If you are feeling sore or worn out, it's important to remember that your body is a very complex web of muscles, muscles which can quickly atrophy and tighten up slowly over time—so slowly that you may not even realise. This problem sneaks up on many people and can lead to problems like having muscles which are so small, tight, and unused due to their irrelevance in modern day activities that they fester and cause unnatural imbalances. How can you exercise and refresh these aged, unused tissues, and circulate new life into tight and toxic muscles? Consider getting a therapeutic massage.
The benefits of therapeutic massage have been proven to be many, with multiple scientific papers just clicks away. But what are some of the more important of these benefits?
Decreased Anxiety and Depression
To some degree, anxiety plagues most people, and if someone procrastinates treatment, letting it grow and fester, it can easily pounce on them and could potentially destroy their life in an instant. Luckily, relief may be just a massage away. Single-dose massages have shown clear positive effects on state anxiety, or one's immediate anxiety levels. In addition, multiple-dose, or regular massages, have shown the same positive effects on patients' trait anxiety, or their general, everyday level of anxiety, on top of improved state anxiety. Along with these benefits, massage has also shown its abilities at combatting depression, according to the NCCIH.
Reduced Blood Pressure, Heart Rate, and Neuromuscular Excitability
A recent meta-analysis published by the Psychological Bulletin has shown massage to also be useful in the reduction of both blood pressure and heart rate. There are also clear links between massage and reduced neuromuscular excitability. Have you ever noticed your muscles twitching a lot? You might have what is considered high neuromuscular excitability—a common symptom of nutrient deficiencies such as hypocalcemia (low blood calcium). Or maybe you are just mildly twitchy and it annoys you. Whether medically twitchy or not, therapeutic massage is shown to help.
Pain Relief
According to The National Centre for Complementary and Integrative Health, or the NCCIH, massage has been show to have multiple pain-reduction capabilities in multiple recent studies. Lower-back pain, chronic neck pain, osteoarthritis of the knee and labour pains have all shown signs of melting away at the hands of a massage therapist. In addition, according to the NCCIH, cancer patients have also received significant pain relief from massage.
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