Does a good massage do more than just relax your muscles? To find out, researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles recruited 53 healthy adults and randomly assigned 29 of them to a 45-minute session of deep-tissue Swedish massage and the other 24 to a session of light massage.
Deep Breathing
Breathing exercises and the relaxation response(by Marcelle Pick,OB/GYN NP)
http://www.womentowomen.com/default.aspx
Deep breathing is the fastest way to trigger your parasympathetic nervous system, through what some practitioners call the relaxation response. Further review and analysis of research by Drs. Brown and Gerbarg resulted in the development of a new neuropsychological theory for how yogic breathing may affect the stress response system and calm the mind and body. Their recent article in Current Psychiatry shows how trained deep breathing can relieve trauma symptoms.
The sympathetic nervous system, which is stimulated in times of stress and anxiety, controls your fight or flight response, including spikes in cortisol and adrenaline that can be damaging when they persist too long.
As many of you know, chronic stress depletes the body of nutrients and destabilizes brain and endocrine chemistry. Depression, muscle tension and pain, insulin sensitivity, GI issues, insomnia, and adrenal fatigue among scores of other conditions are all related to an overworked sympathetic nervous system. What counteracts this mechanism? The parasympathetic nervous system.
Breath is the fastest medium by which these systems can communicate, flicking the switch from high alert to low in a matter of seconds.
When someone is frightened or stressed, they tend to hold their breath or take rapid, shallow breaths. The heart pounds and muscles clench as the adrenaline kicks in. (For more on this see our article on anxiety). When the stressor is resolved, they let out a deep breath, signaling the brain that everything is okay again. If deep breathing continues, the heart rate decreases, the lungs expand and the muscles relax. Equilibrium is restored.
Many Eastern cultures have long recognized the importance of breathing to cultivate a positive relationship between the body and the mind, one that results in a more tranquil state of being and a more resilient physiology. Yoga, qi gong and t’ai chi are such healthy practices in large part because they combine deep breathing and movement to support a steady central nervous response.
This provides at least a partial clue as to why Asian women report fewer menopausal symptoms, including hot flashes. Several studies on women during the menopausal transition show that paced breathing and other relaxation techniques reduce both frequency and severity of hot flashes. This is noteworthy because there are no adverse effects to deep breathing!
****************
- Deep
breathing reduces stress-if you are stressed, you breath in short,
shallow bursts-To relax you do the opposite - breathing deeply
- Deep
breathing releases endorphins-the bodies own painkillers, into the
system. This can help relieve headaches, sleeplessness, backaches and
other stress related aches and pains.
- Deep breathing helps to clear and focus the mind
Regimens: Massage Benefits Are More Than Skin Deep
By RONI CARYN RABIN
Published: September 20, 2010
All of the subjects were fitted with intravenous catheters so blood samples could be taken immediately before the massage and up to an hour afterward.
To their surprise, the researchers, sponsored by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a division of the National Institutes of Health, found that a single session of massage caused biological changes.
Volunteers who received Swedish massage experienced significant decreases in levels of the stress hormone cortisol in blood and saliva, and in arginine vasopressin, a hormone that can lead to increases in cortisol. They also had increases in the number of lymphocytes, white blood cells that are part of the immune system.
Volunteers who had the light massage experienced greater increases in oxytocin, a hormone associated with contentment, than the Swedish massage group, and bigger decreases in adrenal corticotropin hormone, which stimulates the adrenal glands to release cortisol.
The study was published online in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.
The lead author, Dr. Mark Hyman Rapaport, chairman of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at Cedars-Sinai, said the findings were “very, very intriguing and very, very exciting — and I’m a skeptic.”
******************************************************
Pay for Massages With a Flexible Spending Account
By RON LIEBERThe article currently topping The New York Times hit parade (otherwise known as the most e-mailed list) is about new research suggesting that even a single session of massage can cause positive biological changes.
Clearly, there are a lot of massage therapists zapping this around the Internet. What many of them may not know, however, is that potential customers could be getting treatments at a significant discount by using the health care flexible spending accounts that they may have through their employer.
Here’s how this works.
First, you need to sign up for a flexible spending account. Your employer (and a third-party administrator of some sort) will pull money from your paycheck before they take out income taxes. You decide how much to deduct each year for health care expenses that insurance doesn’t cover, keeping in mind that if you don’t use the money within a year or so, you lose it.
Then, ask the administrator of your account whether massages are expenses eligible for reimbursement. If they are, you will probably need a prescription from your doctor for massage therapy for a particular ailment to use your account to pay for the massage. Most doctors are happy to oblige once you explain the reasoning to them; I know this from experience, having been in on this nice little loophole for years.
(If the employees at your administrator won’t approve the expense, you can point them to the study that the article cites and remind them that the giant flexible spending account run by the federal government will approve reimbursement for massage if a doctor believes it to be medically necessary).
Finally, make your massage appointment. You’ll probably need to pay upfront and then apply for reimbursement (don’t forget to submit your doctor’s note or prescription). If a rubdown is going to be a regular routine, you can ask the therapist for a volume discount.
The result? In a high-income-tax state, you’ll probably be getting at least one third off the retail price since you’re paying no income taxes on the money you’re using to cover the massages. Combine that with all of the massage deals that sites like Groupon regularly offer and this hardly even seems a luxury anymore.