How massage fights insomnia
Is sleeping overrated?
Nope…
We don’t think so.
In this article, we explain to you why sleeping is so important.
Plus we show you how massage fights insomnia (sleeplessness): If you have difficulties falling asleep or staying asleep.
How many hours?
The amount of hours you need to sleep each night, differs from person to person and also from age. A newborn is recommended to sleep 14 to 17 hours every day, to enable growth and development. Adults are recommended to sleep between 7 and 9 hours a night, at least not less than 6 hours a night.
A good night rest is vital for your mental and physical health. When you sleep, your body is repairing itself and preparing yourself to be fit and ready for another day.
repaired during sleep
There has been various scientific studies about how the body repairs itself when you sleep. Therefore enough sleep is essential for your physical health. Severe lack of sleep is linked to the risk of excess weight gain, heart disease and many other illnesses.
lack of sleep and mental health
Moreover, your night of sleep is also super important for your daily happiness and stress level.
What do you feel the day after not having had a good night of sleep?
The feeling you didn’t rest at all?
Feeling sleepiness during the day?
Irritability?
Anxiety?
Maybe even depression?
Disturbed mood?
Low in energy?
Difficulty remembering things?
Less focused in tasks?
Having difficulty paying attention?
Don’t worry… you are not the only one…
Insomnia
Difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep is called insomnia, sleeplessness. It can be acute when you cannot fall asleep the night before an exam day for example.
And then there is chronic insomnia. This is when you don’t sleep enough at least three nights a week and when it lasts at least three months.
Causes of insomnia
Causes can vary. Working shift hours? Unhealthy sleep habits? A change in environment? A medical condition? Medicines? Cramps? Most people who suffer from insomnia are having difficulty falling asleep, because of anxiety or stress. They might be thinking too much, have worries, their brain is not resting.
Sounds familiar?
Recognize this?
Well, we do know the feeling of lack of sleep! Being a parent we remember waking up several times a night because of our babies.
But of course, this is very normal. Every parent with young kids will experience this. Probably most of us suffer from lack of sleep the first few years after a baby is born. But that should pass.
Also if you fall asleep right after your disturbance, then you might still catch quite some sleep. But if you have difficulties falling asleep, you can suffer from insomnia.
Are you worrying too much?
Nevertheless, most people have difficulty falling asleep, because they are worrying too much. They have anxiety or stress. Others wake up because of muscle cramps. And others have sleeping problems because of digestion problems.
If this is you or you know someone that has one of these problems, then hopefully this article will help.
How does stress work?
Before we explain how massage fights against insomnia, when you have anxiety or stress, let’s first take a look at how stress works.
When you feel stress, your nervous system responds immediately by releasing a flood of stress hormones, including cortisol and adrenaline.
These stress hormones awaken the body for emergency action. Your heart pounds faster, muscles tighten, blood pressure rises, breath quickens and your senses become sharper.
Reduce stress hormones
So that is great when you need that. But as you can see, this is not exactly what we need when you like to fall asleep. Actually, the opposite should occur in your body.
When you want to sleep, you would like to be relaxed. You would like to have your hormones balanced.
You would like to have your stress hormones, your cortisol level reduced.
And this is exactly what a massage treatment does to your body.
Increase happy hormones
The best is even to have your serotonin and endorphin levels increased. We call this the happy hormones.
The hormones that bring you in a happy relaxed state of mind.
Perfect state to sleep, right?
So again, this is exactly what a massage treatment does to your body.
Anxiety
There are many causes of having anxiety. However, long time stress and getting not enough sleep can trigger or worsen anxiety.
Muscle cramp
Moreover, you like to sleep during the night without waking up from muscle cramps, so you also like to have your muscles relaxed if this is the cause of muscle cramp.
Night leg muscle cramp usually occurs just as you are falling asleep or waking up. It can have many causes, but one of them is overuse of muscles or blood flow problems.
And these two causes can be easily treated by massage.
Digestion problems
And then there are people who have insomnia because of digestion problems, caused by stress.
If you are stressed your digestion system shuts down. So if you are stressed for a longer period of time you can have digestion problems.
You can even get into a vicious circle by waking up too much during the night due to digestion problems. So you have slept too little. Therefore becoming more stressed.
And as we just have explained, stress is not the best if you like to fall asleep.
As well as with digestion problems, a massage treatment can be a good solution, especially abdominal massage.
So how does massage fight insomnia?
Since you now know that massage reduces digestion problems, increases serotonin, decreases cortisol and reduces muscle cramps.
You can see that a massage treatment is a great way to fight insomnia.
And then we did not even tell you about what you feel during a massage treatment: it can feel like a long meditation session when you receive a massage. So you can feel super relaxed after the massage as if you have slept for many hours.
Of course, a massage treatment cannot fight all insomnia problems. We don’t claim that.
Though, if you have insomnia due to stress, anxiety, muscle cramps, digestion problems… just try massage treatment and hopefully it will work for you.
Create a good night of sleep!
Nicole & Manel
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