Benefits of Massage

There’s no denying a massage is calming and beneficial.  Massage therapy isn’t just a way to relax, it’s also a way to alleviate muscle soreness after exercise and improve blood flow, mood, sleep and overall wellbeing.

A 2011 study found that massage helped people with low back pain to feel and function better, compared to people who didn’t get a rubdown. That’s good news for the eight in 10 Americans who will experience debilitating back pain at least once in their lives, Time.com reported. “We found the benefits of massage are about as strong as those reported for other effective treatments: medications, acupuncture, exercise and yoga,” Dan Cherkin, Ph.D., lead author of the study, said in a press release. Massage also seems to lessen pain among people with osteoarthritis.

The calming treatment can also help you spend more time asleep, according to research from Miami University’s Touch Research Institute. “Massage helps people spend more time in deep sleep, the restorative stage in which your body barely moves,” the Institute’s founder Tiffany Field, Ph.D., told More magazine in 2012. In one study of people with fibromyalgia, 30-minute massages three times a week for five weeks resulted in nearly an hour more of sleep, plus deeper sleep, she said.

There’s a small body of research that suggests massages boost immune function. A 2010 study, believed to be the largest study on massage’s effects on the immune system, found that 45 minutes of Swedish massage resulted in significant changes in white blood cells and lymphocytes, which help protect the body from bugs and germs.

At least one study has linked massage to better brainpower. In a 1996 study, a group of adults completed a series of math problems faster and with more accuracy after a 15-minute chair massage than a group of adults who were told to just sit in a chair and relax during those 15 minutes. Increased focus, higher productivity and reducing stress? Hosting a chair massage event for your workplace crew may earn you the “best manager ever” award!

Among patients receiving care for cancer, studies have noted multiple benefits of massage, including improved relaxation, sleep and immune system function as well as decreased fatigue, pain, anxiety and nausea.