By Stacey Androlah – Sports Massage Therapist
Massage therapy is a great way to relax and unwind, but did you know it can also provide many health benefits? Regular massage therapy is becoming increasingly popular as people discover the many health benefits it can provide. From improved circulation and relaxation to relief from chronic pain, massage therapy can be a powerful tool in improving overall health and well-being..
Is there any better feeling than that post massage feeling? You walk away from your appointment feeling more relaxed, tightness eased, your mind is clearer and you have a smile plastered across your face.
Believe it or not, the benefits of regular massages are about more than those feel-good moments. Each session is a building block, training your body to maintain its relaxed state and teaching your muscles to remain loose even during high-stress periods.
But this sense of internal relaxation is only the start, let’s run through some key benefits of regular massage therapy.
Pain Relief
Committing to regular massages is a great tool for pain management. Your therapist can focus in on specific problem areas, tight muscles, and gradually loosen them with increasing blood circulation. These actions help alleviate pain caused by injuries, poor posture or a range of other conditions. After regular sessions you may see benefits like a reduction in need for pain medications.
Lower stress and anxiety and provide Immune System Support
It’s a well-known fact that people with high levels of stress and/or anxiety are more likely to get sick more often. This stress often leads to a myriad of other negative side effects such as lack of sleep, tension headaches, a bad diet and a weakened immune system. Regular massage sessions can help to alleviate stress and anxiety and, as a result, have been proven to naturally increase the immune system’s strength by increasing the activity level of the body’s natural ‘killer T cells ‘ – aka its ability to fight off bacteria, viruses and infection.
Injury Resilience
Rehabilitating any injury can be a tiring and frustrating process. While the main goal of physical rehabilitation is to increase strength and flexibility, it often ends before the area has been returned to its full pre-injury state.
Massage plays an important role as a supplement to standard injury rehabilitation procedures. By encouraging circulatory movement and relaxing muscles, it helps the body pump more oxygen and nutrients into tissues and vital organs. Regular massage allows the rehabilitating injured area(s) to become more flexible, heal at an accelerated rate and help to prevent future injuries.
Improved Posture
Everyone has caught themselves slouching over their desk or slumping in a chair at some point. This poor posture can cause a lot of tension in the back and neck which is not good for our body. Proper body alignment can help improve things like digestion and even breathing capacity. The good news is bad posture can be corrected with regular massages. When you undergo treatment from your massage therapist you allow your body to begin to reintroduce healthier movements.
The massage itself will loosen the muscles and alleviate any pain caused by your bad posture. This will enable your body to position itself in its natural-and pain-free-posture. With ongoing massage the body will begin to naturally position itself in a healthy posture, steering clear of the bad posture.
Improved training performance
Regular massage can help as part of a training programme to maximise performance. Regular massage encourages an increase in circulation around the body. An increase in circulation helps to flush out metabolic wastes enabling a person to carry out the activity for longer without tiring or fatiguing. Increased circulation also provides muscles with an increase in oxygen and nutrients as well as increasing muscle temperature. Increasing oxygen and nutrients provides muscles with an increase in energy as well as maintaining their strength and health. Increasing muscle temperature allows muscles to loosen and stretch, decreasing restriction. Loosened muscles enables a person to put their muscles on full stretch without pulling, straining or tearing muscle fibres.
During a training programme, muscles can become fatigued, over worked and sometimes damaged. Regular massage helps to maximise performance during a training programme by speeding up recovery. Recovery is improved as circulation increases. Circulation of blood provides muscles with essential oxygen and nutrients needed for the repair of damaged tissues. Circulation of the lymphatic system removes waste products and toxins that slow down the recovery process more efficiently. Maximising performance through regular massage as part of a training programme also maintains relaxation of muscles reducing a build-up of stress and tension.
Overall, regular massage therapy can provide numerous health benefits. It can help to reduce stress and anxiety, improve circulation, provide relief from chronic pain and improve training performance. Regular massage therapy can also help to improve sleep quality and promote healing. If you are looking for a way to improve your overall health, consider giving regular massage therapy a try by booking in at our Thornbury, Thornbury Active or Yate Active clinics.