How Muscles Benefit from Massage

How Muscles Benefit from Regular Massage

Your muscles are essential for various bodily functions, including mobility, pumping the heart, and supporting your posture, not to mention, they are also responsible for giving you the sleek, toned physique of your dreams. However, over time, or due to certain factors, they can become tight, stiff, contracted, and overworked, which can cause several issues throughout the body, including pain, cramps, decreased mobility, tiredness, and more, which can prevent you from enjoying everyday life.

Massage therapy, which works soft tissues in the body, has been used throughout time to promote healing and wellness in the body and has been scientifically proven to help benefit the muscles in the following ways:

Massage Helps Release Lactic Acid, which is a Major Cause of Muscle and Joint Pain Following Demanding Activity 

Lactic acid, along with carbonic acid, is a metabolic waste product that accumulates in the muscles following demanding physical activity and is often associated with inflammation, pain, and overall discomfort in the muscles and joints.

Manipulating the muscle tissues, using massage therapy, helps stimulate the release of lactic acid and other waste products from the muscles, which helps bring about comfort. It also helps prevent pain signals from reaching the brain, which also helps decrease muscle pain following strenuous activity.

Massage Helps Alleviate Chronic Muscle Pain

Chronic muscle pain, which is characterized by muscle pain that persists for more than six months, can occur in the back, neck, hands, and other parts of the body due to various reasons, including injury, poor posture, some forms of arthritis. Other muscle pain can be the result of illness, autoimmune reaction, or even overuse or repetitive use of the muscles, which can interrupt your sleep patterns, cause fatigue, and muscle weakness. Chronic exposure to muscle pain can eventually lead to depression or elevated stress levels as you struggle to cope with the pain.

Chronic muscle pain can also be caused by a condition called chronic myofascial pain (CMP), which causes discomfort in the muscles as well as the tissue that covers them, or the fascia, and it can affect only a single muscle or multiple muscles. This condition differs from fibromyalgia in that it is a muscle disorder, whereas fibromyalgia is believed to be a condition that intensifies pain signals due to how the brain processes them.

No matter the source of your chronic muscle pain, research shows that massage therapy can help relax strained and injured muscles, as well as help reduce swelling and stiffness in the muscles associated with various disorders to help bring about relief.

Massage Keeps Muscles Long and Pliable For Increased Range of Motion

Various issues, such as an injury or even poor posture, can cause your muscles to become short and tight, which can decrease the body's range of motion. When this occurs, it can hinder you from performing your usual activities.

When the muscles are injured, the body reacts by replacing the damaged tissue with scar tissue as a way to help keep the surrounding tissues supported. However, because scar tissue is so dense, it can prevent the muscles from fully lengthening, which can affect your movements. It can also affect nearby joints as a full range of motion is also needed to help keep the joints healthy. Scar tissue can also be painful in and of itself, which can further add to the discomfort.

Regular massage helps breakdown and release scar tissue and also helps restore pliability to the muscles, which helps improve your range of motion.

Massage Helps Speed Muscle Recovery

Muscle injury, which can occur as a result of swift jolting, heavy lifting, sports, or other strenuous activities, occurs when the muscle is stretched beyond its limits or encounters small rips or tears in the muscles, which can cause swelling, pain, and stiffness that can prevent you from carrying out routine functions. However, increasing blood flow to the muscles can help aid in recovery.

Massage therapy dilates the blood vessels, which helps increase oxygen, nutrients, and blood flow to the injured muscle, which helps speed healing and recovery.

Massage Helps Keep the Muscles Relaxed, Which Helps Improve Emotional Well-Being

When your muscles are tense, it causes your entire body to become tight and stiff, which can make you feel on edge. Muscle tension also makes you more susceptible to injury during sports and other everyday activities as it prevents the muscles from bending and moving as needed, which can result in muscle sprains and tears.

Massage not only helps keep your muscles relaxed, so you avoid injury, but it also releases endorphins and spikes your levels of serotonin and dopamine, which are the hormones the body produces to promote healing, ease pain, and calm your nerves, which helps you feel good. Research shows that patients report feeling more resilient, less anxious, less stressed, and having a greater sense of well being after receiving regular massage.

Massage also helps improve the immune system by increasing the number of white blood cells, which helps fight toxic, bacteria, infected, and cancerous cells for improved overall health.

Your muscles make up more than 38% of your body, which means if they are inflicted, it can throw the rest of your body out of whack, which can leave you feeling blah. Therefore, you need to take care of your muscles by keeping them pliable, relaxed, and nourished, which regular massage can help you do.

About the Author

Eugene Wood is a leading Licensed Massage Therapist in Nassau County NY. Learn more about his services, as well as how massage can help you improve your health and well-being by visiting his website at EugeneWoodMassage.com