Why Massage is as Vital as the Gym
Edited from Daily Telegraph - July 2005. Catherine Nikkas-Boulos

Researchers from the Miami Touch Institute in the US have ranked massage in equal importance to diet and exercise in creating an effective health regime. They say massage has proven benefits for skin tone, blood circulation, increased immunity and lower stress.

People with cancer who are too weak for chemotherapy often use it to boost their system and proceed with treatment. In another US study, a group of premature babies who were massaged for an hour each week showed a higher survival rate than those who weren't.

Massage therapists advise that massage should be as important to an individual as gym membership. "The view of a massage as a luxury or pamper treatment is wrong. Sure it feels good, but the benefits to a person's physical and emotional well-being are enormous".

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Belinda Pitorino has heeded the advice and incorporated massage into her weekly agenda. She suffered lower-back pain and found her shoulders were starting to slouch forward after long hours in front of her computer at work.

Traditional medicine offered no solution, so she booked herself in to see a massage therapist to right the wrong.

"I noticed that over four months my shoulders were rolling forward and my posture became quite bad. After one session the tension was released from my shoulders and after several sessions my body started falling back into place," she says.

"After every treatment I can see how my body improves."

Pitorino now sees a massage therapist once a fortnight. She has found she sleeps better because of it - she no longer wakes up "clenched", and her flexibility has improved tenfold.

"I always used to get a one-off massage to relax, it felt great at the time but I didn't understand the benefit; it's very obvious to me now,"she says.

In a US consumer report on effective treatment for back pain, 60,000 respondents said massage helped more than standard medical practice, physical therapy and prescription drugs.

One of the biggest problems conventional medicine faces is the difficulty in treating chronic pain. Most medics treat acute pain, whereas chronic pain is just lingering pain. All they can offer is painkillers, which isn't a particularly good solution. As soon as you come off the painkillers you're back at square one.

Basically, the nature of chronic back pain, the fastest rising disability in the Western world, is that it goes on and on until dealt with effectively.

The neck and shoulders are the second and third most common problems, but when one area of the body gives, it has ramifications for the entire body as everything's interconnected.

Massage helps people to feel well, love life and be their best. Essentially it's a way of giving something back to another person, and the healing power of human touch is not to be underestimated.

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