Massage & the Healing Power of Human Touch

Massage used to be considered simply a way that one can pamper themselves and forget about their troubles for an hour while relaxing to spa music. In spite of this, over the past few decades, massage is coming to be recognized as a real natural healing conduit for a variety of ailments.

Regular massage therapy sessions have been shown in studies to not only reduce anxiety and depression, but also to significantly relieve pain. People who have suffered chronic pain from nerve damage or arthritis have reported a great improvement in their pain when receiving regular massages. Many even say that they were able to reduce their pain medication.

Let me continue with this document. People who suffer from fribromyalgia haven’ticed tremendous relief from regular massage. Fibromyalgia is a chronic condition that affects the nerve pathways and results in almost constant pain in the joints and muscles. The medical community is still somewhat baffled when it comes to this illness.

As a result, unfortunately there aren’t a lot of effective medications or therapies. Thus, fibromyalgia patients often resort to therapeutic massage for the relief of their symptoms. They report significant improvements when getting regular massages.

Massage is even being recognized by the traditional medical community as a means for everything from pain relief to stress relief. Hospitals have started to make it a regular offering in their recovery therapy, and many doctors are now referring patients to licensed massage therapists for what ails them.

Massage has a profound effect on the brain’s activities as they relate to mood and stress levels. Subjects who have received massage tested high in their levels of dopamine and seratonin and lower in the stress hormone cortisol. This explains the relaxed, angst free feeling one feels when they’re exiting the massage room.

Women who receivd regular massages report that it helps with PMS symptoms. Carpal tunnel sufferers also claim that it helps ease their pain and improve the mobility of their fingers. Patients who experience insomnia even report that regular massage helps them to sleep through the night without interruption.

You can see how regular massage can have a sort of domino effect on your health. By simply raising your “feel good” chemicals and lowering your stress and depression chemicals, it causes a chain reaction of good stuff to occur in your body.

It even can influence the choices you make about the food you eat, your exercise regimen, how you treat others, and how you feel about yourself. This is all due to the hormones and chemicals that it helps to release in the body. Massage tends to increase feelings of well being, happiness, and contentment. This transcends into every other facet of your life.

When you feel good, you eat well. When you sleep well, you tend to feel much better, more energetic and lively throughout your day. Massage has a profound impact on your life when you utlilize it on a regular basis. Not to mention, it just plain feels good after a long and stressful day at work!

Danna Norek owns and writes for several natural health and wellness sites and blogs. She recently launched an all natural, aluminum and paraben free nontoxic deodorant which can be found at Aura Sensory Natural Deodorant. You can also find her reviewing natural health and wellness products here at her herbal health news magazine Herbal Health News Magazine.