MASSAGE BENEFITS ARE MORE THAN
SKIN DEEP

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 massage and 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 byThe National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, found a single session of massage caused
biological changes.
 

Volunteers who received Swedish Massage experience significant decreases in levels of the stress hormone 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 also experienced greater increases in oxytocin, a hormone associated with contentment. Both groups also had decreases in adrenal hormone which stimulates the adrenal glands to release cortisol. This study on massage was said to be "very-very intriguing and very exciting."