How Does Massage Therapy Improve Your Well-Being?

How Does Massage Therapy Improve Your Well-Being?  A brief look at the science behind your favorite treatments

A lot of people know that massage therapy feels amazing.  It helps increase relaxation and improve mobility, while diminishing pain and tension.  But how does therapeutic touch affect your body and allow these changes to occur?  In this blog article, I will outline some reasons why massage therapy just keeps you coming back for more.

Firstly, trust plays a major role in this equation.  When you trust that your therapist, you feel safe.  This allows your body to relax. 

Environment has a major affect on how your body reacts to the treatment.  By using soothing sounds, a warm colour palate and providing comfortable linens, you can start to unwind and let the world slip away.  Taking this time is extremely beneficial not only for your massage therapy experience, but in everyday life in itself.

One of the main reasons people seek massage therapy is to help reduce muscle pain and tension.  By overusing and/or injuring muscle or connective tissues, the body adapts by creating “knots”, or Trigger Points, which are hyperirritable spots in the muscle belly and connective tissues that are usually found in a taut band.  They can cause tenderness, refer pain or even cause muscle contractions when palpated (Rattray & Ludwig, 2000, p. 203).  Studies have shown that Trigger Points also have increased metabolism from the chemicals released during sustained muscle contraction. This causes reduced circulation and interferes with homeostasis within the body (Rattray & Ludwig, 2000, p. 204).  By releasing these Trigger Points appropriately, the muscle is able to relax, permitting adequate blood flow to and from the area to restore proper function in the tissue. 

What about all the other types of pain?  Although we talked about pain caused by muscle tension, massage therapy has a wide range of benefits to help diminish other various types of pain.  Have you ever hit your elbow or stubbed your toe?  The pain that you feel immediately can be excruciating.  But have you ever rubbed the area and felt significantly better?  In the early 1960s, Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall developed the “Gate Control Theory”.  This theory indicates that non-painful stimuli can override painful stimuli travelling from the Peripheral Nervous System (limbs, organs etc.) to the Central Nervous System (the brain and spinal cord).  Think of it like the non-painful stimuli, such as touch, areclosing the gate so that painful stimuli cannot travel to the Central Nervous System.  (Deardorff, 2003).

When you experience therapeutic touch, the nerve cells in your skin send a message to the brain to signal the release of endorphins and reduce the level of cortisol.  This combined response helps to create a euphoric effect on the body by lowering perceived stress and anxiety levels (Rattray & Ludwig, 2000, p. 166).

In today’s world, life can throw some pretty hard punches.  In order to keep a calm mind and body, we need to take care of ourselves.  There are many modalities out there to help, but you just need to know where to look.  Thank you for taking the time to read this article, and I hope you took away something new from this article!

References:

Deardorff, W. (2003). Modern Ideas: The Gate Control Theory of Chronic Pain. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.spine-health.com/conditions/chronic-pain/modern-ideas-gate-control-theory-chronic-pain. [Last Accessed December 5th, 2014].

Rattray, F., Ludwig, L. (2000). Clinical Massage Therapy. 2nd ed. Elora, ON: Talus

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