Massage Therapy Can Help Long-COVID Symptoms
Did you know that massage therapy can help with some of the symptoms of long COVID?
Massage can help with these symptoms of long COVID:
- headaches
- joint and muscle pain
It may even be able to help alleviate the following long COVID symptoms, when the cause is related to functional issues (involving the nervous system) as opposed to structural (tissue damaged by the disease) ones:
- coughing
- breathing difficulties
- brain fog
- dizziness
- digestive issues
Here’s how massage can help:
Reducing stress: When the body senses a threat, it turns on the sympathetic nervous system response, also known as the “fight or flight” response. The body tenses up and becomes more alert. The parasympathetic nervous system controls the “rest and digest” response which takes over when a threat is gone and things are calm. Sometimes the body may get stuck in the “fight or flight” response, especially when it’s been dealing with an ongoing lengthy stress, like long COVID. Chronic stress can cause things like brain fog, dizziness and digestive issues. Massage can help us switch back to our “rest and relax” state by soothing the nervous system.
Returning to relaxed breathing: The breathing difficulty caused by COVID in turn causes the diaphragm to fatigue. When this happens, the body uses other muscles to help with breathing. These are known as ancillary breathing muscles and include the intercostals, abdominals, scalenes, serratus muscles, SCM , pectorals and trapezius. After a while of breathing like this, the body adopts it as the new way to breathe. The problem is, this is not fully relaxed breathing. Massage can help to “reteach” the body how to return to efficient breathing.
Relaxing muscles that have been compensating: The ancillary muscles which are not used to taking on all of the work from the diaphragm can become sore. Massage can help reduce the pain and tension in these muscles.
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