Sometimes it is about the relaxation massage. Especially when it can help lower cortisol.
If you haven't heard of cortisol, it's a completely essential hormone that you use frequently, and it can really come in handy. It's built in to our fight-flight-freeze response, so if you need to hurdle a fence or lift a car off someone, it's your "guy!" It does have it's drawbacks, though, especially when overused.
See, cortisol has a nice pattern it follows throughout the day, starting higher in the morning and then falling gradually so that you can (hopefully) get to sleep at night. It's on standby, though, and fires up when you need it. In these cases, it's like the jet propulsion button you see in James Bond's car, or whoever is cool enough to have a car with that in it. But this button is meant to be used for a getaway, not for everyday.
One of the big problems we have with cortisol is that we tend to overuse it. We have deadlines, bills, traffic jams, kids to herd, bosses to please, 'oh crap I lost my keys,' and the list goes on and on. High stress means you're burning that cortisol, which triggers the release of noradrenaline and adrenaline. These things all have PURPOSE and cause REACTIONS in the body, they shouldn't just be used to get your work done faster.
Too much of anything causes problems (imbalance) in the body. High cortisol, for instance, lowers your immunity, increases blood sugar and can lower serotonin levels. I'm not going to go into the nitty gritty nerdy details about cortisol in this blog, so if you are interested in learning more, and like bio stuff, check out Dartmouth's link: Here.
The point I really want to get to, is that massage can help! I just read a new study about how massage from a professional (in the study it was done by nurses) lowered blood cortisol levels in patient's who had recently had a heart attack. Literally, massage affects your body's cortisol levels. Meaning, it lowers your stress. Meaning IT IS AWESOME! See for yourself:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26405441
Now, don't you want to get a massage?
If you haven't heard of cortisol, it's a completely essential hormone that you use frequently, and it can really come in handy. It's built in to our fight-flight-freeze response, so if you need to hurdle a fence or lift a car off someone, it's your "guy!" It does have it's drawbacks, though, especially when overused.
See, cortisol has a nice pattern it follows throughout the day, starting higher in the morning and then falling gradually so that you can (hopefully) get to sleep at night. It's on standby, though, and fires up when you need it. In these cases, it's like the jet propulsion button you see in James Bond's car, or whoever is cool enough to have a car with that in it. But this button is meant to be used for a getaway, not for everyday.
One of the big problems we have with cortisol is that we tend to overuse it. We have deadlines, bills, traffic jams, kids to herd, bosses to please, 'oh crap I lost my keys,' and the list goes on and on. High stress means you're burning that cortisol, which triggers the release of noradrenaline and adrenaline. These things all have PURPOSE and cause REACTIONS in the body, they shouldn't just be used to get your work done faster.
Too much of anything causes problems (imbalance) in the body. High cortisol, for instance, lowers your immunity, increases blood sugar and can lower serotonin levels. I'm not going to go into the nitty gritty nerdy details about cortisol in this blog, so if you are interested in learning more, and like bio stuff, check out Dartmouth's link: Here.
The point I really want to get to, is that massage can help! I just read a new study about how massage from a professional (in the study it was done by nurses) lowered blood cortisol levels in patient's who had recently had a heart attack. Literally, massage affects your body's cortisol levels. Meaning, it lowers your stress. Meaning IT IS AWESOME! See for yourself:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26405441
Now, don't you want to get a massage?