Say Good-bye to your Headache with Massage Therapy

If you ever had headaches in your life, you know just how bad they are. They are that kind of pain (like tooth ache) that no matter how you sit or stand or move, won´t go away. The worst thing about headaches is that they are very common and can even happen to you several times a day. To avoid analgesics and pills, it is important to find a natural way to fight those painful moments. Read on and find out how massage therapy can help you live a better life away from chronic headaches and migraines.

Headaches and Migraines

Acute pain in your head can even take you to nausea and will definitely ruin your plans for the day. Other symptoms can be extreme sensitivity to light, flashes of light, tingling in your extremities (arms or legs) and blind spots. There are different types and also different intensities of migraines. Some people might experience sudden ache that will come and go while others have it for hours regardless of what they do. The kind that most people complain the most about is chronic headache or migraine. In this case, patients experience migraine and headache very often and for long periods of time. This condition can be not also very painful but also very disturbing for social life. If it is not yourself, you have a friend, or a relative who often is in a bad mood and that doesn´t attend to some meetings and gatherings because he or she is not “feeling well”. Well, the reason behind that might very well be migraine.

How can Massage Therapy Help with Migraines?

It has been tested extensively and most specialists agree that massage therapy can help with migraines and headaches. According to the professionals in The Touch Institute that belongs to the School of Medicine of the University of Miami, massage therapy lowered the amount and intensity of headaches that appeared in patients as well as sleep disturbances, distress symptoms and also pumped the levels of serotonin, an enzyme that is capable of reducing discomfort and generating pleasure.

Stress and Tension

Many of the headaches and migraines are directly related to stress, tension, worries and modern-life rush. In fact, one of the main answers in every test made for this affection comes out with the word “stress” written. It is well-known that one of the main benefits of massage therapy is to reduce stress and tension in the muscles. Well, that property is extremely helpful to alleviate the body from headaches and migraines. The level of association between one phenomenon and the other is so big that prestigious clinics like the Mayo Clinic advice their clinical patients to do something relaxing for the muscles and the mind for at least half an hour a day. This could help alleviate them from headaches and migraines after having rough days at work and/or at home. Also, high serotonin levels like the ones massage therapy generates in people can help cope with high levels of cortisol, the stress hormone.

Which are the Best Techniques?

The techniques that can help you with migraines and headaches are plenty, but here is a list of the most common ones. Swedish Massage Swedish massage is great for alleviating pain in the back and the neck. What we commonly call a massage is actually a Swedish massage and when performed by a specialist it can really help you get the muscles and tendons in your back and neck loose and defeat the contracting pain of stress. Without stress and contracted muscles, chances are that the headache will go away too. Deep Tissue Massage Although this is a massage that is more for high-end sports athletes, the benefits of disarming long-term knots in your back are huge. For people who have been under heavy stress for a long period of time and also for people who enjoy deeper pressure on their skin, deep tissue massage can be very relaxing. When you relax, your body releases serotonin and hence, you combat cortisol (the stress hormone) and can reduce your headache or migraine. Reflexology Reflexology is an ancient art and it is based upon the belief that every part of our body is connected to each other. This means that if a part of your body hurts, you can have a massage in another part and heal that pain. In this specific case, you can ask the massage therapist to focus on your head points and rub them until you stop feeling the pain you are under. Reflexology massage is mostly applied to feet and hands and by pressing technical points in them addressing the whole body. According to recent studies carried on with a small group of adult people who were experiencing chronic headaches, reflexology could diminish their headaches in more than 50%. The subjects attended to reflexology sessions two to three times a day for six months. As a result of this experiment, subjects who used to experiment 7 headaches a week reduced them to an average of two. Also, the average length of the headache decreased in time to half (from eight hours average to four hours average). Reflexology is the most effective of the three massage types presented here. By pressing the right points in your hands and feet, massage therapists can relieve headache directly without going for the contractures or knots in your back or the overall stress levels.

Conclusion

The causes of chronic headache or migraine are plenty and for each person it might be a different combo. Perhaps you are having a rough time at work or there is a new baby at the house, or you are under a lot of competition or academic pressure. Whichever the reason, it is important to know that there is a natural cure for that without taking a single pill and it is massage therapy. Go to a certified masseuse or a spa and get rid of your chronic migraine once and for all.

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