How Massage After a Workout Helps You Heal Faster

by: Dr. Gabe Mirkin, M.D.

Knotted Muscles. (image from: BeBionik.com)

Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario have shown that deep massage after an intense workout causes muscles to enlarge and grow new mitochondria (Science Translational Medicine, published online Feb, 2012). This is incredible. Enlarging and adding mitochondria can help to prevent heart attacks and certain cancers.

The authors asked 11 men to exercise to exhaustion on stationary bicycles. After the workout, one of each participant's legs was Swedish-style massaged for 10 minutes. Biopsies were taken from one quadriceps muscle before and after the workout, and from both muscles immediately after a 10 minute massage of one leg, and 2.5 hours later.

When you exercise intensely, you feel a burn in your muscles. When the burning lasts for while, you have significant muscle damage. Biopsies of muscles at that time show bleeding into the muscle fibers and disruption of the muscle fibers themselves. In response to muscle cell damage, your immunity produces certain proteins called cytokines that remove the damaged muscle parts. This increases swelling and delays healing.

Massage reduced these cytokines and, surprisingly, increased the size and number of new mitochondria more than exercising without massage. The previously held explanation that massage improves muscle blood flow and gets rid of lactic acid does not have firm research support. Furthermore, research from this same group shows that massage decreases blood flow to muscles after exercise, and therefore slows lactic acid removal from muscle after exercise.

MITOCHONDRIA MAKE YOU FASTER OVER DISTANCE

Athletes who start an intense endurance training program can double their concentration of mitochondria in muscles in about 4 to 6 months. Massage increases the number of mitochondria even more. The limit to how fast you can move in competition is the time it takes for oxygen to enter your exercising muscles. Increasing mitochondria markedly increases the rate that muscles can take in oxygen so they make you faster over long distances.

ICE AND NON-STEROIDALS BOTH DELAY RECOVERY FROM EXERCISE

Massage is good because it increases mitochondria and healing. Ice and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, such as ibuprofen, block muscle repair and delay healing.

HOW INCREASING MITOCHONDRIA HELPS TO HELP PREVENT CANCER

Anything that increases or enlarges mitochondria helps to prevents cancer. Cancer occurs when cells lose their genetic limit of programmable number of doublings called apoptosis and forget to die. The cancer cells then live forever and kill you by invading and destroying other tissues in your body.

Read the following links for further information about Mitochondria and Cancer:

http://www.drmirkin.com/public/ezine012212.html

http://www.drmirkin.com/public/ezine011512.html