Massage Therapy: Healing Affects for Athletes

Massage Therapy: Healing Affects for Athletes

Athletes who push themselves to the limit of their endurance, often find themselves either injured or exercised to exhaustion. With injury comes inflammation and pain which can severely impact an athlete’s training regimen. A study by the Buck Institute for Research on Aging found that just a 10-minute massage reduced the production of cytokines in athletes which play a significant role in inflammation. In addition, a short massage was shown to stimulate mitochondria—a critical piece of cell function and repair.

For strenuous exercisers, this is welcome news. This is one of the first studies to report that massage can reduce inflammation involved with pain by promoting growth of new mitochondria. “Our research showed that massage dampened the expression of inflammatory cytokines in the muscle cells and promoted biogenesis of mitochondria, which are the energy-producing units in the cells,” said Buck Institute faculty member Simon Meloy, PhD.

As one of the leading massage therapy schools in the country, the Soma Institute in Chicago has trained thousands of students in the many areas of massage therapy, including sports and athletic massage. If you have a passion for both massage and sports, you may want to consider a career in sports massage therapy. There are more opportunities available to aspiring massage therapists everywhere as the medical and sports communities understand more about the benefits of massage therapy. For more information, and to find out if a career in sports massage therapy would be a good fit for you, give Soma a call at 1.800.694.5314.