
Many times, massage therapy is considered a component of integrative medicine. It is used in conjunction with traditional therapy for a variety of conditions and diseases.
Therapeutic massage improves performance, decreases cell adhesion, promotes muscular flexibility, warms and increases blood flow to the muscles, and lowers the risk of injury.
Therapeutic massage has been used all throughout the world for thousands of years. A study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine by UK researchers reveals that therapeutic massage makes up about 45% of the total time spent receiving physiotherapy treatments. There are several applications for therapeutic massage, including as pre-competition, during competition, and rehabilitation following the event.
Know what are massage’s health benefits? – BBC World Service podcast CrowdScience
Mechanical pressure is applied during therapeutic massage to reduce tissue adhesion. Increasing the mobility and length of adherent or reduced connective cells may improve muscle-tendon compliance.
Muscle-tendon unit conformance is assessed biomechanically using three methods: dynamic passive stiffness, strong active stiffness, and stationary joint end range of motion.
Massage therapy has been shown to alleviate stress, promote relaxation, ease pain and tension in the muscles, improve circulation, vitality, and alertness, lower blood pressure and heart rate, and strengthen the immune system.
What are the health benefits of massage?
Massage offers several physiological mechanisms that have positive effects on the body.
Shallow skin friction raises local temperature, which causes hyperemia. Blood flow is increased by localized heating. Although massage warms the skin and the muscles, it could not have an impact on blood flow to the muscles.
Getting a massage therapy can help you relax and relieve stress and anxiety. The parasympathetic nervous system is in charge of routine, daily activities that lead to rest and relaxation, whereas the sympathetic nervous system is in charge of the “fight-or-flight” response during stressful situations.
A study that was published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry reveals that massage therapy can lessen anxiety by enhancing the parasympathetic nervous system.
Receiving a massage has been shown to lower the stress hormone cortisol and raise the mood-regulating neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin. Massage therapy can be beneficial for those who experience insomnia as a result of congestive heart failure or menopause.
Numerous academics have looked into the potential benefits of massage for treating acute knee, neck, back, and headache pain.
When it comes to relieving pain, many 60-minute massages per week may be more beneficial than fewer or shorter sessions. The researchers do, however, issue a warning that any effect might only last temporarily.
The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine paper states that regular massages can increase the body’s production of white blood cells, which are vital for fighting disease.
According to a Gastroenterology Nursing article, abdominal massages can alleviate constipation. The outcomes demonstrated that abdominal massage improved quality of life, decreased constipation symptoms, and shortened the amount of time between bowel movements in people with postoperative constipation.
Researchers showed that after five weeks of massage therapy, the effects of fibromyalgia on mood, cognition, and sleep improve (In their article ‘PLOS ONE’).
The physical and psychological effects of cancer are profound. Massage therapy can enhance quality of life, relieve pain, and soothe patients with cancer. Massage therapy may help reduce cancer-related discomfort, according to research published in Integrative Cancer Therapies.
A massage can be beneficial to people of all ages. It is not only an exercise in self-indulgence or self-pampering. This is a powerful tool to employ whether someone is looking for a technique to de-stress or has a specific health condition.
References:
- Gasibat, Q. and Suwehli, W. (2017) ‘Determining the Benefits of Massage Mechanisms: A Review of Literature’, Article in Journal of Rehabilitation Sciences, 2(3), pp. 58–67. doi.org/10.11648/j.rs.20170203.12.
- Li, Y.H. et al. (2014) ‘Massage therapy for fibromyalgia: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials’, PLoS ONE, 9(2). doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0089304.
