Though pain is something that all humans experience at some point in their lives, it’s not something that any of us would ever choose to live with. That’s why mankind has spent so much of its history looking for ways to relieve physical pain. Over the last several thousand years, human beings have resorted to a wide variety of strategies to cope with, manage, and avoid pain. In modern times, many patients rely on prescribed medications or over-the-counter pain relief solutions. But those solutions often come with unwanted risks and side effects. Fortunately, there is a more natural solution for reducing pain relief, and it’s as simple as the ancients always suspected: massage.
Yes, massage is a perfect solution for many of the aches and pains that plague mankind. Although those claims were doubted for many years, new pain research has demonstrated that various massage techniques can provide real pain relief for patients suffering from a whole host of pain-related ailments. In other words, even many medical doctors now accept that massage is a legitimate and worthy component of any long-term pain relief strategy. They now acknowledge that one of the oldest forms of pain relief has a real place at the table of modern pain management.
There are several reasons for this, and they involve every aspect of the human body, mind, and emotions:
- First, pain can be a real physical sensation. Your brain processes pain in a way that is unique to your person. That’s why something that causes one individual severe pain may be scarcely noticed by the next person. The problem is that medical science is ill-equipped to deal with pain, since it is premised upon the need to identify the actual source of pain. Doctors often struggle to help patients manage pain when they cannot find that source. Massage therapists are not limited by those constraints.
- Pain has a mental component too. If your mind perceives danger to the body due to unexpected sensory input, it will often respond by giving you sensations of pain. This can happen even when there is no real trauma that should be causing pain. Again, doctors struggle with these non-injury pain manifestations. Massage offers the mind-easing therapy these pain-sufferers need.
- Pain can be emotional as well. If your brain presumes danger, what is the solution? It’s simple: you provide it the feeling of safety it needs to reduce that pain warning. The manual manipulation techniques used in massage therapy help to ease muscle and tendon tension, relax the body and mind, and even improve circulation and immune function. All of that helps to create a greater sense of safety for the patient’s mind – and thus signals to the brain that it’s all right to turn off the pain alarms.
Pain does not have to be something that you just “live with.” Massage therapy can be an effective way to take control of your pain and escape its debilitating effects once and for all. So, if you’re struggling with pain and are looking for a solution that doesn’t involve reliance on side-effect-inducing pain medications, massage may be the answer you need.
