The Clinical Benefits of Massage

There can be no doubt that a session of your favorite massage therapy technique can bring you to a state of utmost relaxation. But did you know that massage therapy also has a lot of clinical benefits?

In its formal sense, massage therapy or therapeutic massage is the scientific manipulation of the various tissues found in our body for the purpose improving blood flow an circulation, reducing tensions in the muscles, and enhancing tissue healing. Muscle and tissue manipulation is considered one of the oldest health care services in the history. Up until now, it is one of the methods used to help the body in its ability to heal itself.

Professional massage therapists use different hand techniques to achieve to achieve variations in the amount of pressure exerted on the muscles. Professional massage therapists from Clearwater, Oldsmar, Safety Harbor, and Trinity all agree to this fact. There are five basic strokes that massage therapists use when giving a massage. These are effleurage, petrissage, percussion, friction, and vibration. Effleurage is the use of soothing, long, and gliding strokes made with the entire flat surface of the hands. Petrissage is kneading or the firm but gentle stroking of the skin and surface muscles with thumb and fingers. Percussion is the rapid alternate movements using both hands tapping, hacking, cupping, slapping, pounding, and tapotement. Frictionis the combination of long, slow, firm stroking movements in which the hand is kept in contact with the skin. Lastly, vibration is the rapid back and forth shaking or trembling movements performed by the whole hand or the fingers mostly used on the upper back, buttocks and thighs.

The combination of these strokes gives rise to the different types of massage therapy. For instance, deep tissue massage uses the combination of slow strokes, direct pressure, or friction which exerts greater pressure to deeper layers of muscle compared to Swedish massage. Swedish massage uses light pressure from long gliding strokes, kneading, and friction techniques. Sports massage, the most popular form of body massage availed by sports oriented individuals, uses almost the same strokes as deep tissue massage and Swedish massage.

You may prefer one type of bodywork over the other. Swedish massage is the most popular technique. Nevertheless, whatever type of technique it is, recent studies have shown that having regular massage therapy sessions brings a lot of clinical benefits. For example, regular muscle therapy can improve the pulmonary function of young patients with asthma. It is also known to reduce allergies, anxiety, and stress, as well as relieve people from painful arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome, and other repetitive motion injuries. Other conditions helped by body massage is chronic and temporary muscle pains, problems associated with the body's circulatory system, depression, digestive disorders, tension headaches and migraines, insomnia and other forms of sleeplessness, myofascial pain, sports injuries, and temporomandibular joint dysfunction.