The Benefits of Combining Chiropractic Care and Massage Therapy
Massage therapy complements chiropractic care and offers a simple way to enhance your chiropractic treatments. Combining the therapies boosts pain relief while improving stiffness, flexibility, and range of motion. Here is a look at seven ways the massage/chiropractic combination can help you.
Complete Pain Relief
Pain in your back or neck may be related to a subluxation, a misalignment of the vertebrae in your spine. Chiropractors use spinal manipulation, commonly called "adjustments," to realign the vertebrae. Adjustments are performed with quick thrusts of the hands or with a handheld activator device.
Although adjustments relieve pain and improve range of motion, you may still have some lingering pain. Subluxations increase tension on muscles and other soft tissues, like ligaments and tendons. Unfortunately, soft tissues can remain tight even after your spine is properly aligned.
Massage, one of the first-line treatments recommended by the American College of Physicians for low back pain, relieves pain by gently stretching and loosening tissues. Chiropractic treatments and massage also activate hormones that act as natural painkillers.
Improved Outcomes
Tight tissues or muscles may make it difficult for your chiropractor to treat a sore or injured area, which could affect the success of the treatment. Relaxing tissues with massage prior to chiropractic therapy eliminates that issue and may make treatments more effective.
Your chiropractor may also offer massage at the end of your visit. Massage helps your muscles support the adjusted position of your vertebrae and joints.
No More Stiffness
Adjusting your spine and joints eliminates restrictions that make it difficult to move easily. Thanks to adjustments and other chiropractic treatments, you may find that you can bend over to pick up a dropped pen without pain or easily reach a can on a high shelf.
Stiffness can also be related to inflammation. Chiropractic treatments and massage improve blood flow to sore and injured areas and help reduce inflammation.
Longer-Lasting Benefits
Unfortunately, subluxations can occur again after your spine is realigned. Falls, blows, repetitive motions, stress, poor posture, and imbalanced muscles can lead to a subluxation and the pain that comes with it.
Imbalanced or tight muscles pull on the vertebrae, causing subluxations. Massage relaxes the muscles, reducing the risk for subluxations. Improving core muscle strength can also help you avoid spinal misalignments. Your chiropractor may show you a few exercises that will keep your core strong.
Better Circulation
Both massage and chiropractic care improve blood flow essential for tissue repair. Blood flow may be restricted when tissues are inflamed or tight, which may prevent healing nutrients from reaching muscles and soft tissues. Improving circulation also helps your lymphatic system remove waste products and bacteria.
Quicker Healing
Chiropractic treatment and massage therapy work hand-in-hand to promote healing. Increasing blood flow, realigning the spine and joints, decreasing inflammation, and relieving muscle tension speed the recovery process, helping you feel better sooner.
Less Stress
Is stress an unwelcome part of your life? You're not alone. Forty-nine percent of Americans frequently feel stressed, according to Gallup. Stress can have painful consequence, whether it's due to work, family issues, health, finances, or other concerns. Stress raises your heart rate and blood pressure, tightens your muscles, and causes stomach pain and headaches, and may raise your risk of heart attack and stroke.
The same natural hormones that ease pain also help relieve stress. Do you suffer from stress-related headaches? Chiropractic care and massage help you manage your headaches by keeping your muscles and tissues loose.
Researchers recently determined that spinal manipulation may help tension headache patients manage their pain without using butalbital or reduce their butalbital dosage. Butalbital is one of the drugs in Fioricet, Capacet, and other prescription headache medications. They reported their findings in Health Science Reports in 2024.
Ready to find out how chiropractic care and massage therapy can improve your life? Contact our office to schedule your appointment.
Sources:
Gallup: Americans Sleeping Less, More Stressed, 4/15/2024
https://news.gallup.com/poll/642704/americans-sleeping-less-stressed.aspx
Wiley: Health Science Reports: Association Between Spinal Manipulation, Butabital Prescription, and Medication Overuse in Adults with Tension-Type Headache, 11/29/2024
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hsr2.70218
Annals of Internal Medicine: Noninvasive Treatments for Acute, Subacute, and Chronic Low Back Pain: A Clinical Practice Guideline From the American College of Physicians, 2/14/2017
American Massage Therapy Association: 25 Reasons to Get a Massage
https://www.amtamassage.org/find-massage-therapist/25-reasons-to-get-a-massage/
Harvard Health Publishing: Therapeutic Massage for Pain Relief, 7/1/2016
https://www.health.harvard.edu/therapeutic-massage-for-pain-relief