Massage therapy: Be a repeater

I had the extreme pleasure of enjoying my first massage about 12 years ago.  Since then, massage has mostly been a sporadic gift to myself that I might use to celebrate a special milestone, or to help myself recover after a very stressful time.

I took a different approach at the beginning of this year: I began scheduling massage therapy sessions every other week, for a couple of reasons. I have a chronic neck and shoulder problem that has been bothering me since I was about 14 years old. I had become accustomed to a constant, low level of pain in my right shoulder and neck. Sometimes the shoulder would flare up so badly that I could actually hear the muscles in my neck squeaking when I turned my head.

I also had a pretty severe back spasm around New Year’s. That was the third time this particular muscle group had acted up on me. It wasn’t the worst episode: the first time, it affected me for about six weeks, even affecting my ability to work. This most recent time wasn’t nearly as bad, but it made me realize that I was turning into a five-foot-five stress ball.

I exercise a lot, but I also spend a lot of time writing on my laptop with generally poor posture. I juggle a few different jobs. I have three kids, a dog, a cat and a husband. I am a perfectionist. I have a low tolerance for disorder. I feel a compulsion to please everyone else around me. In other words, I am very susceptible to stress.

It was the low-back flare-up and my neck that brought me in for massage therapy at the beginning of this year. And although I had done massage before, I never particularly cared which therapist I saw, or where. But in this particular case, I happened to get matched up with a therapist who had a background in fitness and personal training, and was very skilled at interpreting the root causes of the muscle problems I was having. As with a hair stylist, dentist, doctor or manicurist, feeling comfortable with your massage therapist and respecting their level of expertise enhances the experience and makes you want to come back.

For the first time, I started working with the same person regularly, which produced many surprising benefits. For one thing, I began to feel safe and comfortable. Without having to worry about what they were going to do next, I could relax and allow my brain to unplug for a while.

The therapist also got familiar with some of my problem areas, and was able to quickly hone in on trouble spots. For example, we discovered that my piriformis muscle is a huge trouble-maker in my low back, and that my lack of upper-body strength was contributing to my neck and shoulder problems. Armed with that knowledge, the therapist suggested a series of exercises and stretches to help strengthen the weak spots and counteract the tight ones. I am working on those, but this is not a quick fix. It took several decades of postural mistakes to cause these problems, and they won’t go away overnight.

I have been working with the same therapist for about three months now. For the first time in recent memory, my right shoulder feels generally pain-free. It still flares up from time to time, but I haven’t heard the muscles squeak for many weeks.

We had a couple of memorable breakthroughs, like the day my right shoulder finally released and it seemed like a thousand pounds of pressure dropped out of my jaw. I have always been a tooth-grinder, but I never knew before that day that my tooth-grinding was connected to my shoulder pain. Once the shoulder released, the tooth-grinding decreased. It’s been about a month since I woke myself up with the sound of my upper and lower jaws compressing together so tightly that you could mistake them for a glacier moving across land.

We’ve done some excellent work on the right pirifomis as well, and although it is still a bit of a nag, I cannot remember ever feeling so good in my running stride as I do right now. I feel like a child when I run—both legs feel loose and light. I have a longer stride, and it is rare for me to feel the stinging burn in my hip and hamstring that used to be normal after a mile or two.

All the physical benefits are wonderful, and well worth the investment of time and money, but the psychological benefits are something else entirely, and the subject of another blog.

Resources 

This blog has been about my personal experience with massage therapy, but if you are interested in reading more general information about massage benefits, check out the following resources:

North American Journal of Sports Physical Therapy: NAJSPT

The Sports Physical Therapy Section of the American Physical Therapy Association

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2953308/

The Mayo Clinic. Massage: Get in touch with its many benefits

http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/stress-management/in-depth/massage/art-20045743

USA Today, The Benefits of Massage Therapy

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/weekend/health/doctors/2013/12/20/benefits-of-massage-therapy/4137819/

Five tips for relieving sore muscles

Whether you are a beginning exerciser or an advanced athlete, you will occasionally experience some muscle soreness when you try a new movement. As your body becomes more accustomed to exercise, it becomes much more efficient at repairing itself, and soreness will go away much faster—but as long as you continue to challenge your body in new ways, you will get sore from time to time.

Why are you sore?

Strenuous exercise causes microscopic damage to your muscles. This damage prompts your body to strengthen your muscle tissue so that you will be better able to handle the same activity the next time. As the repairs and improvements begin, waste products build up in the muscle tissue, causing some discomfort. In order to remove the waste products, your muscles bring in extra water to dissolve the substances, creating swelling.

What can you do?

Time is the best healer for sore muscles. The soreness should peak at 48 hours after your activity and then start improving. In the meantime, there are a few things you can do to alleviate the stiffness and discomfort.

1. Drink lots of water. Water helps increase your blood volume to make it easier to move harmful substances and waste products out of your muscle tissue. The exact quantity you need depends on your weight, gender, activity level and the weather outside. As a general guideline, take a look at your pee when you go to the bathroom. It should always be a pale yellow color. If it becomes a more concentrated yellow, drink more.
2. Keep moving. The more you move, the better your circulatory system works. This means that blood can move more freely through your muscles, removing waste products and excess water, and delivering nutrients to your muscles. Gentle exercises, like walking or low-intensity swimming, are good choices.
3. Get wet. Whether pool or hot tub, pressure from water can help your circulatory system function more effectively. You don’t have to swim to get this benefit: you can walk or play in the pool. The best water of all is a hot tub—whether a hot bath or a Jacuzzi with bubbles. The Jacuzzi adds the extra benefit of massaging action from water jets, which will further improve your circulation. In my own experience, the Jacuzzi is the number-one muscle soreness reducer.
4. Eat well. If you are serious about health and fitness, you should always focus on eating quality foods, but it’s especially important when you are recovering from a bout of strenuous exercise that produced muscle soreness. A nutrient-rich diet packed with vitamins and minerals from vegetables and high-quality proteins will give your body the supplies it needs to repair muscle damage and prepare you for the next bout of exercise. Focus on foods as close to their natural form as possible: like grilled fish and fresh grilled, steamed, or raw vegetables.
5. Sleep strong. Your body does its major repair work when you sleep. Make sure that you give yourself plenty of time for rest each night. To facilitate good sleep, take a hot bath before bed. Spend a half-hour relaxing  (reading, meditating, praying) before you turn out the lights. Use white noise (like a fan on low) to drown out distractions, and reserve your bedroom for sleep only—in other words, condition your brain to understand that bed is for sleeping, not watching TV or eating.