Medical massage has been helping people for thousands of years. It has been used since ancient times to relieve pain and disease. Yet scientific research into how medical massage works and its effectiveness is only relatively new. While we knew that massage helps back pain, we only just recently found scientific research that proves this point.

Here’s the science behind why you should get a massage if you have back pain.

What Causes Back Pain?

For such an important part of our body, you wouldn’t expect back pain to be as common as it is. Unfortunately, 85% of adults face back pain at some point in their lives, and for many the pain is chronic.

Back pain can come from a number of places. Bad posture or injury are the most common sources. Stress can also cause a lot of pain around the fascia, the connective tissue between your bones, your muscles, your skin, and other tissues in your body. Restrictions in your fascia, poor diet, and a sedentary lifestyle can cause your blood flow to slow down and become less efficient resulting in slower recovery and longer healing times.

Some common sources of back pain forms include the following:

• Bad posture or injury
• Lack of Exercise
• Poor Diet
• Depression, Anxiety, and Stress
• Reduced circulation from Smoking or other causes

And if left unchecked, they can lead to chronic conditions. The good news is that regular massage therapy is proven to help.

How Massage Can Help

Many of the issues that keep back pain going and make it worse are helped directly by regular massage therapy. A massage therapist  uses a variety of techniques that relax your muscles, improve your blood flow, and encourage natural healing in your body.

Ease Muscle Tension

Back pain usually involves a lot of tension in your muscles. A lot of adhesions like to gather in the fascia around the body, particularly on the back.

Because the back is put to so much use throughout the day, these adhesions can gather quickly and dangerously, creating tenseness around your back that eventually turns into pain. Massage is meant to relax your muscles by targeting the fascia and using a variety of techniques to create natural friction and loosen the muscles.

Swedish massage takes care of your outer layer. If you’re in a lot of pain, deep tissue massage might be a better option. It’s like a normal massage, but a lot more pressure is added to work past the initial layers of muscles and focuses on loosening and healing the muscles that are much deeper into the body.

Ask your doctor for a diagnosis on your back and then come to us and we will create the perfect massage routine to help your back pain.

Improve Blood Flow

Along with loosening muscle tension, massage also increases blood flow. Once the muscles are loose, blood travels much quicker through the muscles, and larger sweeping motions are done to improve healthy blood flow.

As the muscle loosens, those adhesions break up. The massage therapist then uses those sweeping motions to encourage the blood and lymph flow to help remove built up  toxins from your body.

As the blood flow pushes toxins away, new blood will come rushing in. The body sends healthy biochemicals in to replace the toxins. These biochemicals improve healing, boost your immune system, and makes you feel refreshed and invigorated.

Medical massage involves a lot of work with blood and lymph  flow around the body. The massage therapist expertly guides this flow so that the body can heal itself naturally. The effects are amazing, and are backed by significant scientific research. There’s no harm in scheduling a massage to help with back pain, and we’re confident that you will find a session with us to be relaxing,refreshing, and healing.