Straighten your arm in front of you with your palm up. Use the other hand to gently press your fingers down toward the ground in a slow gentle stretch. Repeat on the other hand. Then, straighten your arm in front of you with your palm down. Use the other hand to slowly bend your fingers back toward your body stretching your wrist. Repeat on the other hand.
A landmark study from Loma Linda University years ago showed that ingesting processed or refined sugar as opposed to a more natural form of sugar found in fruits and vegetables makes the white blood cells—the cells we rely on to fight infections—less responsive.
One thing that ingesting sugar is known to do is to provoke an inflammatory response. The body’s reaction to that is to send the protective white blood cells to limit the damage that inflammation can do. If white blood cells are made less responsive by the sugar that is present, they’re less able to protect the body from inflammation.
Here are 5 additional reasons to limit the amount of refined sugar in your diet:
Refined sugars—syrups, honey, table sugar, soda, baked goods, etc.—when consumed in quantity, or even in small quantities but consumed regularly can lead to disease and can hamper your ability to fight off infection.
If you get cold sitting at the stadium watching a game, get your big muscle groups working to warm you up.
Abdominal circles – squeeze your lower abdominal muscles and hold for 3 seconds, then your right abs, then your upper abs, then your left. Repeat that circle 5 times.
Calves Lifts – Lift your legs up so that you’re on the balls of your feet, hold for 10 seconds and release. Repeat 5 times.
Butt and Thigh Squeezes – squeeze your buns and hold for 5 seconds, then squeeze your thighs and hold for 5 seconds. Repeat 5 times.
Tension-type headaches are common and can be greatly relieved by massage. Headaches can be caused by referral pain from trigger points in the muscles of the neck and head. Often, the symptoms are pain that runs up through the temple, or around the eye, or across the forehead. These are classic signs of trigger points that can be treated with neuromuscular massage.
Long-distance runners often complain of knee pain due to the structure of the knee and the way it gets used while running. Often pain caused by the soft-tissue structures around the knee can be the source of pain that feels like it’s coming from within the knee. Strains in the hamstring or quadriceps can mimic intra-joint pain as can strains in the iliotibial band. Muscular sources of knee pain can be relieved by neuromuscular massage.
People with plantar fasciitis often complain about pain in the heel that is most painful with the first few steps in the morning. The pain then subsides with movement. Massage can treat the musculature that places stress on the plantar fascia—the thick connective tissue that runs along the bottom of the foot from the heel to the toes.
Massage can also treat soft tissue injuries that mimic plantar fasciitis. Pain in the foot that results from a long day of walking but never occurs in the morning is more likely to be pain referred from trigger points in the calf muscle that is felt in the foot. Either way, neuromuscular massage can help relieve the symptoms.
Sciatica is an inflammation of the sciatic nerve that causes pain that runs down the back of the leg from the three gluteal muscles to the hamstrings, the calf muscles and even to bottom of the foot. Pain can also be accompanied by numbness in the leg. Most often, sciatica is caused by a disk that has slipped or herniated. Typically, sciatica only affects only side of the body.
There is another condition that mimics sciatic pain: piriformis syndrome (also called pseudo sciatica). Piriformis syndrome causes the same pain pattern as sciatica. The piriformis, a muscle in the gluteal area that sits on top of the sciatic nerve allows us to walk, shift our weight from one foot to the other and maintain balance. When this muscle gets tight and contracts, it pushes onto the sciatic nerve causing pain.
Unfortunately, many doctors will prescribe pain killers which only mask the pain, physical therapy which can decrease the pressure on the nerve, injections of cortisone-like-anti-inflammatory drugs which can have side effects, or surgery which can be difficult to recover from and doesn’t always work.
Neuromuscular massage can fix piriformis syndrome, and the symptoms do not usually come back. Neuromuscular massage can also relieve the pain of sciatica, but may require a combination of therapies to eliminate any underlying structural problems.
Fighter pilots face the same body stresses that hunters do when they have to remain still for long periods of time. Exercising your large muscles will help reduce stiffness and help keep you warm. Here are a few exercises you can do without any sudden motion.
Spinal twist – Inhale and sit up tall. Twist as far as you can comfortably to the left, exhale, and remain in that position for 5 gentle breaths, then switch sides.
Shoulder shrugs – Inhale and lift your shoulders up toward your ears, then squeeze them straight back. Exhale and squeeze your shoulder blades together and let your shoulders come back down. Inhale and squeeze your elbows toward each other in back. Exhale, and relax.
Back release – cross one ankle over the other thigh, exhale and lean forward over your legs. Hold for five breaths, exhale and put your foot back down. Repeat with the other leg.
Shin splints is a catch-all term for pain in the lower leg. Shin splints often occur when you increase the amount of running or walking you’re doing by a measurable amount or if you’re trying to improve your time. Shin splints can be caused by soft tissue injury to either the front of the shin or the back of the shin. In some cases, because your calf muscle is so much stronger than the muscles that run along the front of your leg, there’s an imbalance that causes strain on the front, the shin.
Shin splints can also be caused from injury to a muscle underneath the big calf muscle. This is a more rare form of shin splints and the pain is often described as spreading from one area to another.
Neuromuscular massage techniques can help stretch and loosen the muscle and fascia causing the pain of shin splints.
One common cause of chronic pain is the distortion or deterioration of joints which compresses nerves and impairs circulation. If muscle or other soft tissue is deprived of nutrients, chronic pain is often the result.
Neuromuscular massage therapy helps to restore the natural function of joints by relaxing the muscle structure that supports the bones. If the muscles are unbalanced, joint distortion occurs. Neuromuscular massage techniques selectively loosen tight muscles and connective tissues to restore muscular balance and improve range of motion.
Chronic pain is often the source of body-wide stress. The inability to relieve pain adequately results in a cascade of stress hormones. In the case of chronic pain, neuromuscular massage can enhance the effect of the body’s natural endorphins which help to soften the perception of pain. Massage also lowers blood pressure and heart rate which may be elevated as a result of pain.
Neuromuscular massage can help in some of the most common causes of chronic pain including postural distortion, nerve compression or entrapment, restricted joint movement and fibromyalgia .
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