Stress. Anxiety. Depression. Fatigue. Diabetes. Chronic muscle, joint and nerve pain. High blood pressure and other circulatory problems. Would you believe us if we told you that there’s a single treatment that could possibly improve all of these ailments and better your life? Believe it or not, these are but a few massage therapy and massage chair benefits.
“Hold on a second”, you’re thinking, “miracle cures and snake oil are for only for gullible people. There’s no way a massage chair can do all that for me.” It’s understandable to be skeptical because it seems too good to be true.
Let’s be clear, massage therapy isn’t a cure-all for everything. Here at Woodstock Furniture & Mattress Outlet, we aren’t doctors (or massage therapists, for that matter), so we don’t want to overhype the results. However, through decades of helping furniture and mattress shoppers live more comfortably, our experts have seen many of these things firsthand.
There are a staggering number of massage chair health benefits — many of which the general public is wholly unaware of. It’s our goal to walk you through each of these benefits honestly and thoroughly and explain exactly how a massage chair could impact your life for the better. By the end of this article, you’ll know how a quality massage chair from a brand like Infinity can improve your own health and wellness, as well as the next steps to take on your own journey.
But first, let’s talk a little biochemistry…
How Massage Benefits Your Hormones, Body & Brain Chemistry
Before we get into the numerous benefits of a massage chair, you first need to understand where many of these health benefits come from. For that, you’ll need a quick crash course on the relevant biochemicals — namely hormones and neurotransmitters.
Your body’s endocrine system is the network of organs and glands that produce chemical messengers called hormones. These hormones move throughout your body via blood vessels and regulate different body functions. In fact, the human body produces dozens of different hormones, each with its own job to do.
Hormones that specifically interact with the brain are called neurotransmitters, because they transmit information from one neuron, or nerve cell, to another. Most of the relevant hormones we’re talking about today are neurotransmitters — specifically, serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and a group of peptide chains under the umbrella-term endorphins. These are often collectively called the happy hormones.
About Neurotransmitters & Happy Hormones
Serotonin is your brain’s primary mood stabilizer. As such, it is responsible for feelings of happiness and contentment. However, it also helps regulate your appetite and sleep cycle, and stimulate your brain’s learning and memory centers.
Dopamine is the key driver of your brain’s reward system and is responsible for feeling pleasure and achievement. When you ace the big test, win the big game, eat a tasty meal, or listen to your favorite music, dopamine makes you feel good. As a result, dopamine is what motivates you to both seek enjoyment and accomplishment. Along with serotonin, dopamine also stimulates learning and memory.
Oxytocin is one of the most important hormones when it comes to social bonding and building relationships. Additionally, oxytocin is responsible for feelings of love, trust, empathy, and life satisfaction. For women, it is critically important for childbirth and breastfeeding.
Endorphins primarily help your body deal with pain or discomfort. In fact, endorphins block pain receptors in your brain similar to powerful opioid drugs. However, this often produces a sensation of euphoria as a side effect. Often, endorphins work in tandem with dopamine to both decrease pain and increase pleasure. This is true with everything from strenuous exercise, to sex, to acupuncture, to eating spicy foods.
There are a host of medical and mental health issues linked to low or imbalanced dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphin levels. These problems range from depression and anxiety, to irritability, learning disabilities, eating disorders, insomnia, social withdrawal, sexual dysfunction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, chronic muscle pain, short-term memory problems, addictive behaviors, and more.
A Short Note on Cortisol
Lastly, while not a neurotransmitter, the stress hormone known as cortisol is another biochemical you need to be familiar with to fully understand massage chair benefits. The release of cortisol is triggered by your body’s natural stress response.
If your body perceives a threat, whether it be a growling dog, horns honking in traffic, a looming bill, a big project at work, or relational stress, it will release cortisol to prime your fight or flight response. Even chronic lack of sleep can set off this stress response. Together with adrenaline, cortisol’s priming of your body’s stress response system increases blood pressure, floods your blood stream with glucose, and readies your body to make quick use of energy.
The problem is that cortisol also puts many body functions that it deems as nonessential or less essential on the back burner. Under normal conditions, your cortisol levels will eventually subside. However, if your cortisol levels are always elevated due to constant stress or anxiety, this can trigger a host of chronic health issues, including weight gain, increased blood pressure, increased blood sugar, and weakened immune response.
But What Do These Hormones Have to Do with Massage Chairs?
Here’s the cool part. Getting a massage has repeatedly been shown to increase your body’s levels of all four “happy hormones”. It’s also been proven that massage therapy – including using a massage chair at home – can lower your cortisol levels.
When each of these hormones are properly balanced, it can unleash a cascade of other amazing health benefits. As you’ll see below, tons of massage chair benefits stem from the ability of massage to increase endorphins, dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin while simultaneously decreasing cortisol.
How a Massage Chair Benefits Muscular, Cardiovascular, & Mental Health
Now that you understand what the relevant hormones do, it’ll be easier to discuss our huge list of massage chair benefits. So, where do we start? Let’s break them down by category.
How Massage Chairs Benefit Mental Health
The mental health benefits of a massage chair are perhaps the most overlooked, but they can set off a chain reaction of general improvements to your wellness and quality of life.
1) Balances Hormones
To emphasize one more time — regular massage therapy can lower cortisol and help restore serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin to healthy levels. This is the foundational benefit of massage since it helps regulate so many other systems in the body, particularly the systems that govern mental health and wellness.
2) Mood Regulation, Stress & Anxiety Relief
Massage has been repeatedly proven to decrease negative emotions, guard against depression, and reduce stress and anxiety. Low levels of serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin, along with high levels of cortisol can all cause anxiety and depression. Massage sessions are an effective, drug-free way to reverse not just the symptoms, but the causes as well.
3) Increased Alertness & Productivity
Insufficient dopamine alone can cause all sorts of cognitive issues, from forgetfulness, to demotivation, to inability to focus. Regular massages can restore dopamine levels and give you back your ability to focus on your work, solve problems, and get things done.
How Massage Chairs Benefit Circulatory / Vascular System
Relatively few people realize the significant impact of massage therapy on your circulatory system. Much like the mental health benefits above, these benefits cause a domino effect that can improve your health in numerous other ways.
4) Improves Circulation
According to a study published in the International Journal of Neuroscience, a massage decreased cortisol levels in patients by 31% on average, and increased serotonin and dopamine by 28% and 31% respectively. This rebalancing of hormones leads to vasodilation, or the relaxation of blood vessels, thereby improving circulation.
5) Decreases Blood Pressure & Heart Rate
As circulation improves due to vasodilation, the heart is able to pump blood much easier and more efficiently. As a result, the arterial blood pressure decreases and the heart rate drops almost immediately. This is great news for your heart and the rest of your cardiovascular system!
6) Lowers Blood Sugar
This one seems a bit odd, but it’s true. Especially for those who suffer from diabetes. While the jury is still out about the best type of massage to help lower blood sugar and A1C levels and how frequently it’s needed, there are multiple studies showing a link between massages and lower blood glucose.
How Massage Chairs Benefit Your Musculoskeletal System
Muscles, joints, tendons, ligaments, and bones are what most people think of when they think about massage.
7) More Effective Pain Management
Headaches, muscle pain, joint pain, back pain, neck pain, nerve pain, sciatica or other neuropathy. Whichever symptom is your own personal nemesis, a massage can help. How does it work? Massages release a wave of endorphins to temporarily block pain receptors and make you feel good. Chronic pain management is one of the single most important massage chair benefits since you can plop down in your chair for a session any time you need relief.
8) Quicker Recovery & Less Muscle Fatigue
Remember that bit up above about better circulation? Well, it turns out that more efficient circulation has lots of other benefits. Nowhere is this more apparent than with healing injuries or post-workout recovery. In fact, athletes have been using sports massages for healing and recovery for millennia.
Injuries need plenty of oxygenated blood to heal. More efficient circulation means more blood flow, which means more oxygen in the blood and less inflammation. Additionally, post-workout massages reduce buildup of lactic acid in the muscles, the main source of muscle soreness.
9) Better Range of Motion
Massage is well-known to increase the range of motion when it comes to muscles and tendons. Regular stretching and massage reduces inflammation and increases the elasticity of these tissues.
10) Spinal Decompression
Massage therapy has repeatedly been proven to help with the decompression of the spine. Zero gravity recline and lumbar stretch features in particular are able to help with this. This important massage chair benefit can reduce back and neck pain by alleviating discomfort caused by pinched nerves and bulging or slipped discs. It can also help those who suffer from chronic headaches caused by spine compression or misalignment, and improve posture.
Other Benefits of a Massage Chair
Lastly, there are 3 more massage chair benefits that are a bit harder to categorize.
11) Better Sleep
Since serotonin is the hormone primarily responsible for regulating your sleep patterns, it stands to reason that a massage-induced increase in serotonin will help even out your chaotic sleep schedule. Deeper, more restful sleep can also lower your stress (and your cortisol) leaving you feeling much more rested.
12) Weight Loss / Weight Management
In the busy, modern world we live in, cortisol is a major culprit when it comes to weight gain. Have you ever dieted, worked out, and the weight still wouldn’t come off? You just might have high cortisol levels. Since massage can help you de-stress and lower your cortisol significantly, a massage chair could possibly help you lose weight and keep it off.
13) Improved Immune Response
Once again, better circulation is the key here. Your blood vessels are a highway. When your heart can pump your blood more efficiently, it’s easier to get things where they need to go on a cellular level. For instance, getting white blood cells to problem areas to fight infection perhaps. Additionally, reflexology massages can improve the functionality of your lymphatic system, which is also linked to your immune function.
Experience These Massage Chair Benefits Today with Your Own Infinity Massage Chair
Do any of these massage chair benefits address a health condition that you’ve been struggling with? If so, massage therapy may be something worth exploring as part of your own personal plan for health and wellness. There are simply too many health benefits to ignore.
Here at Woodstock Furniture & Mattress Outlet, we are big believers in the power of massage therapy. But here’s the problem — regular massages can be extremely expensive and time-consuming. This is why we’re also big believers in Infinity Massage Chairs. With your own chair at home, you can get the exact massage you want, any time that you want, as often as you want.
For info on Infinity and how they can help deliver all these massage chair health benefits, be sure to read our Infinity brand review. However, if you want to know everything there is to know about every chair we carry, don’t miss our Infinity massage chair comparison.
Finally, if you’re in North Georgia or the Atlanta metro area, we invite you to come try one of these amazing chairs for yourself at our Acworth showroom. Keep in mind that we are able to fulfill Infinity Massage Chair orders anywhere in the Continental US!
