Massage therapy is more than just a luxury -- an extravagance you enjoy at a spa every once in a while. Massage therapy can play a key role in improving health and maintaining your fitness level. That's because massage therapy can improve circulation as well as help relieve tension and stress in strained or knotted muscles and get you back to your healthy, active self in no time.
Circulation and Lymph Health
The squeezing and manipulating of muscles throughout the body can boost blood flow to parts of the body where it may be lacking, as well as help move lymph through the lymphatic system, which helps rid tissue of waste materials. Lymph is a substance that takes impurities from tissue in the body and filters them through glands in the lymphatic system. This action is improved when muscles are in action and receive massage therapy.
Massage Therapy Varieties
Hundreds of massage therapy varieties exist to meet specific needs, whether it's for pregnant women suffering considerable back pain or other complications or rehabilitation for a car accident or sports injury. Many massage therapy techniques use a combination of approaches, such as "acrosage," which combines massage, acrobatics and yoga and involves the suspension of a client from his feet so that as he hangs downward, his upper body can be massaged with less pressure on the neck and the spine.
Range of Treatable Ailments
Because of the variety of massage therapy treatments, a wide range of injuries and ailments can also be treated with massage. The West Richmond Massage Therapy and Rehab Clinic in British Columbia, for example, lists among the needs that can be addressed by massage therapy as headaches, whiplash, lower back pain, neck pain, muscle spasms, tendinitis, bursitis, arthritis, fibromyalgia and other physical problems. If you're having soreness, stiffness, limited range of motion or numbness in a particular part of the body, ask a massage therapist in your area about whether her services can help you.
Sports Massage
If you have strained muscles or joints from overuse due to sports or training, the specific massage therapy form used is known simply as sports massage. Sports massage may also come in handy before an event to help stimulate blood flow and warm up muscles for the competition. After an event, sports massage can help speed up recovery time by kick-starting the removal of toxins from the body and the relaxation of muscles. You'll see such post-event sports massage at marathons, for example, as runners seek to recover quickly from such an exhausting activity.
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