For many people, joint pain and muscle stiffness are a daily nuisance. Joints in the hands, wrists and feet get stiff and sometimes painful to move. Sometimes it’s hard to get up out of a chair or button a shirt. Or you might have a nagging lower back ache, or that shoulder that just won’t relax. The good news is that relief may come from something you may have never considered–massage.
Tag: joints
Please, Tell Me About Knees!
Your knees are among the largest joints in your body and are under intense weight-bearing strain and used daily–no wonder they hurt sometimes.
The knee joint joins your thigh bone (femur) and your shin bone (tibia). The fibula bone runs alongside the tibia and, along with the kneecap (patella), make up the rest of the bones in the knee. Two c-shaped pieces of cartilage, the medial and lateral menisci, act as shock absorbers between femur and tibia.
The knee joint is the most complex in the body. It’s a “condylar” joint, meaning it has two protrusions on the femur (called condyles) and the the tibia has two grooves which enable them to roll and slide against each others. Because of it’s unique structure, it’s also a hinge joint.
Perform a Mental Reset with Massage
Most modern day computers and mobile devices have a limit. You’ll know when you’ve hit it when things start running slowly, battery life drains fast, things just don’t work the way they should. You try everything, then pick up the phone and call for tech support–they always recommend a restart.
A mental restart sets things back to normal. It clears extra memory baggage and dismisses extraneous code that causes things to bog down. It returns important settings that balance your machine to default status. POOF! The restarted device seems to have a new lease on life. It just works better.
Relieving Lower Back Pain
In any given year, one in 10 (10%) of men and women in the US experience lower back pain. Some just deal with it, others are more proactive.
Lower back pain is one of the top reasons people seek medical attention in the U.S., and it is notoriously tough to treat. Most lower back pain comes from injury or overuse of muscles, ligaments and joints. Less common are pressure on nerve roots, compression fractures and infections.
Studies show very few medical therapies, from medications to injections to surgeries, reliably relieve it, and some can aggravate the problem. A new study randomly assigned 400 adults with moderate-to-severe low back pain lasting for at least three months to either weekly whole-body massages for relaxation, weekly massages that focused on specific muscle problems around the lower back and hips, or usual care (“control group”). Continue reading “Relieving Lower Back Pain”
Massage Can Improve Range of Motion
Your body is constructed around a bony skeleton composed of roughly 206 bones, which are jointed to one another. Skeletal muscles attach to two or more bones that are joined through one or more joints. Contraction of these muscles crossing their respective joints powers the movement of the bones, pivoting at their joints. Muscles tend to work in pairs, across joints, each muscle of the pair pulling opposite to its partner.
When muscles become tense due to stressors of any kind, both muscles of a pair partially contract and shorten, putting pressure across the joint(s) the muscles cross. This tension reduces the potential range of motion (ROM) at the joint(s), because part of the dynamic range of the muscles is already reached. Continue reading “Massage Can Improve Range of Motion”
Five Massage Therapy Snapshots: Is This You?
Massage therapy is one of the best investments you can make for your personal well-being. All kinds of people seek massage therapy for all kinds of different reasons. The end result is almost always pain relief and relaxation.
Here’s a snapshot of some of the client types who already benefit from regular massage.
- Betty Back Pain. Back pain comes from joints, muscles, joints in the spine, bones, and nerves around the back. The pain could be in one area or could have a wider spread effect on an individual. A massage helps Betty feel and function better compared to her friends who don’t receive any massage treatment. Studies show it improves her range of motion and decreases discomfort, too. Continue reading “Five Massage Therapy Snapshots: Is This You?”