Stress, Cortisol and Massage

What is stress? It is anything which challenges your mental and physical ability to adapt. Stress isn't always bad - for instance when you stress your muscles by going beyond your usual workout, they adapt during rest by growing stronger and larger. Stress helps your body and mind learn how to adapt to the demands of life. However, prolonged stress with no chance to rest and recover is dangerous. 

Under stress, your brain responds by activating the so-called fight, flight and defeat hormones. Fight or flight hormones make your heart and lungs work harder and increase the level of fatty acids in your blood, giving you more energy to deal with the stress. The defeat reaction occurs when you feel overwhelmed and unable to cope. It suppresses your immune system and triggers the release of cortisol, a steroid that helps release fat into the bloodstream for more energy. It can move fat around the body according to need, into your bloodstream for more energy and into new storage areas, especially into the abdomen. 

If stress is unremitting, the fight or flight reaction causes your organs to race, using up energy and causing damage over time. When you feel you can’t cope with the stress in your life, the long-term exposure to cortisol -- because you feel overwhelmed -- can cause obesity, especially in the abdomen, as well as high blood pressure and elevated glucose, leading to diabetes.

It’s important to learn how to deal with stress, to turn off stress hormones, so that you can remain healthy. Research shows that massage can help reduce those stress hormones, turning off the fight/flight/defeat reactions and switching your nervous system to the relax and heal state. For instance, Russian scientists in 2011 reported that a stimulating sports massage increases hormones necessary for a stress situation such as a competition, while a relaxing massage actually decreases those hormones and switches the nervous system into a relaxed state where healing takes place.

Another 2011 study, published in the journal “Nature Communications,” showed that the tactile stimulation of massage lowers stress in fish. A study reported in the "Yonsei Medical Journal" in 2011 reported that heat and massage both significantly lower blood levels of the stress hormones cortisol and norepinephrine.

For over a decade the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami has done research on the effect of massage on stress. Their studies show that massage can reduce the markers of stress, including high blood pressure, anxiety, depression, anger and blood levels of cortisol in people with stress.

If you are feeling stressed and overwhelmed, try putting yourself in your massage therapist's hands for a relaxing massage as often as practical in your life. You'll definitely feel more relaxed and able to cope than you would without massage. In addition to massage, learn how to meditate, learn a soothing exercise regimen such as yoga or Tai Chi, and ask your massage therapist to teach you some breathing exercises.

The influence of various technologies of sports massage on biochemical parameters of the blood. 

Tactile stimulation lowers stress in fish 

The effects of heat and massage application on autonomic nervous system. 

Touch Research Institute Abstracts 

Cortisol Connection 

Anorexia nervosa symptoms are reduced by massage therapy 

More:

1. Field, T., Morrow, C., Valdeon, C., Larson, S., Kuhn, C. & Schanberg, S. (1992). Massage reduces anxiety in child and adolescent psychiatric patients. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 31, 125-131.
2. Field, T., Grizzle, N., Scafidi, F., & Schanberg, S. (1996). Massage and relaxation therapies' effects on depressed adolescent mothers. Adolescence, 31, 903-911.
3. Field, T., Deeds, O., Diego, M., Gualer, A., Sullivan, S., Wilson, D. & Nearing, G. (2009). Benefits of combining massage therapy with group interpersonal psychotherapy in prenatally depressed women. Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, 13, 297-303.
4.  Hou, W.H., Chiang, P.T., Hsu, T.Y., Chiu, S.Y., & Yen. Y.C. (2010). Treatment effects of massage therapy in depressed people: a meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 71, 894-901.
5. Field, T., Ironson, G., Scafidi, F., Nawrocki, T., Goncalves, A., Burman, I., Pickens, J., Fox, N., Schanberg, S., & Kuhn, C. (1996). Massage therapy reduces anxiety and enhances EEG pattern of alertness and math computations. International Journal of Neuroscience, 86, 197-205.
6. Cady, S. H., & Jones, G. E. (1997). Massage therapy as a workplace intervention for reduction of stress. Perceptual & Motor Skills, 84, 157-158.
7. Shulman, K.R. & Jones, G.E. (1996). The effectiveness of massage therapy intervention on reducing anxiety in the work place. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 32, 160-173.
8. Hernandez-Reif, M., Field, T., Krasnegor, J. & Theakston, H. (2000). High blood pressure and associated symptoms were reduced by massage therapy. Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, 4, 31-38.
9. Field, T., Seligman, S., Scafidi, F., & Schanberg, S. (1996). Alleviating post-traumatic stress in children following Hurricane Andrew. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 17, 37-50.