Have you always wanted to get a body massage but not sure if it’s worth the investment? Here are the top eight scientifically proven health benefits of a full body massage that everyone needs to know about. These benefits are the reason professional athletes, models and fitness professionals have body massages regularly.
This post is all about body massage benefits that will change your life.
Investing in a professional body massage can be difficult, especially with the prices of everything going up recently. The average body massage can cost anywhere from 60 to hundreds of dollars per session. If you’re anything like me, you’re doing all the research you can to figure out if the outcome will be worth the investment. As someone who balances a very busy work/life/workout schedule, here are the top eight reasons I started getting massages and how they’ve proven to be a wonderful asset to not only mine but my family’s and friend’s lives as well.
You will become knowledgeable on all of the scientifically proven health benefits of body massage. These benefits will help improve your life in almost every facet, being the key that can help you break through a weight loss plateau or reduce pain from injury.
Once you’ve read all of these health benefits of massage, you are no longer going to be hesitant in booking your first massage and enjoying the rewards yourself.
This post is all about the top eight body massage tips that will change your life.
1. Reduces Stress
Body massage is known for having many positive benefits, stress reducing being at the top of the list. Stress is something everyone experiences in their life. While there is both good and bad stress, you know that we are talking about the bad stress here. Body massage is known for reducing this negative stress through multiple means; many of them are listed as benefits two through eight. Body massage reduces stress by relieving pain in muscle soreness and tension, stimulates the lymphatic system, it makes you healthier, promotes weight loss and also promotes better sleep. I mean think about it, it’s really freaking hard to be stressed out when you are in excellent health, have wonderful sleep, and are sitting at your ideal weight without any pain from muscle soreness or tension, right? Really think about this for a minute: a world where you wake up feeling fully refreshed, fit and healthy and with no body pain. That sounds like a dream to most people. The way to achieve this? Start getting body massages regularly.
2. Is a natural pain reliever
As stated above, body massage has numerous benefits that help with stress reduction, pain relieving being one of them. Even for people that are not as active as competitive body builders, professional athletes or fitness gurus, there are routines that we get into that cause us to do the same repetitive motions over and over again. I know that even with my busy schedule and workout routine, there are still a lot of ADL’s (activities of daily living) that I do repetitively. This includes things such as picking up and putting down my bag the same way a dozen times a day, getting up and sitting down in a chair the same way, getting in and out of a car and even sleeping the same way every single day. While these are all common activities of life, doing motions repetitively can cause stress and imbalances on certain joints in our bodies. This can lead to increased muscle tension and soreness or even more significant chronic pain over time.
3. Improves immune function
Believe it or not, in addition to reducing stress and relieving pain, body massage is also known to help boost the immune system. If you are anything like me when I first started reading more into the benefits of body massage, you’re probably thinking, “how is this even possible?” Body massage is known for improving the immune system by increasing blood flow through the entire body. This increases the activity of white blood cells that are responsible for helping us fight off infectious diseases and reducing cortisol. If you have never heard of cortisol, it is basically your body’s built in alarm system. It is your body’s main stress hormone, or the fight or flight response. When cortisol levels are really high, it can be extremely hard to lose weight.
4. Stimulates the lymphatic system
Now you’re probably wondering, okay this sounds really cool, but what is the lymphatic system? The lymphatic system helps protect us from disease and infection. It’s a delicate network of tubes throughout the body that help move lymph back into the bloodstream. It’s complementary to the circulatory system and is part of the immune system, being important to balance the fluid in your system. During a body massage, blood is being worked through the muscle and tissues, where the lymphatic nodes help drain out waste products, pathogens and even dead cells. Think of this as a fantastic way for you to detox your body without drinking some ridiculous vegetable juice for a week.
5. Helps maintain flexibility and range of motion
Regardless of if you’re an active person or not, having great flexibility and range of motion is extremely important. If you’re like me you’re probably wondering how in the hell does a body massage help improve this? The answer is actually very simple. Body massage increases flexibility and range of motion through increased tissue elasticity. The pressure applied to muscles during the massage helps stretch and elongate them. The more regularly you receive massages, the more the tissue elasticity increases, and the more flexibility you will have over time. However, it is not only important to rely on body massage for improving flexibility. You should still incorporate stretching into your daily routine and then incorporate the body massage to see maximum results.
6. Makes you healthier
If it wasn’t obvious, there are numerous benefits of body massage. As described above, the rewards of massage include increasing flexibility and range of motion, stimulating the lymphatic system, improving immune function, reduces stress and also serves as a natural pain reliever, and there are still a couple more benefits to go over. However, all of these benefits combined are what leads to an overall healthier life.
Having a body massage regularly helps improve mental health by reducing stress, it helps improve posture by properly stretching, elongating muscles and eliminating any pain or soreness. It also helps improve circulation, lowers blood pressure, helps treat fibromyalgia, helps treat arthritis and prevents illness. Before running off to book your first appointment, it’s extremely important to review the last two major benefits of body massage.
7. Promotes better sleep
When we think of body massage, one particular word comes to mind: relaxation. It’s the number one most associated feeling that comes with body massage, and it has always been that way for a reason. When it comes to sleep, there are a few things that primarily keep us up at night. This includes increased stress and bodily discomfort, tension and pain, making it nearly impossible to properly relax. This is where body massage comes to the rescue: by forcing the body to relax. This is done through the things we have discussed already. This includes stretching and elongating muscles, increasing blood circulation and that tells your brain to allow the body to relax. Once the brain gets this signal, it releases the happy hormones in your body, causing you to feel much happier and at ease. With stress and pain levels lowered, having this body massage done regularly, it can do wonders for improving your sleep.
8. Promotes weight loss
I know what you may be thinking, okay now this must be too good to be true. Trust me, I used to think the exact same thing. How is it possible that getting a body massage can help you lose weight? The answer is actually very simple. It goes back to number four: deep tissue massage stimulates the lymphatic system and improves circulation. This aids not only in weight loss but also detoxification. A common reason people struggle to lose weight is due to lack of sleep and an increase of cortisol, the stress hormone. As we have already stated earlier, body massage helps promote better sleep and it also releases more of the happy hormones that reduce cortisol. Lower levels of cortisol help promote weight loss, especially fat loss in particular.
However, it is extremely important to keep in mind that while body massage can help improve all of these aspects of your life, it is imperative to maintain a healthy diet and exercise routine for proper weight loss. You cannot just sign up for massages and then expect to drop five pounds in a few days. It doesn’t work that way. The promotion of weight loss comes from the health benefits of body massage improving over time. This includes the boost of endorphins, lowering of the stress in the body, improving your lymphatic system and getting better sleep helps your body’s systems function better. With all of your systems improving over time, this will work well in conjunction with a proper diet and exercise regimen to yield the best results.
This post was all about the top eight body massage tips that will change your life.
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