Can Massage Reduce Inflammation in the Body?

Study Shows Massage Therapy Could Reduce Inflammation

While most people are aware of how beneficial massage therapy can be to relieve stress, the effects of massage on reducing inflammation isn’t as well known.

Why is it important to reduce inflammation? Because it is linked to contributing to most of the major diseases, including heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s.

The following excerpt is from DoctorsHealthPress.com:

Need an excuse to get a massage? A new health breakthrough in the area of natural health news has proven that this alternative therapy could reduce inflammation in the body. Since inflammation is implicated in a wide swath of chronic diseases, it seems that seeing a massage therapist might not be just about stress relief.

On a cellular level, massage lessens inflammation and promotes the growth of new mitochondria in skeletal muscle. Mitochondria are the energy center of every cell in the body. The research appears online in the journal “Science Translational Medicine.”

The potential benefits of massage are vast. Massage could be useful to a broad spectrum of individuals, including older adults, those suffering from musculoskeletal injuries, and patients with chronic inflammatory disease. Massage could be used as actual medical practice in these cases.

Read the full article here.

For more information on chronic inflammation and disease, I found this article at lef.org:

Of the ten leading causes of mortality in the United States, chronic, low-level inflammation contributes to the pathogenesis of at least seven. These include heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, and nephritis (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2011; Bastard et al. 2006; Cao 2011, Jha et al. 2009; Ferrucci et al. 2010; Glorieux et al. 2009; Kundu et al. 2008; Murphy 2012; Singh et al. 2011).

Inflammation has classically been viewed as an acute (short term) response to tissue injury that produces characteristic symptoms and usually resolves spontaneously. More contemporary revelations show chronic inflammation to be a major factor in the development of degenerative disease and loss of youthful functions.

Chronic inflammation can be triggered by cellular stress and dysfunction, such as that caused by excessive calorie consumption, elevated blood sugar levels, and oxidative stress. It is now clear that the destructive capacity of chronic inflammation is unprecedented among physiologic processes (Karin et al. 2006).

The danger of chronic, low-level inflammation is that its silent nature belies its destructive power.

In fact, stress-induced inflammation, once triggered, can persist undetected for years, or even decades, propagating cell death throughout the body. Due to the fact that it contributes so greatly to deterioration associated with the aging process, this silent state of chronic inflammation has been coined “inflammaging”.

Read the full article here.

In addition to making some changes in your eating habits, book a massage to help reduce the inflammation!

If you have any tips on reducing inflammation, please share them by posting.