It’s pretty hard for anyone to think badly about going for a massage. Regardless of the reason for the massage therapy, the benefits seem obvious. Even if it is just for an hour down time. However, until recently, very few studies have been carried out looking at the actual benefits that massage therapy can have on someone.
The study was carried out by the University of Illinois in Chicago. They were primarily looking at how massage can affect someone post exercise and whether recovery can be improved from the massage therapy. For me, this part of the study is a decade too late, almost every sports team in the country will now have someone performing massage therapy on the sports people. For professional sports people and athletes it will be part of an almost daily routine. They have found out the benefits themselves so use it because it works.
Now before I talk about the surprise findings, lets talk about what these benefits are. It’s all well and gone throwing around the word benefit, but lets be more specific. With this study what they found was people who had massage post exercise could reduce there muscle soreness from 24 hours post exercise to about 90 mins. An amazing result. They also found that sore muscles reduced blow flow in those affected areas and the massage therapy helped increase blood flow.
The study continued to find that the massage not only had positive effects in those locally affected area but also in the body overall.
What the study also did was set up a massage only control group, therefore no exercise but the same regular massage. This group shows almost identical improvements in circulation compared to the exercise groups. the effect also lasted for several days. This benefits means that massage therapy can be used as a protective treatment as well as treating symptoms.
So what we can draw from he study is Massage can benefit anyone, improve how their body functions and improve quality of life. It’s not just for athletes but everyone.
Source of this Massage therapy article
Nina C. Franklin, Mohamed M. Ali, Austin T. Robinson, Edita Norkeviciute, Shane A. Phillips. Massage Therapy Restores Peripheral Vascular Function following Exertion. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 2014; DOI: 10.1016/j.apmr.2014.02.007