Massage for injury recovery?

We all know massage feels good, but can it actually help the recovery process after an injury? When an injury to skeletal muscle occurs, the body begins the healing process within seconds, has 3 phases, and lasts for approximately 2 weeks. The first two waves of cells to arrive are responsible for creating the initial inflammation needed to clear out the injured cells and begin repairing the damaged tissue. The final wave is meant to be anti-inflammatory, where the body slows down all regeneration and inflammatory responses and the muscle functions, such as contracting, are restored.

So where does massage help with all this? Massage benefits have been mostly anecdotal - after receiving a massage the client will tell us they feel better, but no one has been able to really look at what’s happening inside the tissue. Researchers and scientists have been creating ways to study the beneficial effects of massage and other similar therapies on the body, however it has been hard to replicate a repeatable, systematic way, until now. A team led by Dr. David Mooney of Harvard University created a robotic system with a force sensor to deliver consistent and measurable compressive forces to injured leg muscles in mice. Using the visual guidance of ultrasound, the team applied various levels of pressure to injured tissue daily for 14 days. They found that the treatment significantly reduced remnants of damaged muscle fibers and scar tissue compared to untreated tissue. The amount of pressure used did not seem to make a difference in the results either, meaning that even the lightest pressure had profound benefits.

Now that we have measurable, repeatable results, researchers next explored why the robotic compression helped muscle repair. They theorized the treatment might affect the body’s inflammatory response after injury. As discussed above, the first 2 phases of healing are pro-inflammatory, playing an important role in repairing injured tissue. The problem is these cells can remain in the tissue too long, actually inhibiting healing. Think of it like stagnant water behind a clogged pipe. If the pipe is so full of debris, the water can’t drain properly. The same thing can happen in injured tissue. It can become so full of fluid as a result of your body’s attempt to heal, it can actually cause a backlog and fluid stops moving through the tissue, stopping the healing process.

By rapidly and continually clearing the inflammatory cells from the tissue with massage, or in this case using a robot to apply pressure, it reduced the levels of most inflammatory factors after the third day. This continued to support scientist’s theory that using massage to rapidly clear the neutrophils and inflammatory factors in the tissue following an injury substantially improves recovery speed and quality. In conjunction, contraction strength (how strong the muscle can fire) continued to improve throughout treatment until ultimately the treated muscle performed better than uninjured muscle. Improvements were similar across all force levels.

So next time you experience a muscle strain, rather that reaching for that ice pack or propping the area up on a pillow to rest it, give your local massage therapist a call and let them aid you through the recovery faster, and with a better outcome.