How massage can benefit you
As a massage therapist you would expect me to be a big advocate of touch therapies. We often think of the benefits of touch therapies like massage in terms of our physical health but they also impact out mental wellbeing too. So l wanted to share with you the details of a new report that has found that introducing touch therapies withing the NHS could potentially reduce mental health problems by 10%, potentially reducing sick days by 1.76 million.
The report also concluded that touch therapies including massage can help you manage
- back pain
- neck & shoulder pain
- osteoarthritis
- cancer symptoms and treatment side effects
- fibromyalgia
- HIV/AIDS
- premature infant care
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Tips for a healthy stomach
The stomach is the body's food processor. It takes about 4 hours for a moderate meal to be processed. It takes 7 seconds for food to travel from your mouth to your stomach. Your stomach can hold 1.5 litres of food and drink. Chew each mouthful at least 20 times Chewing produces saliva which start the digestive process efficiently, enabling the food to the broken down thoroughly. Eating to quickly often means you don't chew each mouthful enough and causes problems such as heartburn and indigestion. Swallowing large lumps of food causes problems for the gut as undigested food ferments, creating toxins and gases that irritate the stomach lining; it also prevents absorption of nutrients and creates digestive problems. Digestive enzymes Digestive enzymes help to minimize indigestion, acide reflux, bloating and gas. There are three main clasifications of digestive enzymes:
- Amylases: which break down carbohydrates
- Lipases: which break down fats
- Proteases: which break down protiens
What type of massage is right for me?
The short answer is...
- Seated Acupressure Neck & Shoulder massage is a short focused massage to release tension in the Neck & Shoulders
- Choose Sports massage over deep tissue massage when you go to the gym with a specific sporting goal in mind, i.e. you are going for more than just generally keeping fit. Or you are really focused on your sport including actively taking part in competitions or you are keen to improve your performance or your training is solely focused on your sport and you do not cross train.
Description of your back Recommended Treatment My back feels like concrete? Deep Tissue Massage – the use of hot stones to relax the muscle can be less painful than other deep pressure techniques My neck and shoulder are tight and sore from sitting at my desk all day? Seated Acupressure Neck & Shoulder Massage You play sports, don’t cross train and have specific trouble spots? Sports Massage You work out religiously at the gym, but don’t always stretch? Sports Massage as it incorporates stretching You are training for a specific sporting event or just completed one? Sports Massage You are inactive or active but just have a bad back? Sports Massage or Deep Tissue Massage Can you prevent rheumatoid arthritis?
People in the UK are low in vitamin D because of the weakness of the sunlight and the short summers. In addition there is greater concern in the UK about getting skin cancer from sunbathing or being out in the sun. Almost every rheumatoid arthritis sufferer has low levels of vitamin D and this is likely to be true for people with other inflammatory diseases too. Sunshine isn't the only source of vitamin D. Some foods such as eggs, oily fish such as sardines and salmon are rich in vitamin D too. Reserachers from the university of brimingham are the lastest to report in the importance of vitamin D. In a series of tests, they discovered that the immune cells of rheumatoid arthritis pateients could still respond normally to vitamin D by supressing inflammatory signalling - if those cells were circulating in the blood, but the same cell type when localisec to the fluid around the arthricitc joints, showned no anti-inflamatory reaction to vitamin D. This is because arthritis leads to vitamin D insensitivity which means that cells no longer respond to it. The research suggest that vitmain D therapy could still work on patients if they are given very high doeses, although standard suplements amy not. Prof Martin Hewison says that "almost everyone in the Uk has vitamin D deficiency". High levels of vitamin D can help prevent inflamatory diseases including rheumatiod arthritis. Reference https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896841117304201
