The Top 15 Benefits of Massage Therapy
Massage therapy is one of the most relaxing and rejuvenating beauty therapies. In fact, though it’s categorised as a beauty treatment, it’s really more a therapy for mind, body and soul. The way a therapist can bring peace and ease overall tension is the stuff of legends.
There’s something truly magical about it.
Most importantly; a massage relieves symptoms of stress and fatigue. It improves muscular health, emotional wellbeing and encourages restfulness and mindful living.
In a world full of stress, we could all use a little bit of that.
Benefit One: Relieve Physical Tension
We’ll start at the most obvious. Massage therapists work to relieve strained muscles all over the body. The massage therapist is trained in different deep tissue techniques to relieve tension, and in creating the perfect atmosphere to help you relax. If done on a regular basis, massage therapy can lead to better blood circulation, repaired tissues, greater energy and concentration.
All that just from relaxing the muscles? Count us in.
Benefit Two: Relieve Emotional Tension
Our lives are mad. From high tensions at work to balancing home and social lives – we’re all overwhelmed. Our whole society is overwhelmed. Which is where massage therapy lends a helping hand.
Emotional Benefits of Massage Therapy:
- Lowered anxiety and depression
- Immediate reduction in stress levels and ongoing maintenance
Benefit Three: Improve Sleep
None of us are sleeping enough. Which is hardly surprising given the stressful lives we’re all navigating. From first to second jobs, home and social lives, most are running on 4-5 hours sleep – if that!
The real concern is that when we do finally get to bed, we lie there for hours because our brains can’t turn off. It’s the greatest irony of life.
Massage Therapy helps to stop our minds from turning over and over in the chase for sleep.
Benefit Four: Improve Hospice Care
This one hits close to home. If you’ve ever known anyone in hospice or palliative care, it’s a hard time. Not just for those in care, but for loved ones too. Massage Therapy helps ease pain and emotional turmoil. It’s one of the most useful tools to make this period of time as comfortable as possible.
Benefit Five: Manage Chronic Joint and Body Pain
Once passed the age of thirty, you start to feel it. Your back, your knees, your wrists – all of us have troubling pain in different areas. As we continue to age, joint and muscle inflammation doubles down, which is wholeheartedly unfair.
Massage therapy is one of the best managements for ongoing muscle and joint pain. It helps increase blood flow, decrease inflammation & encourage resilience.
Benefit Six: Manage Symptoms of Chemotherapy
This may come as a surprise, but massage therapy is quite useful for managing the nausea, stress and symptoms of chemotherapy. Massaging and gently stroking muscles and soft tissues reduces the side effects of typical cancer treatments. It can also help manage lymphedema, which is a benign swelling of tissue as a result of compromised lymphatic drainage.
Benefit Seven: Improve Digestive Wellbeing…And Weight Loss
When stressed, our digestion suffers. Constantly raised stress hormones wear down the stomach lining until it begins to impact your digestive wellbeing. Massage therapy lowers your stress hormones, helping your stomach to digest everything smoothly – without being impacted by stressy-spaghetti hormones.
When your digestion is improved, your body can absorb nutrients so much better, positively affecting weight loss and eating disorders.
Benefit Eight: Improve Skin Tone
Perhaps the most beauty related of all, massage therapy is incredible for giving your skin a healthy glow. Because of the boost in circulation and the reduction in stress hormones, you’ll leave the massage table with the radiance of someone who’s spent a month in the Bahamas.
Benefit Nine: Improve Lymphatic Drainage and Hormonal Regulation
This may seem obscure, but lymphatic drainage and hormone regulation are integral to your overall health and wellbeing.
Lymphatic drainage massages manually drain bodily waste out of tissues, to help the body work at optimum vibrancy. It reduces swelling, sluggishness, and fatigue. It is also incredibly helpful for those suffering from lymphedema, fibromyalgia and other chronic conditions.
Hormone regulation is one of the most overlooked benefits of massage therapy. Our emotions, energy, and vibrancy. Specifically, massage therapy helps encourage the production of adrenaline at the right times, and discourage the production of cortisol when it’s not needed.
Benefit Ten: Immune System Support
When we’re constantly stressed, our immune system suffers. Constantly raised cortisol levels create a nightmare in your body, leading to diabetes, infectious illnesses, headaches, cardiovascular disease, asthma and gastric ulcers.
Massage therapy slows the secretion of cortisol and stress hormones, meaning your body isn’t constantly in fight-or-flight. So, when the situation arises that you need to fight off infection, your body will be ready – and your immune system strong!
Benefit Eleven: Improve Balance
Because of the improved blood circulation to and from the muscles, your body is better able to stabilise itself. Massage therapy encourages strength in your limbs, because your body isn’t tied up in knots.
Benefit Twelve: Enhance Performance
Tension is one of the biggest causes of injury in pro and amateur athletes. Or, even in those of us working a desk job. Back tension creates referred pain throughout the body, and posterior tension can cause a whole host of injuries. Basically, tension is very bad for your physical performance, and massage therapy is an effective antidote.
Benefit Thirteen: Reduce Anxiety
There’s something that happens when you’re lying on the massage table, at the whim of dim lighting, warm towels, gentle piano music and the firm hands of your massage therapist. You’re forced to stop, forced to relax and be deeply present in the moment.
One massage can help reduce anxiety temporarily; but an ongoing treatment plan of massage therapy can have an overall impact on lowering angst in your day to day.
Benefit Fourteen: Improve Behavioural Symptoms of Dementia
Studies have shown that massage therapy is incredibly useful for those suffering symptoms of dementia. Often, when patients are going through onset dementia, they can be troubled by unusual temper changes. And, with temper comes anxiety, confusion and high stress levels.
All of these things show marked improvement when managed with massage therapy.
Benefit Fifteen: Regulate Blood Sugar Levels
If you’ve ever had a run in with diabetes (type 1 or 2), you’ll know a little something about blood sugar levels. What you may not realise, is that we can all be affected by unbalanced blood sugar. The hormone that controls blood sugar, insulin, is impacted by the rise and fall of any other hormone. Like, stress hormones. Cortisol, adrenaline, norepinephrine are all implicated in raised blood sugar levels, and massage therapy is a viable treatment for all of them.
We told you. Despite it being listed as a beauty treatment, massage therapy is much much more. In fact, it’s no surprise that massage therapy has been practiced since 3000 BCE as a method of natural healing.
