Every couple of months we try and pull together a list of the many benefits of massage therapy (click here or here). We do this because, while writing individually about different benefits of massage therapy week in and week out, it is easy to forget the impressive collection of benefits that massage therapy provides.
Fortunately for this week’s report, another writer has pulled together a pretty thorough list of massage therapy benefits for us.
Constance McCloy, an associate professor at the University of Indianapolis, recently wrote this post about the many benefits of massage therapy for adults. While her report focused on massage’s benefits for older adults (its was posted on the All Things Aging blog), we liked it because it points out a lot therapeutic properties that we’ve already written about as well as explores other therapeutics benefits that we haven’t broached. Another great thing about her report is that it provides the academic studies to back up each claim made.
Some of the benefits McCloy mentioned that we’ve already written about include: massage therapy’s proven abilities to boost relaxation and circulation levels, reduce pain, lower anxiety levels in women dealing with breast cancer, and lower blood pressure.
Other benefits mentioned in the article elaborate on points we’ve made earlier, while mentioning other, new benefits we haven’t explored. Such therapeutic properties include: massage therapy’s proven ability to reduce pain and increase positive outlooks of patients with osteoarthritis of the hands and spine, a specific type of massage (lymphedema massage) that is helpful in reducing the pooling of fluid associated with a mastectomy, and how simple hand massage reduces agitation in elders with dementia.
Finally, the article ends with a reaffirmation of massage’s proven, more general benefits: that massage therapy increases levels of mood, wellness, self-control, vitality, and general health. All-important aspects that we should never forget.