By Alice Mackenzie
Sore muscles often develop after hard bouts of exercise, strenuous activities, or when the body is unwell.
It’s never a nice feeling and while most muscle aches disappear eventually, dealing with them in the present is very frustrating and usually very painful.
Simple things like using the stairs, bending down, or taking the dog for walk become much more challenging. However, there may be a solution to those niggling muscle aches that many have overlooked - getting a professional massage.
While most assume massages are nothing more than a luxury spa treatment, they’ve actually been widely used by professional athletes for decades.
In fact, many people that regularly exercise love to go for a massage to aid in their recovery, with the widely held belief that a massage helps muscles recover from a tough workout.
A Massage Can Decrease Inflammation and Help Muscles Recover
Anyone that has had a massage knows how it helps reduce tightness in certain muscles. A massage also helps to increase blood flow throughout muscles and increases their overall flexibility, so there are obvious physical benefits from getting a massage.
However, a contentious area of debate was whether a massage actually reduces muscle pains, typically those associated with exercise such as delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). Some swear that a massage reduces pain and even aids in recovery, while others claim it only relaxes muscle tension.
A recent study completed in 2012 may have finally provided the answer, with evidence suggesting that a massage does help reduced muscle pain and increase muscle recovery. The findings indicated that massage after rigorous exercise helps to reduce muscle inflammation and increase recovery rates.
What the Study Involved
The study involved 11 male subjects that were required to undergo high-intensity exercise until they could not continue, with the exercise determined to give the same level of muscle soreness that a high-level athlete would have after training hard.
After the workout, each man were given a 10-minute Swedish massage that was only applied to a single leg, with the other leg being rested to mimic natural recovery without a massage. Muscle tissue was biopsied several times from each leg to give scientists different samples to compare.
With these different samples on hand, scientists completed various tests, including gene-profiling, that showed the varying effects on the muscle cells. The findings revealed two notable differences between the massage and non-massaged legs.
Massages and Inflammation
The first finding was that the legs that were massaged had decreased inflammation compared to the other. Inflammation occurs after vigorous exercise due to small tears in muscle fibers, with the body’s attempts to repair the muscle tears causing them to become inflamed.
The reduction in inflammation from a massage was linked to the lowered production of the compound cytokine. Cytokines play an important role in muscle inflammation - many anti-inflammatory medications block cytokines to reduce the pain caused by inflammation.
As inflamed muscles are quite painful, the fact that massages reduce inflammation meant that pain was also reduced, highlighting that a professional massage can reduce the pains associated with post-workout inflammation.
Massages and Muscle Recovery
When comparing muscle tissues from massaged and non-massaged legs, there was also evidence that muscle recovery was also increased in the massaged areas. This was linked to an increase in mitochondria production within the muscle cells.
Mitochondria is a compound found inside cells that convert glucose into energy, which is required for healthy functioning cells and cell recovery. Because the massage naturally stimulated mitochondria, muscles recovered much quicker compared to non-massaged muscles.
Massages Are Serious Medicine
So, not only does a massage help to reduce muscle inflammation and pains, research from spa hotels shows it also helps them to recover quicker. This showcases the exciting protentional that massages offer for muscle recovery and treatments - it could very well be natural alternative to traditional anti-inflammatory medicines!
This is exciting because anti-inflammatory medicine often offers just temporary pain relief without helping the muscle to recover, unlike a massage. For instance, if you take an aspirin for sore muscles, the pain will go away but the muscles will not recover quickly or become fitter - which are benefits a massage may offer according to this exciting research.
Prior to the study, a massage working as a natural medicine for pain relief was never properly researched. Yes, people had anecdotal accounts of feeling less pain in their muscles after a massage, yet there was no explanation as to why or how this happened.
With the research offering insight into what a massage offers muscles - mainly the reduction of cytokines and increased mitochondria - we now have a better understanding as to the possible medical benefits of massages.
Of course, paying for a massage is certainly more expensive than taking over the counter medication, yet the results of a massage may be more beneficial with few - if any - side-effects. If you’re serious about exercise and fitness, then it may be worth adding regular massage therapies into your regime, as the results may be well worth the investment.
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