Continuing on with our blog’s often-explored theme of the benefits of massage therapy for mankind, today’s blog focuses on an element that affects nearly all humans and that massage therapy has a great track record of treating effectively. That element is: stress.
To start off, check out this article from The Massage Advancer, which obviously is a little biased in favor of massage therapy. (more…)
We already wrote about the medicinal benefits of aromatherapy, coupled with massage therapy, over a year ago (see post). As it says in that entry, aromatherapy and massage can be used (and has been clinically proven) to reduce stress levels and help the immune system.
But in that entry, we glossed over the fact that making massage oils and aromatherapy oils can be a very easy task. Follow the directions below, and start adding aromatherapy to your chair and table massage sessions. It is a great addition to the many benefits that massage therapy already offers. (more…)
In my last two entries about trigger points, I’ve discussed how they have been studied, some ways they are described clinically, and the type of pain they cause for the people who suffer from them. I’ve done this all while maintaining that there is still a lot unknown about trigger points, how they are defined, and the symptoms that they cause. However, that has not stopped massage therapists and others from attempting to discover and treat them, a noble cause considering the incredible amount of pain trigger points can cause (see previous entries as well as the ending paragraph of this entry). (more…)
Massage therapy has been demonstrated to help relieve chronic pain, stress, and anxiety, all in a non-invasive way. For this, it deserves praise as a profession. But there are, of course, limits to what massage can do. Often pain and discomfort is caused by something (such as an internal injury, certain chemical imbalances, etc.) that needs a more invasive approach, and in these cases massage therapy can be used as a supplementary treatment. However, there is also a lot of pain that goes unexplained in the medical world, and this might be due by an element that is difficult to define: trigger points.
One of the most important things to do before giving – or receiving – a deep tissue massage is to determine which muscles need a deep tissue approach. It’s very rare that all muscles will need to have deep tissue massage and recipients can end up more beat up and tense after their massage if they do not identify which areas are to receive deep tissue massage, and which are to not. (more…)
Migraine headaches cause severe pain and often incapacitate those who suffer from them. Migraines are commonly associated with extreme sensitivity to light and sound, as well as with nausea and vomiting. The pain and corresponding symptoms can debilitate sufferers for hours or even days. The causes of migraine headaches are not easily understood, and the medical community has struggled for decades to provide effective treatment options. (more…)
The most common type of headache is known as the tension or stress headache. While this type of headache may be considered garden variety, its causes are not always straightforward and recurrent episodes can be difficult to treat effectively. Tension headaches are considered ‘normal’ as they are not the result of a more serious disease or condition, but their debilitating effects can seriously affect work performance and interfere with one’s lifestyle. (more…)