Patrick Stiles, our Director of Massage Therapy has always been our most vocal advocate for the therapeutic benefits of massage therapy. Massage as a popular therapy has struggled to gain respect as serious medicine. In his popular blog post last year, “Massage Therapy, More Than Just a Back Rub”, Patrick points out the therapeutic benefits of massage as well as detailing the intense training required to become a Registered Massage Therapist. He now has additional ammunition. A study just released (study) shows that massaging muscles after hard exercise decreases inflammation and helps your muscles recover. This study also hints that massage after exercise may help relieve soreness, and may also help muscles become fitter faster.
In the study, researchers put 11 young men through a hard bout of exercise. Following their workouts, each got a 10-minute, Swedish-style massage, but only on one leg (the other leg was rested and used for comparison). Researchers sampled muscle tissue from both legs before and after exercise. They used gene-profiling techniques to look for chemical changes in muscle cells.
The lead author for the study was researcher Mark A. Tarnopolsky, MD, PhD, professor of pediatrics and head of Neuromuscular and Neurometabolic Disease at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
Dr. Tarnopolsky and his team found two main differences between the legs that were massaged and those that were not:
1. Massage switched on genes that decrease inflammation. Many painkilling medications also work by blocking inflammation.
2. Massage activated genes that promote the creation of mitochondria, structures that are the energy factories inside cells. The fitter a muscle cell is, the more mitochondria it tends to have.
The Significance of This Finding
In recent years, a number of studies have shown that remedies for muscle soreness that work by turning down inflammation (like ice baths or anti-inflammatory medications), may also have a downside. They may block some of the inflammatory pathways muscles use to repair themselves and grow.
Regarding muscle fitness, "If someone starts an endurance exercise training program, after two or four months of training, depending on the intensity, you essentially double the volume of mitochondria in muscle," says Dr. Tarnopolsky. Mitochondria, he says, help the cell to take up and use oxygen. Exercise and massage both seem to enhance mitochondria and the ability to use oxygen efficiently.
As interesting as these findings are, however, there's still a lot the study is unable to say.
Priscilla Clarkson, PhD, who studies post-exercise muscle soreness, cautions that the study didn't look at whether massage actually improved pain.
What's also not known is whether massage may still be helpful if a person gets a rubdown hours or days after a hard workout instead of just minutes.
In 2010 a study published in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine found that Swedish massage boosted immune function and decreased stress hormones compared to a placebo.
The study is published in the Journal Science Translational Medicine.
Ken McKenzie MD, FRCS(C), Orthopaedic Surgeon
