Can regular massage boost your immune system?

I personally never expected to live through a time like this. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives and brought the world to a virtual halt. Life as we know it has been put on hold until an effective way of dealing with this deadly and highly contagious virus has been found. Governments and health authorities around the world urge people to stay at home, maintain social distancing and wash hands as often as possible. Various reports claim that and effective drug is either a few weeks or a few months away. It also appears that an effective vaccine is not going to be available until the end of the year at the earliest. It has become abundantly clear that those of sound health stand a better chance of living through this pandemic without much trouble or in most cases no consequence or inconvenience at all. In short, our immune system is our most effective defence!

We all know that the most direct path to good health, and hence a strong immune system, lies through a well balanced life, regular exercise, healthy diet, good sleep and sound mental health. Needless to say, massage can assist in and facilitate the pursuit of any/all of the above-mentioned attributes. Being a massage practitioner, please allow me to tell you what specifically massage can do for you to help you to maintain and improve your overall health.

Massage is one of the oldest therapies that exist today. Some people treated it as an occasional indulgence and a means to relax and enjoy themselves. However, there are numerous researches that indicate that it can have a real positive impact on your health, especially if received on a regular basis. Clinical studies point out that massage not only helps to alleviate stress and facilitate physical exercise but also naturally increases the immune system’s cytotoxic capacity (the activity level of the body’s natural “killer cells” that fight viruses and infections etc).

BBC Two’s “Trust Me I’m a Doctor” conducted one such study, together with the University of Roehampton and The Bodyology Massage School, where they compared people who received a massage to those who were asked to lie down and relax for an hour. A baseline blood sample was taken before the experiment began and another at the very end of it. The reason for taking the samples was to establish the T-lymphocytes count, or white blood cells, as an indicator of how well their immune system functioned. Compared to the baseline, both groups demonstrated an increase in white blood cells. However the group that received the massage showed a 70% boost, which was also a higher reading that the one obtained from the group of people simply relaxing.

Beside the obvious boost of the immune system, the function of the T-lymphocytes does not end here. They perform a wide variety of functions in the body, involved with growth and repair, which could partly explain why massage has been reported to help so many conditions.

< Older Post Newer Post >