Top Massage Flashcards

Massage is the art of applying pressure to muscles in order to ease pain and help the patient relax. It’s widely used in sports medicine to help athletes recover after a hard workout, and also has applications in the business world, where massage is an extremely effective stress-reliever.

Although massage has been practiced for thousands of years, we’re only barely beginning to understand how it works from a scientific perspective. Part of the effect is probably psychological – human beings are social primates, and physical contact with others relaxes us and keeps us healthy. In our modern lives, many of us are isolated in solitary lives and need a professional masseur to provide this service. However, there is also a cellular basis for the effectiveness of massage. The pressure from a massage stimulates muscle cells to produce more mitochondria, the little cellular engines that combine sugars and oxygen to produce energy. With more mitochondria in the muscle cell, there’s more energy available to stimulate the body’s natural repair systems.
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