Massage - It's Real Medicine

Here at Fitness For You, we offer 15 and 30-minute chair massages with Laurie from Advanced Health and Wellness. Having your honey rub your back is sweet, but it's tough to compete with the hands of a pro. A good massage therapist can make you feel like a new person. Here are some of the other benefits:

1. Reduce Pain

Rubdowns are especially effective for aches like lower-back pain. Researchers have found that massage works better than common treatments including chiropractic therapy and acupuncture. It's not clear why, but several studies show massage reduces levels of the stress hormone cortisol while boosting the feel-good hormones serotonin and dopamine. Those changes slow your heart rate, reduce blood pressure, and block your nervous system's pain receptors. Massage also increases blood flow to the muscles, which may help them heal.

*A bonus: Massage seems to ease distress from migraine, labor pain, and even cancer, as well as the body tenderness seen with fibromyalgia. Plus, the benefits may last as long as a year after just a few treatments.

2. Improve Sleep Quality

Fluctuations in several types of brain waves either relax you or wake you up. Massage increases delta waves -- those linked with deep sleep. That's why it's easy to drift off in the massage chair.

3. Increase Brain Power

A 15-minute chair massage boosts alertness. Many people report that it feels like a runner's high. Tests also show that brain-wave activity stimulated by massage is linked to improved attention.

4. Fight off Colds

Massage helps ward off bugs by boosting your "natural killer cells," the immune system's first line of defense against invading illness. The stress hormone cortisol destroys natural killer cells. Therefore, since massage decreases cortisol, your immune cells get a boost. Massage even seems to boost immunity in those people with severely compromised immune systems, such as breast-cancer patients.

5. Get Rid of the Blues

Less cortisol and more serotonin and dopamine in your system may also mean less stress, anxiety, and depression. The sense of well-being people feel after a massage is a big reason why some hospitals offer it to anxious patients preparing for surgery and cancer patients going through chemo.

6. Reduce PMS Symptoms

A small study of 24 women with severe PMS found that massage reduced symptoms such as pain, water retention, and mood swings. Try it with proven remedies such as exercise (and “who-cares-if-they-work” solutions like a little dark chocolate).

Try out a chair massage next time you come to the gym! For more information, e-mail Kristin@FitnessForYouGym.com

Source: Kristyn Kusek Lewis (Health.com)