Category: Massage LA Health Updates

Neuromuscular Trigger Point Massage Los Angeles: What Does Neuromuscular Massage Therapy (NMT) Prevent?

NMT prevents muscle strains or tears so you move pain-free and stay active for years as well as poor posture so you don’t slouch and feel round shouldered. (You stand straighter, your shoulders further back, and FIGHT “computer shoulder”). NMT prevents fatigue from chronic tension and stress so you have more energy for you and your family. How? Studies prove chronic pain decreases your energy levels. (Neuromuscular Massage Therapy eliminates your chronic pain and boosts your energy). Lastly, NMT can help prevent osteoporosis by realigning your muscles and bones and thereby producing less force on your joints… so you never fall apart! Call today and request Neuromuscular Massage for longer lasting relief!

The Source of Your Chronic Pain – Trigger Points

Neuromuscular Trigger Point Massage in Los Angeles: The Only Safe, Effective, and Proven Treatment for Pain.

Dr. Travell identified very sensitive areas found in your muscles as the root CAUSE of pain 93% of the time. She called these sensitive areas “trigger points” and by releasing these “trigger points” the stress on the muscles is released and the pain is eliminated. What causes these “trigger points”? Stress, anxiety, and constant worry, Nervous tension, trauma, poor posture, Strenuous activity, Car accidents, Pregnancy Sudden falls, sports injuries, running, sleeping on your stomach or side, aerobics, leaning weight on only one leg for a long period of time…and more In many cases chronic pain is completely eliminated within a few weeks of regular neuromuscular massage treatments. Call today and request Neuromuscular Massage for longer lasting relief!

Flight Attendant Practically PAIN-FREE!

Neuromuscular Trigger Point Massage: Most Effective Treatment for Neck & Back Pain – How to Get Started.

Many people that suffer from recurrent or chronic neck or back pain have likely tried all manner of “cures” and are probably skeptical that there is anything that can work for them. However, the fact of the matter is that neck or back pain can be cured permanently. The first step begins by learning as much about your condition as you possibly can. To keep oxidative stress and systemic inflammation at bay, you need to drink plenty of water, eat a balanced diet, as well as an anti-inflammatory diet. This may mean a diet low in sugar and gluten-free. Everyone who suffers from back or neck pain or headaches has trigger points. Seeing a qualified neuromuscular / trigger point massage therapist to releases and deactivate your trigger points is step one to eliminating your pain. Doing the proper Postural Realignment Exercises to restore your muscle imbalances is step two. Take time off occasionally to relax and meditate. Reacting to stress less reduces the agitation and frustration in your body which causes muscles to tighten and spasm.

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Los Angeles Country To See Us !

“A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses”.
~ Hippocrates

Mental Health: The Relaxation Response: Learn It!

Researchers at Harvard recently took a pile of 28 people who had never meditated or done anything similar in their lives, and taught them the simplest form of what they call the ‘relaxation response’ — by talking them through a muscle-by-muscle relaxation of their entire body while they repeated a mantra. They essentially Pavlovianly trained these folks to relax when they invoked their mantra, in the same way that Eastern monks who regularly meditate relax by closing their eyes and taking a deep breath. The benefits of learning to enforce relaxation? “[The relaxation response] produces immediate changes in the expression of genes involved in immune function, energy metabolism and insulin secretion,” the study says. In other words, you resist bugs more effectively, burn more calories, and store less fat — oh, and your stress levels plummet, too.
Science Daily, May 2013

Health Alert: ‘Five Second Rule’ Proven True…ish

Two separate studies examining the speed with which bacteria and other grossness on the floor gets transferred to your food have used very similar methods and received very similar data…and somehow managed to end up at nearly opposite results. The more liberal group essentially said that the five-second rule is probably OK given that the food gets dropped in your own home (where the bugs are ‘your bugs’ and you’re used to them) — not so much on the street or even in someone else’s house. The conservative group looked at the same data and concluded that “there is no five-second rule…eating food off of the floor is as dangerous as driving without a seat belt on, even after zero seconds.”
National Geographic Magazine, March 2014

Diet: Ketogenic Diet Can Fight Cancer!

Dr. D’Agostino, an assistant professor at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology, has been studying the effects of extremely low-carb ‘ketogenic’ diets, and believes that cancer sufferers can manage their tumors metabolically. It turns out that cancer cells don’t burn fat for energy — only sugar — but humans who simply don’t eat any sugars will (after some suffering) naturally switch over to burning fat and fat alone for energy, which essentially starves the cancer, sending it into remission.
The Examiner, March 2014

Exercise: Obese People Don’t Get Any Exercise…and Should

It’s fairly common knowledge that obese people should exercise more, but a recent study revealed just how much they need to work at it — a study by the Mayo Clinic found that obese women get at little as one hour of aerobic exercise…per year. Men faired little better, with obese men averaging just four hours of exercise per year. Their conclusion: even if it’s just five minutes a couple of times a week, getting tiny amounts of exercise and working to increase that amount slowly — even over years and years — will improve these peoples’ quality of life (and lifespan) significantly.
Time Magazine, February 2014

Neuromuscular Massage: Myofascial Pain: A Sticky Subject

The term ‘myofascial pain’ is fairly common (and getting more so) but not that many people have a clear idea of what it means. Here’s what it means: the ‘fascia’ are like envelopes of slick tissue that surround almost every part of our internal body. Imagine the thin, clear layer you can often find in top of a skinless chicken breast. ‘Myofascia’ means ‘fascia around your muscles’ — so ‘myofascial pain’ is ‘pain caused by a problem with the tissues that envelop your muscles.’ This happens most often when small tears in the myofascia cause them to adhere to nearby other tissues. Massage or other forms of directed pressure can release the adherence and thus allow the myofascia to return to their proper place (and stop hurting!)
Click here to learn more about Neuromuscular Massage

Academy of American Family Physicians, February 2002

Ergonomics and Proper Posture: Does Your Office Chair For Back Relief Do This?
The office chair market is drowning in the word ‘ergonomic.’ There isn’t an office chair produced in the world today that isn’t ‘ergonomic’ — yet we’ve seen nothing but an ever-increasing amount of back pain. Chairs that are ‘ergonomic’, in fact the entire science of ‘ergonomics’, have failed us. If you want a serious back pain chair, you need the next evolution…Click Here to Read About the Ultimate Chair for Back Relief.

Wellness/Prevention: Knowing What Your Risks Are

Anne Wojcicki, founder of genetics testing lab 23andMe, put on a TED talk regarding some of the benefits of knowing your genes, and while 23andMe is currently prevented from giving out health advice based on their genetic findings, it’s almost certainly only a matter of time before that gets sorted out. Once they’re back in business, it should be considered an investment in your own future health to get yourself profiled — their results will tell you, for example, whether to worry more about cancer, heart attack, Alzheimer’s, or something altogether different. From there, you can decide for yourself what preventative measures suit your lifestyle.
Engadget, March 2014

Alternative Medicine: Herbal Remedies for Back Pain – the most common and uncommon!

There are a mountain of powerful, all-natural herbs in the world that help the human body heal in a vast number of ways. If your back hurts, for example, there are more herbal remedies for back pain than you can shake a stick at. Here’s just a rough sampling of a few…Continue Read Here

“The best six doctors anywhere, and no one can deny it Are sunshine, water, rest, and air, exercise and diet.”
~ Wayne Fields

 

Mental Health: Living At High Altitude Linked to Depression, Suicide

Utah researchers recently uncovered a startling factoid: while the folks in Utah tend to be some of the physically healthiest in the country, they also have some of the highest rates of mental illness. In fact, in the greater context of the Rocky Mountain states, the cities that sit high atop the mountains tend so strongly toward depression that some have started referring to the mountains as the ‘suicide belt.’ The theory is that living at high altitudes alters your brain chemistry and promotes depression, schizophrenia, and suicide. The theory falters on a global scale, however, as countries like Bhutan and Nepal are high-altitude countries with significantly better mental health overall than the U.S.
Salt Lake Tribune, March 2014

Health Alert: Autism Linked With Environmental Toxin Exposure…and Genes

Researchers from the University of Chicago, led by professor of genetic medicine Andrey Rzhetsky, analyzed data of nearly 100 million children gathered from different states in the United States to measure autism rates and intellectual disability. The study was epidemiological in nature, which means it didn’t focus on finding a single ‘smoking gun’ chemical that was ‘at fault’ — but what they did find is that there is significant evidence that autism happens when certain genetic states coincide with certain environmental circumstances. A glance at the map that comes with the study seems to point to high-fracking areas as being high-autism areas in general, though that may be purely coincidental.
Autism Speaks, March 2014

Diet: ‘Free Sugars’ Strongly Linked to Heart Disease

JAMA last month contained a large study that linked ‘sugar as a percentage of caloric intake’ to ‘death from cardiovascular disease’ and found that the correlation between the two was startling. We all know by now that correlation doesn’t imply causation, but nevertheless the World Health Organization is revising its guidelines, suggesting that ‘free sugars’ (in other words, sugar added to food rather than those naturally occurring within food) should comprise 5% of less of your total caloric intake. (For the record, that would put almost every American breakfast food off limits.)
The Journal of the American Medical Association, February 2014

Exercise: Late-Night Exercise Won’t Mess Up Your Sleep Schedule

The National Sleep Foundation Sleep in America Poll for 2013 finally came back a few weeks ago, with interesting results. It seems that people who get at least 30 minutes of aerobic exercise sleep better at night — no surprise there. But even people who get that exercise right before bedtime sleep better than people who don’t get it at all — so the old theory that you should use the hour before bed to relax and do nothing has been officially tossed. If you can’t sleep, get some exercise, and try again.
Prevention Magazine, March 2014

Neuromuscular Massage: Amazing Treatment for Back, Neck, Hip and Knee Pain: Pain and Posture

A study from IPSB college showed that in people with chronic hip, knee, and back pain, a simple assessment of their posture can lead to new potential avenues of treatment. They assessed the pelvic tilt of people who reported many years of chronic hip, knee, and back pain. Then, they applied neuromuscular massage therapy intended to correct the posture of the patients — and when the five-week process was complete, they verified that complaints of pain were reduced in rough alignment with the correction of the pelvic tilt accomplished by the neuromuscular massage.
IPSB college, June 2008

Wellness/Prevention: Even Prevention Can Be Overdone

A massive study out of Canada last week revealed that preventive medicine can be taken too far. It turns out that there was zero difference in breast cancer mortality between women ages 35-60 who had annual mammograms and those who did not. What did change was that the women who received mammograms had more false positives, meaning lots of unnecessary fear, stress, and medication.
Modern Healthcare Magazine, February 2014

“To insure good health: eat lightly, breathe deeply, live moderately, cultivate cheerfulness, and maintain an interest in life.”
~William Londen

 

Health Alert: Marijuana Less Addictive Than Cigarettes, But Still Addictive

One of the few epidemiological studies of marijuana was released over the weekend, having gained importance with Washington and Colorado having recently legalized the sale of pot. The study proved that alcohol, cigarettes, and other forms of tobacco/nicotine are all more addictive than marijuana — but not by much. Approximately 2 million Americans are addicted to marijuana in the sense that they cannot quit and their lives are negatively affected by the drug.

Diet: Reduce Food Cravings with Well-Timed Video Games

A group of scientists at Plymouth University, testing the theory that food cravings came from our imagination, not our stomachs — and were thus visual, not something felt, tested their theory in a unique way. They proved that people feeling food cravings who stopped whatever they were doing and played 3 minutes of a highly visual video game (they used Tetris) felt a 25% drop in their cravings.

Exercise: Antioxidants Nullify Many Benefits of Exercise

We’ve all been told that antioxidants are massively good for you — but studies from as far back as 2009 (Germany) and as recently as last week (Norway) have proven again and again that that combining high-antioxidant foods with exercise can make the exercise much less effective. One of the major benefits of exercise is the creation of new mitochondria (the organelles that burn fat and sugar for calories) inside your cells — but that cannot happen in the presence of “healthy” levels of antioxidants. In particular, Vitamin C, resveratrol, and CoQ10 have shown to impair the benefits of exercise.

Neuromuscular Massage: The Newest Back & Neck Pain Relief Breakthrough Taking Off in the United States

A study released by the American Massage Therapy Association revealed that neuromuscular massage therapists are becoming more and more in demand in the United States as the benefits of therapeutic massage become more evident. Predictions are that there will be 20% more massage therapists by 2020 than there are today — significantly above the average rate of growth for medical professionals.

Preventative Medicine: The Trifecta of Dietary Preventatives

It’s not that often that we get great, ‘clean’ studies out of China, but it can happen. In this case, a month or so ago, a trio of scientists at Wuhan University called out three preventative superfoods: garlic (for it’s antibacterial, antiviral, and antiparasitical properties), ginger (as a powerful anti-inflammatory and digestive aid), and lemon (because it cleanses the blood and liver as well as reducing mucus body-wide.)  A tablespoon each of the first two — raw, with honey — and a glass of water with a lemon squeezed into it — are on their list of things everyone should consider as a daily part of their health regimen.

Mental Health: Stress Causes the Brain to Build Misfires Into Itself

There are stem cells in the brain that are used when new neurons need to be built. But according to researchers at UC Berkley, under chronic stress, the brain will instead convert these stem cells into a kind of glial cell that has the job of coating nearby neurons in a myelin sheath. This operation is necessary in some parts of the brain (‘white matter’), but when it happens in an area of the brain that is normally gray matter, it can cause communications between some cells to become accelerated while others’ communications are at normal speed. The result is a ‘misfire’ that can cause a variety of effects from PSTD-like symptoms to a lack of ability to consider the ramifications of one’s actions. End result? Avoid stress when at all possible.