5 Surprising Weight Loss Benefits Of Massage

Massage is well-known for relieving stress, tension, pain, and stiffness. Not surprisingly, massage has a menagerie of benefits on top of all that, including the ability to help you lose weight. The art of massage has been used for thousands of years to treat a wide array of physical ailments, and science is just now starting to recognize and confirm its effects. Even nurses are adding massage therapy to their treatment regimens as of late.

If you’re on, or about to start, a weight loss journey of your own, here are some ways massage can help you along the way:

Improves Circulation

Massage provides stimulation to your blood vessels, which encourages increased blood flow throughout your body. Increased blood flow not only helps your muscles and vital organs receive and absorb more nutrients; it also increases exchange between blood and tissue cells, allowing your entire body to work better as a whole. Making the most of the nutrients you already have in your body and improving the way all of your systems work together is advantageous not only to general health, but can help you drop down to and maintain a healthy weight.

Decreases Swelling

Massage therapy, especially manual massage, can help drain excess fluid from unwanted areas of the body. Excess fluid is the main cause of swelling, and also water retention. Some of us can gain several pounds in a single day simply from retaining water. Along with a good dose of electrolytes and a healthy amount of movement and motion, massaging your extremities in a central motion toward your heart can help your body release and absorb the extra water it’s holding.

When it comes to swelling, the culprit is often lymph, a natural fluid that carries white blood cells to needed areas of the body. When you are hurt or injured, the area swells because the body is rushing white blood cells to the area to help it heal. But, overweight individuals, especially diabetics, often have defective lymphatic vessels. This can lead to buildups of lymph fluid in the body even though there’s no injury to be mended.

This type of swelling can impede weight loss efforts because it disrupts circulation and restricts movement. This movement restriction, along with the pain that comes with swelling, can keep you from getting the exercise you need. And as you know from the section above, good circulation is conducive to weight loss.

Improves Muscle Strength

Working out is the best way to gain muscle strength and increase flexibility and range of motion. Massage, especially post-workout massages, can significantly boost your efforts. When you exercise, your muscles create lactic and carbonic acid, which are waste products. These waste products build up and can cause a host of issues, including soreness and slow recovery time.

As mentioned before, massage means better circulation. Improved circulation to these muscles helps your body carry out the buildup of lactic and carbonic acids, which decreases your recovery time between each workout. This means you can work out more often, and that the workouts you do will have a bigger impact, thus improving muscle strength. Stronger muscles burn more fat, even when you’re not working out, so utilizing this snowball effect can have a huge impact on your weight loss efforts.

Stimulates Metabolism

There are many factors that contribute to a slower (or slowing) metabolism. These include genetics, hormones, activity levels, diet, aging, stress, and overall health. Some of these factors you can influence, others you cannot. One of them is definitely stress. We know that massage has a relaxing and calming effect, which can melt away stress from the outside in.

It has been recently found that massage therapy can help reduce stress from the inside out, as well. Cortisol is a hormone that appears as a result of stress. Excess cortisol causes weight gain and decreses metabolism, and can continue to build up in an almost exponential fashion when stress persists. The good news is that massage therapy can reduce cortisol levels (one study showed cortisol levels reduced by 31%,) which will in turn boost metabolism, which will help you burn more fat.

Can Break Apart Fat Cells

Massage therapy targeted to areas with higher fat deposits can actually break apart fat cells, causing them to burst open and be re-absorbed by the body. This sounds a little harsh, but massage therapy is actually one of the gentlest ways to achieve this effect. This method alone results in very little fat loss, but combined with diet and exercise, it can help release fat from stubborn areas that are giving you trouble. Added bonus: targeted massage therapy can also decrease the look of cellulite.

All in all, there are a lot of components that can be involved in your weight loss endeavor. While a healthy diet and regular exercise should be the main pillars of your plight, massage therapy can definitely help along the way. I hope you consider trying it for yourself!