A recent issue of The Week had the following article on the many benefits of a massage. If you are doing massages in your spa or salon this is good info to pass on to your clients.
Larry Kopsa CPA
Nearly 9 percent of Americans get at least one massage every year, and they’re probably healthier for it: A new study suggests that massage not only relaxes the body, but also boosts the immune system and prompts beneficial hormonal changes. Researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles subjected volunteers to what was perhaps the most pleasant experiment ever devised: Half received 45 minutes of deep-tissue Swedish massage, while the rest received light-touch massage for the same period.
Just a single massage session induced marked physiological changes. Blood and saliva samples from the Swedish group registered lower levels of cortisol, a hormone elevated by stress, and arginine vasopressin, a hormone that can elevate cortisol; they also showed a rise in lymphocytes, white blood cells that aid the immune response. The light-massage recipients showed a greater increase in the “Love hormone” oxytocin and a greater drop in a different hormone that prompts the release of cortisol.
Despite the popularity of massage, psychiatrist and study author Mark Hyman Rapaport tells The New York Times, “there hasn’t been much physiological proof of the body’s heightened immune response following massage until now.”
Health and Science
October 8, 2010
