Q: Many people suffer from some kind of physical pain. How can massage therapy make them feel better? A: Massage helps people spend more time in deep sleep, the restorative stage in which your body barely moves. In our studies of fibromyalgia, we monitored the sleep of subjects who received 30-minute massages three times a week for five weeks. We found that the fibromyalgia sufferers slept nearly an hour longer at the end of the study period than they did at the beginning and that their sleep was deeper. We also found that by increasing sleep, we could reduce substance P, a neurotransmitter that’s closely associated with pain. Fibromyalgia is a vicious cycle: The less restful sleep you get, the more substance P is emitted and the more pain you have; the more pain you have, the more difficulty you have sleeping. We were trying to use massage to break that cycle, and it was very effective.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 15:17:44 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015