4 Benefits of Regular Massage Therapy
Believe it or not, the benefits of regular massages are about more than those feel-good moments. Each session is a building block, training your body to maintain its relaxed state and teaching your muscles to remain loose even during high-stress periods.
But this sense of internal relaxation is only the start, let's run through four key benefits of regular massage therapy.
1. Pain Relief
Committing to regular massages is a great tool for pain management. Your therapist can focus in on specific problem areas, as well as stiff muscles, and gradually loosen them with increasing blood circulation. These actions help alleviate pain tied to injuries, arthritis and a range of other conditions. After regular sessions you may see benefits like a reduction in need for pain medications.
2. Immune System Support
It's a well-known fact that people with high levels of stress are more likely to get sick more often. This stress often leads to a myriad of other negative side effects such as lack of sleep, a bad diet and a weakened immune system. Regular massage sessions help alleviate stress and, as a result, have been proven to naturally increase the immune system's cytotoxic capacity - aka its ability to fight off bacteria and infection.
3. Injury Resilience
Rehabilitating any injury can be a tiring and frustrating process. While the main goal of physical rehabilitation is to increase strength and flexibility, it often ends before the area has been returned to its full pre-injury state.
Massage plays an important role as a supplement to standard injury rehabilitation procedures. By encouraging circulatory movement and relaxing muscles, it helps the body pump more oxygen and nutrients into tissues and vital organs. This allows the rehabilitating injured area(s) to become more flexible and heal at an accelerated rate.
4. Improved Posture
Everyone has caught themselves slouching over their desk or slumping in a chair at some point. This poor posture can cause a lot of tension in the back and neck which is no good for our body. Proper body alignment can help improve things like digestion and even breathing capacity.