Fitness and Massage For Chronic Pain

Massage and fitness are two ways to combat one of the fastest growing epidemics in the Western World, chronic pain. Chronic pain is a slow cooking plague that is affecting 1 in every 2 Americans. It effects quality of life, energy, and overall wellness. Although western medicine has a lot to offer for acute pain, diseases, infections, and so on, the standard medical model doesn’t have a lot of “reputable” solutions for chronic pain.

Enter fitness and massage. Most chronic pains cannot be solved by taking pills or having an operation. And since most chronic pains are degenerative diseases (osteoporosis, arthritis) or metabolic ones (diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis), lifestyle interventions are the most useful in reversing the disease. All too often, fitness and massage get split apart the same way yoga and exercise does. People are either “massage” people, or gym rats, meaning they either enjoy resting and being massaged, or they look to solve their issues at the gym, without being touched. I’m here to tell you that your body needs both.

The body needs to be treated for the extraordinarily smart thing that it is. And at the root of it all you have your Central Nervous System (CNS). The CNS regulates everything; breath, movement, hormones, emotions, fear, panic, rest, digestion, literally everything. What massage and fitness offer are two solutions that help expand this system’s understanding of itself. Because after all, just because you have a spine, or spina cord, doesn’t mean you understand it.

Without getting into the science of it (which I’m more than glad to do with you), massage and bodywork can help tissues that are stuck (not pliable), not hydrating well, not absorbing nutrients well, effecting joint functions, and not eliminating waste products. Massage helps with ALL those things! And, it can train your body to learn how to relax. And a relaxed system is what we want, one that isn’t all wound up all the time. Not to mention that the science behind our skin being touched can be incredibly therapeutic for the overall well being of our being.

On the other side of the coin, fitness helps move the byproducts (O2 and CO2) in and of our muscles to different parts of the body (organs, tissues). Movement and force is the language of cells, and our cells need to receive daily and regular messages that tell us how our joints work, and how conditioned our muscles are. If your muscles aren’t elastic, if your joints don’t have healthy ranges of motion, it effects everything from the spine, to the organs, to your hormones. And so fitness and personal training play a vital role in preventing degenerative disease and chronic pain.

And so fitness and massage need to be married to one another. They are a partnership that we have to integrate into our lives if we want our bodies to stay healthy, bouncy, and remain pain free! The human body is a life long project, and instead of dreading or avoiding the process, it behooves us to embrace it and start working on it! The future is going to keep selling us on medications and surgeries, but we need to be taking our health back into our own hands, and doing everything we can to solve our issues and pains naturally without “minor” procedures that involve cutting into our bodies.

If you ever have questions about the kinds of bodywork I offer, please click here to learn more, as there are many treatment types. The same goes for fitness and training. Come in for a complimentary consult to learn more about what specific type of work I do and to feel the difference when improving your fitness level.