Since ancient times, massage has been known to treat several physical problems among many other benefits such as alleviating chronic pain, easing and treating muscle and joints pain, and alleviating back pain in pregnant women. Many of us ask ourselves how often we should have body massage. The answer to this question depends on some factors such as the cost of massage therapy, and your body health condition. This article looks at different factors that affect how often you should get a massage.
- Budget
The amount of money the masseur is charging greatly determines how often you can get massage therapy. For a massage therapy that is very expensive like in the case of high-end hotels, spas and massage parlors, the number of times you will go for therapies will be limited unless you are very wealthy. An average cost of massage therapy in a normal parlor is between $35 and $50 a day. Most massage parlors are designed to offer monthly massage in which case the introductory price may be a little lower like $55-$75 and the monthly cost will be a little higher than the introductory price by around $10.
- Chronic Pain
Massage therapies have been known to treat chronic pain in the body. Massage helps in releasing the tension of muscles in the paining areas, resulting in the release of feel-good hormones, endorphins that take away the pains. These pains could be from a past vigorous workout of very hard manual work or massive fatigue from a long trip or jetlag. Similarly, if you work at a job where you are involved in very tiring manual work, you may experience pain after some time and for this reason, you may need a massage twice a month.
- Expectant Women
It is common for pregnant women to experience back, shoulder and lower leg pain because muscles are under a lot of pressure from the increased weight of the growing baby. In addition, they may experience pain in the legs or lower back when they stand or walk for quite some time. Massage helps in alleviating shoulder, neck, lower back, and leg pain by helping release tension of the muscles in these parts of the body. Therefore, two sessions of massage therapy a month would be better for them.
- Vigorous Workout
If you are involved in vigorous workouts or are a sportsperson, your muscles and the whole body is prone to injuries, hence intense pain if you do not get massage therapy often. This is because your muscles are subjected to a lot of tear and stress due to heavy-duty workouts and long hours of stressing them. For this reason, you may keep experiencing a lot of pain. If you are in a sports career, then a massage therapy every week is most appropriate. If you are not a sports personality but usually have vigorous training, you might want to seek massage therapy twice a month.
- Major Stress
When you are stressed for quite some time, you may experience some rigidity and sometimes pain in the muscles, joints or even the whole body. This is because of reduced production of the feel-good hormones, serotonin and endorphin. Therefore, if you are constantly involved in stressful situations or have had major stress recently, then massage therapy twice a month is good for you since this will alleviate the stress by releasing tension in your body, hence the release of the feel-good hormones, endorphins, and serotonin.
- Insomnia
Lack of sleep, a condition known as insomnia, is related to being under pressure, tension or stress. This is because when in those situations, production levels of feel bad hormones adrenalin and cortisol are very high and these make the body restless and tensed. This leads to a lack of proper or no sleep at all. However, with massage, the body will release rigidity and relax, leading to the release of feel-good hormones, endorphins and serotonin. The result is proper or more sleep than before. That being said, if you are one of those that struggle with lack of sleep, then massage therapy once every week is good until you regain your sleep.
If you are in one of the aforementioned situations, you can have massage therapy as often as possible until you regain normalcy in your body. However, after that, maybe you could reduce the number of times you have the massage therapies. Make sure you do not stop completely since this will take your body to the same situation that made you seek the therapies in the first place.