Adequate sleep is required for proper functioning, and quality sleep is critical to overall health and well-being. However, an estimated 50 to 70 million Americans suffer from sleep problems that have a negative impact on their health, frequently resulting in poor job performance, slower response time, obesity, an increased risk of long-term illness, and drug dependence.
Chronic insomnia causes great exhaustion and difficulty concentrating, and it may have a negative impact on a person’s mood and overall health. For healthcare providers, assisting patients in overcoming insomnia is crucial for promoting overall health and well-being. According to Ralph Pascualy, medical director of the Sleep Medicine Institute in Seattle, the amount and quality of a person’s sleep have a direct impact on their health. Nutrition and exercise are often advised as the cornerstones of good health, but research indicates that healthy sleep should also be included in any holistic therapy. Those who sleep fewer than 8 hours each night accumulate ‘sleep debt,” which cannot be erased by sleeping more on weekends.
Problems Related to Insomnia
According to recent research data, massage Dubai is useful for insomnia-related stress. The therapy helps resolve lots of issues:
- Anxiety;
- Digestive disorders;
- Fibromyalgia;
- Headaches;
- Myofascial Pain Syndrome;
- Paresthesia and nerve pain;
- Soft-tissue strains or injuries;
- Sports injuries;
- Temporomandibular Joint Pain.
Let’s dig a bit deeper into the key benefits of massage treatments.
Benefits of Massage Therapy
Massage therapy has been shown to improve sleep in infants, children, adults, and the elderly, as well as people with psychiatric disorders, fibromyalgia, heart disease, lower back pain, cancer, cerebral palsy, and breast disease, according to the National Institutes of Health.
According to Anne Williams, director of education at Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals and author of Spa Bodywork and Teaching Massage, “Massage helps individuals spend more time in deep sleep, the restorative phase in which the body barely moves, which minimizes the neurotransmitter-related to pain.”
There are numerous distinct forms of massage, including the following typical types:
- Swedish massage is a gentle massage technique that employs lengthy strokes, kneading, deep circular motions, vibration, and tapping to help you relax and invigorate.
- Deep massage is a massage method that employs slower, more vigorous strokes to target the deeper layers of muscle and connective tissue, which is widely used to treat muscular damage caused by accidents.
- Sports massage is similar to Swedish massage, but it is designed to assist those who participate in sports to avoid or cure injuries.
- Trigger point massage focuses on tight muscle fibers that might occur as a result of injury or overuse.
The chemistry of sleep is crucial to massage because it directly affects the body’s generation of serotonin, which is required for melatonin production. Research on back pain published in the International Journal of Neuroscience found that, in addition to a reduction in long-term pain, massage recipients reported better sleep and higher serotonin levels. Results were based on twice-weekly, 30-minute massages for 5 weeks, utilizing these approaches.
- Kneading and pushing the back muscles;
- Massage both sides of the spine and hips;
- Gliding rubs on the legs;
- Kneading and pressing the thighs.
Participants in the supine posture received:
- Gliding strokes for the neck and abdomen;
- Kneading the rectus and oblique muscles that assist bend the trunk of the body forward;
- Rubbing on the legs;
- Kneading the anterior thighs;
- Flexing the thighs and knees;
- Gently pull on both legs.
The research included additional evaluations such as a sleep scale to determine sleep quality and urine samples to analyze serotonin levels.
Let’s Wrap It up
Massage is a wise, healthy, drug-free treatment that has helped many individuals conquer insomnia. Because melatonin regulates an individual’s circadian clock, increasing serotonin naturally is a good strategy to induce sleep. This finding calls for further investigation into the direct effects of massage treatment on serotonin and sleep. In the meantime, the available data is sufficient to prescribe frequent massages for restless patients.
A rising number of healthcare providers understand the value of using a multidisciplinary approach to patients in order to better identify the cause of illness — rather than merely treating the symptoms. At the same time, sleeping drugs and pain relievers should give way to complementary and alternative forms of treatment, such as massage therapy, in order to treat the full person and improve results.
