Photo: Lava Shell massage
Ground breaking research reveals massage can have a positive effect on muscle mass
American researchers have found that massage can help muscle tissues to re-grow faster after injury.
The research, published in The Journal of Physiology and carried out at Colorado State University and the University of Kentucky, demonstrated that massage increases protein production in the body’s cells. This results in improved muscle re-growth – and shockingly this is even the case when applied to the opposite, uninjured limb.
‘If you injured one leg and so couldn’t massage it, we now have evidence suggesting that massaging the other, non-injured, leg could lead to benefits in the injured leg,’ explains Karyn Hamilton, a faculty member at CSU’s Department of Health and Exercise Science and co-author of the paper. ‘That’s a ground breaking finding with potentially very important implications.’
Muscle can be lost very quickly during periods of disuse, such as during bed rest or a hospital stay, and it is often extremely difficult to grow back, especially in the elderly. Massage is already considered an easy-to-use treatment that can lessen pain, increase flexibility, improve immunity and increase blood flow with very few side effects – and now it’s believed it can improve muscle regeneration, too.
The researcher put rats through a period of inactivity to decrease muscle mass. They were then allowed to recover and massaged every other day for a week. The researchers analysed the size of the rats’ muscle fibres, protein production and communication in the cells that programmes them to grow. Similar studies are now underway with human participants at the University of Kentucky.
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