Massage Benefits Are More Than Skin Deep - Spiral Eye News March 2011

The Daffodil is the floral emblem of March.

In This Issue -

Correction to Last Newsletter

March Honors Women

Massage Benefits Are More Than Skin Deep

Science Friday on Health

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"Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are."

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Correction to Last Newsletter

Oops! There was an error in the link to the article "Yoga by Prescription." Here's the correct link:
http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2010/12/yoga_by_prescription.html

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March Honors Women

March is Women's History Month (HerStory?).

March 8 is International Women's Day, a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future.

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"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." Albert Einstein

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Massage Benefits Are More Than Skin Deep
by Roni Caryn Rabin

Massage Benefits Measured in New Study

A new NIH study measures some of the beneficial biochemical changes due to massage therapy. Massage decreases levels of stress hormones, boosts number of immune cells, and increases hormones related to contentment. Results very exciting, skeptic says.

Does a good massage do more than just relax your muscles? To find out, researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles recruited 53 healthy adults and randomly assigned 29 of them to a 45-minute session of deep-tissue Swedish massage and the other 24 to a session of light massage.

All of the subjects were fitted with intravenous catheters so blood samples could be taken immediately before the massage and up to an hour afterward.

To their surprise, the researchers, sponsored by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a division of the National Institutes of Health, found that a single session of massage caused biological changes.

Volunteers who received Swedish massage experienced significant decreases in levels of the stress hormone cortisol in blood and saliva, and in arginine vasopressin, a hormone that can lead to increases in cortisol. They also had increases in the number of lymphocytes, white blood cells that are part of the immune system.

Volunteers who had the light massage experienced greater increases in oxytocin, a hormone associated with contentment, than the Swedish massage group, and bigger decreases in adrenal corticotropin hormone, which stimulates the adrenal glands to release cortisol.

The study was published online in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.

The lead author, Dr. Mark Hyman Rapaport, chairman of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences at Cedars-Sinai, said the findings were “very, very intriguing and very, very exciting — and I’m a skeptic.”

Vital Signs - A Good Massage Brings Biological Changes, Too - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/health/research/21regimens.html?_r=3&src=me&ref=health

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"Cultivate love, for love is the light that gives the eye to see great and noble things." Helen Keller

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Science Friday on Health
From my Twitter feed (@SueReddingLMT)

Cell Phone radiation Affects Brain. Are they safe? Use caution: use speaker, wired earpiece. @SciFri
http://bit.ly/fmsIat

Shall we pursue health, or look for abnormality that may lead to unnecessary treatment? Who profits?
http://bit.ly/gVAEea

Is Preventive Medicine Actually Overtreatment? In “Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health,” Dr. H. Gilbert Welch argues that modern medicine is looking too closely for disease, and that unnecessary screenings, MRIs and CT scans turn healthy people into patients, by revealing often harmless abnormalities….

Science Friday is on OPB radio Fridays 11am-1pm and online at
http://www.ScienceFriday.com/

Science Friday on Twitter (@SciFri)
http://www.Twitter.com/SciFri

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"Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!" Da Vinci

Join me on Twitter:
SueReddingLMT
http://twitter.com/SueReddingLMT

Content of this newsletter is for information only and is not intended as medical advice. Please consult your health-care practitioner.