Body Wellness Blog

You already make regular appointments with your massage therapist because you know that getting massages is great for nearly every part of you. You’ve been feeling better, getting sick less often, and are even sleeping a little better. However, savvy as you are, you might be neglecting to take care of your muscles before, after, and in between massages as well.

Stretching is an often-overlooked aspect of body care. Stretching increases blood flow to your muscles, increases your joint range of motion, and enables your muscles to work their fullest potential.  To get started, be sure that you don’t try and stretch cold muscles.  The optimal time to stretch is after a light session of exercise, such as a 10-minute walk or jog.  Aim to hold each stretch, without bouncing, for 20-30 seconds.  Before a massage, stretching can help make your muscles more accessible and loosened up for your massage therapist.  The day after a massage, if muscles feel a little tight, some gentle stretching following a warm bath can be very helpful.  Here are a few of our favorites:

1. The Toe-Touch, or as close as you can get.  Even though this is a least-favorite stretch for many folks, it’s nonetheless an important one.  This stretch addresses your hamstrings (the group of four muscles on the back of each thigh), the lower back, and the muscles around your shoulders.  Hint: If you can’t quite reach the floor (few of us can), then rest your hands on a hard surface at the level that is raised from the floor.  Yoga blocks, a kitchen chair, a stack of books, or a step stool all work just fine.
2. The Butterfly.  Such a delicate, fun name for such a killer stretch!  Sit with your feet touching soles in front of you with your knees bent, gently press down on your bent knees toward the ground, bending at the waist.  This stretch helps out your hip adductors, which, when tight and inflexible, can lead to a greater chance of injuring your knees or lower back.
3. The Hip Flexor Lunge.  A truly satisfying stretch when done correctly, this one can take some finagling before the proper form is found.  Kneel on the ground, and then bring your right foot forward, flat on the ground, into a kneeling lunge.  Bring your right flat foot forward, keeping your right knee above your right ankle, and lean into the lunge. You should feel a deep stretch in the muscle that runs below your hip bone.  Repeat on the left side.  The small-but-mighty hip flexors are responsible for keeping your hips and lower back strong and properly aligned.

Does your Monday through Friday world consist of a desk, a phone, a computer, and a well-used chair? When you get out of your office chair at the end of a long day, do you feel as sore and tired as if you’ve just played a few rounds of volleyball or moved furniture? It’s no secret that desk jobs can wreak havoc on your body.  With a whopping 80% of us who work at jobs that are either sedentary or else require only light activity (compared to a mere 20% in 1960), the neck strains, slouching, and shoulder pain are an unfortunate reality for many of us. So how can you prevent desk job aches and pains without switching jobs?

For starters take a look at the position of your computer screen. Ideally, you should not have to bend your neck to look at your screen.  If using a laptop, connecting to a different, eye-level monitor is a great idea or placing it in a raised platform. Over time, the extra, added stress to your neck from being tilted to gaze at a traditional laptop screen can lead to permanent damage and degeneration to your neck. Ditto for phone screens.  Try to lessen the amount of time your head is bent down while you’re texting, or otherwise looking at your phone. For every degree that your neck is bent forward, a surprising amount of weight is added onto your neck.  Here is an article from The Atlantic for more information.

Avoid the phone neck-cradle. Difficult as it is to break this habit, it’s a worthwhile endeavor.  Our necks were not made to be contorted into a severe enough angle to be able to hold a phone, in the exact right position for us to talk. Ignoring this suggestion can lead to pinched nerves, knotted muscles, or, shockingly, as reported in the BBC News in 1999, a “mini-stroke.”  One man, after holding his phone cradled in his neck for over an hour, suffered temporary blindness, ear-ringing, and difficulty speaking. With today’s wide selection of Bluetooth headsets and the great quality they provide, there is really no excuse for this problem.

Even after trying to set your chair at the right height, getting wrist-cushions for your keyboard, and utilizing a phone headset, you can still suffer day-to-day strains and stresses on your body. Keeping up with regular visits to your massage therapist can help heal the aches and pains you experience. Whether he or she is breaking up and lengthening the knotted muscles in your neck and shoulders, working the strains out of your hands and wrists, or working on the knots at the base of your back, massages are crucial to office work wellness.

Once your tendons and muscles are healed from their office-related aches, regular massage can keep your muscles loosened, lengthened, and soothed, and can prevent future injuries. Bonus: massage can also help promote proper posture, and avoid permanent “desk slouch.”

While many people experience the doldrums regarding their job, taking proper care of your body can make every day more enjoyable and more comfortable.  And, come the weekend, your body will be primed for whatever these sunny days have in store.

Massage can help so call Jodi at Inner Focus Massage today for an appointment: 701-238-8257.

A clamp. A vise. A tight rubber band stretched firmly around your skull. Whatever your tension headache feels like, it’s no picnic. Whether yours is brought on by a single stressful event (summer with all the kids and activities) or a regular, ongoing stress, chances are that you wish they wouldn’t happen in the first place. Though often dubbed “stress headaches,” many people experience them regardless of their stress level.

Here are a few things you may not know about these nasty pains:

• Tension headaches can be brought on by hunger, low iron levels, fatigue, anxiety, or even bad posture.
• Some people get them for no apparent reason whatsoever.
• Up to 80% of adults get tension headaches periodically, and 3% of adults are chronic sufferers (meaning, they experience one daily).
• Women are two times as likely to get tension headaches as men.
• This is one thing you didn’t get from Mom – these types of headaches are not hereditary.

With head pain being so prevalent among us, there’s likely a whole lot of pill-popping going on, as well. While a few quick ibuprofen tablets may take the edge off of the pain, there’s a price to pay for that comfort. Frequent, ongoing ibuprofen use can lead to damage of the stomach lining. Add in the possibility of diarrhea or constipation, ulcers, nosebleeds, and hypertension, and you’re getting way more than you bargain for. What about acetaminophen (commonly known as Tylenol)? Although it is the most widely-used painkiller in the world, regular use is not without its own potential risks. In fact, frequent, heavy acetaminophen users can be responsible for digestive tract bleeding and kidney disease.

One more tension headache useful fact you may not know: massage is a proven method of preventing and treating stress-related head pain. In an oldie-but-goodie study from 30 years ago, participants with tension headaches were treated to massage-like touch. 90% of those participants felt relief from their head pain immediately, and 70% still felt relief four hours later. Other studies have shown that in regards to tension headache pain, massage can decrease perceived pain, reduce intensity, reduce frequency, reduce duration, decrease anger status, and decrease medication usage.

Not only that, but the effects from your massage can be surprisingly far-reaching, and can improve sleep, increase feelings of well-being, strengthen your immune system, and reduce anxiety and stress in general. Plus, they can be a successful preventative measure when received regularly.  Can your anti-inflammatory do that?

During a massage, your massage therapist can focus on the tightened muscles around your neck, face, head, and shoulders that can tense up and lead to cranial pain, loosening and lengthening the muscles and tendons, increasing circulation and flexibility in those areas. Specifically, he or she will likely hone in on your suboccipital muscles, which are the love-to-be-massaged muscles in your neck at the base of your skull.  As always, discuss your tension headache problem with your massage therapist.  As he or she practices various massage techniques to relieve your pain and you provide feedback, you’ll eventually find exactly what works for you. As a result, you may just consider yourself a grateful and happy tension-headache-free minority. Are you ready to get rid of that tension now?

 

Massage can help many with the pain of headaches. For an appointment to see Jodi at Inner Focus Massage, call 701-238-8257.

Have you ever gone to make an appointment for a massage, and found yourself a little perplexed at the different options available?  Shiatsu?  Hot stone?  Swedish?  What in the world??  We get it.  It can be hard to decipher the difference between massage types, and figure out which is the best one for your body.  Today we’d like to lift the shadow of confusion from one of our best-loved and most often requested massage options: deep tissue.  What exactly is deep tissue massage?   Is deep tissue massage the right choice for you?

During a deep tissue massage, the ultimate goal of the massage therapist is not your relaxation, although you will likely still feel that trademark happy, relaxed feeling after.  Instead, your massage therapist’s goal will be your ultimate wellness and healing.  He or she will be fine-tuned focused on these important elements:

• Your fascia.  In case you don’t know, fascia is the membrane of mostly collagen tissue that covers, separates, and encloses your muscles.  Healthy fascia is flexible and moves freely.  However, when this tissue experiences strains, trauma, or becomes inflamed, it can become rigid and tight, putting extra strain on your body.  This presents itself as anything from headaches to muscle pain.  During a deep tissue massage, your therapist will work on making sure your fascia is properly smoothed and lengthened, maintaining your body’s fluid flexibility.

• Your scars.  No, not the mark on your leg from your brother’s unfortunate archery attempt when you were four, but rather residual scar tissue from surgeries, injuries, or sprains.  When a muscle tears, the body repairs it by building scar tissue.  Scar tissue isn’t as strong as the regular muscle, making it pretty easy to re-injure that same area.  Deep tissue massage will actually remove the scar tissue, strengthening and healing the scarred area.

• Your tension.  Chronic tension is often a miserable cycle of stress and pain – your stress leads to tension, which leads to pain in your muscles, which leads to more stress and tension . . . you get the picture.  Deep tissue massage tackles the core of your tension-related pain.  By releasing the bunched-up muscles in your shoulders, neck, and back, it helps break the pain cycle.  With the knots and pain relieved, you might even find that you’re able to face your stressors with renewed energy.

• Your blood pressure.  Okay, so obviously your massage therapist is probably not consciously improving your blood pressure level during your massage, but it’s happening anyway.  Deep tissue massage has been proven to lower the blood pressure and heart rate of its recipients.  In fact, a 2008 study published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine found lower systolic and diastolic pressure readings, and a heart rate around 10 beats less per minute in its 263 participants after just one 45-60 minute massage.

 

Ouch.  You’ve majorly pulled a hamstring, and are limping around like Quasimodo, popping ibuprofen and sitting on as many ice packs as you’ve got in your freezer.  Craving relief, you decide to call your massage therapist, because surely a massage will cure your sore muscle, right?

We’ll get back to that question in a moment.  First, however, it’s important to understand what happens to your muscle when it gets strained.  An acute muscle strain can happen from overexertion, whether that be from throwing or lifting something heavy, slipping or stumbling, or running or jumping.  Really, any sudden overloading of a muscle that is not properly conditioned or warmed up can cause a strain.  Muscle damage occurs with a partial or complete tearing of muscle fibers, and/or the tendons attached to the muscle.  With the initial injury, swelling and inflammation occurs in the area.  As the inflammation subsides, the muscle begins to regenerate muscle fibers from surrounding stem cells.

So should you get a massage following a muscle strain?  It happens to be a great idea, and here’s why:

• Massage increases circulation and blood flow in your entire body, including the injured area.  This can bring necessary nutrients to the strained muscle and surrounding tissues.
• Think about the chain reaction that often happens with a strained muscle.  You may have pulled your hamstring, but the resulting effect can have much further ramifications.  You’ve adjusted the way you walk to favor the hurt area, putting your leg, back, ankle, and shoulder muscles out of alignment with every step.  Also, the surrounding muscles have likely tensed up in response to your strain.  Our muscles tend to try and step in to “help” their injured neighbors, leading to an entire area that is strained and sore.  A full-body massage is key for this, and helps in way that is unique from other remedies.
• Feeling anxious about your injury?  Massage is great for that, too.  Studies have shown that massage actually reduces feelings of stress and anxiety.  Because of the hormones released, massage can promote a wonderful feeling of relaxation and well-being.
• Massage can help you sleep better.  This is huge, as our sleep is often disrupted when we have the stress and pain of an injury.  Anything you can do to promote peaceful rest is a welcomed bonus.
• One note: post-massage, you’ll probably still feel soreness in the area.  It’s not an instant pain cure.  However, you be assured that you’ve made an important step in the recovery and health of your injured muscle, as well as your entire body.
• Please note that in some severe cases of muscle strain, immediate medical attention might be required.  If you’re unable to walk, heard a popping sound at the time of injury, or if you have significant swelling and pain, or have a fever, you’ll need to go to an emergency room or urgent care center.

When you get a muscle injury, you’ll commonly hear the RICE method touted – rest, ice, compression, and elevation of the injured area.  These are all necessary and smart steps to take.  And we think massage should be featured in that must-do acronym for care as well.  However since “MICER” or “CRIME” might not catch on very quickly, we’ll keep doing our part to make sure massage is on your short list as an important step in your recovery and wellness.

If this makes sense and you feel a massage could be beneficial to you, call Jodi at Inner Focus Massage – 701-238-8257 for an appointment.

It is estimated that 85% of Americans experience some type of back pain.  And if you’ve been diagnosed with sciatica and its signature pulsing pain that can radiate through your hip, leg, and foot, you know that it’s no picnic.

Your sciatic nerve is actually comprised of five nerve roots from your lower back.  These nerve roots join together and run from the lower back down through each leg, and into your feet. Sometimes, through a maddeningly vast array of reasons, one of these nerves will become compressed, irritated, or injured, and cause pain.  Because of this multi-nerve composition, depending on which nerve is damaged, sciatic pain can be experienced in a variety of locations and ways, including pain that is stabbing or burning, numbness and tingling, or weakness.  And, if multiple nerves are affected, you can experience pain in more than one area, and in more than one way.

Sciatica is most often caused by one of your nerves being pinched by a herniated disc in your back.  This can happen through frequently lifting heavy objects (and bending our twisting while doing so – lift with your legs, friends!), driving heavily-vibrating vehicle, or even being pregnant.  Sciatica can also occur because of spinal stenosis, degenerative disc disease, or when one vertebrae slips forward over another one. Some things that make you more prone are being overweight, having diabetes, and prolonged sitting.

How can massage fit in to my treatment plans?

Trigger point massage therapy in particular, while not as relaxing as your typical massage, can bring a major dose of healing to your sciatic pain.  In trigger point therapy, your massage therapist will manipulate trigger spots through cycles of pressure and release.  It can take several sessions to work through the trigger spot, but doing so can bring great relief.

Swedish or deep tissue massage can also be extremely helpful for treating your sciatica symptoms.  A tight lower back can put pressure on inflamed sciatic nerves.  Working out those knots and tight spots can ease that pressure, and bring relief.  Plus, don’t underestimate the power of released endorphins when you’re in pain.  These powerful “feel good” hormones that are released during a massage can act as a whole-body pain reducer.

Also, when we’re in pain, other parts of our body tend to try and compensate.  Think: a limp to favor a hurt hip, a hunched posture to compensate for a hurt back, or sitting oddly to protect a painful leg.  Experiencing a massage takes care of your whole body, and works the tensed-up areas that are affected by your painful sciatica.

Please note that you should always consult a doctor about your sciatica pain. He or she can help confirm your diagnosis, and help you map out an appropriate treatment plan.