About Massage

Massage has been around for at least 3000 years and people tend to like it. If you've never tried massage, you're really missing out. There are dozens of styles of massage out there and every massage therapist is a little different in how they combine and utilized these. There is massage for lymph fluid, the muscles, connective tissue, and scarring, among other tissue types. Pressure can be light, medium, or deep, and there are hundreds of different individual techniques across the dozens of styles out there. Just talk to your massage therapist about what you like and don't like, because while they're usually good at reading body language, your words are helpful in tailoring the treatment to suit you.

How It Works

Massage works by reducing inflammation in the areas massaged as well as actually speeding up healing and recovery time. The first is done by reducing the action of inflammatory cytokines in the body and the second is done by increasing the action of mitochondria in individual cells. It reduced swelling locally too, which can help with pain at the site of an injury or with edema.

Benefits of Massage

Most types of massage increase circulation, relax muscles, and help reduce stress. Many types also help your body realign itself in a positive way so that you experience less fatigue, pain, and disability. Pain and muscle tension are the most common reasons people come for massage but people also go to help detoxify their bodies and even to treat anxiety and depression. There is a much wider range of ailments that massage can handle than most people know about.