Bodies of Steel and Holistic Massage Clinic💮

You know the feeling. After a long hard day of working, maybe with a bit more stress, or bad posture, and you feel it coming on. It wraps around your head like a vice, causes neck and shoulder pain, and puts you in an absolutely foul mood. It’s a good old tension headache. So what IS a tension headache? What causes a tension headache? And what can you do to manage it?Tension headaches can be common or only affect you at certain points, like during times of stress and when you’re extremely busy. Which is exactly the time that we don’t need them!

A tension headache is actually the most common type of headache. According to Headache Australia (a division of the Brain Foundation), tension headaches can affect up to 36% of men and 42% of women . Research has not yet managed to establish the root cause of tension headaches. Stress, however, is usually referred to as a common cause. The Mayo Clinic states that there are two main divisions of tension headaches, episodic and chronic. As the name suggests, episodic tension headaches occur less frequently than chronic, lasting from as short a time as 15 minutes, up to a week. Chronic tension headaches, on the other hand, occur more often, lasting hours, possibly days at a time, for more than 15 days each month . Imagine having a headache for half the time of each month!

Poor posture has also been identified as a possible cause of tension headaches. When you’re sitting all day at work on a computer, slumping because you’re tired, it’s likely that the muscles in your neck, shoulders, and back will start to tense up. Muscles don’t like being still for long periods of time. This is why doctors recommend standing up from your desk every half hour and moving around. If your neck muscles and shoulder muscles become very tense, they can actually cause the muscles in the base of your skull to tense up as well. In my experience as a massage therapist, the pain and tension from tension headaches most commonly starts at the base of the skull. When these muscles take more strain than they are built for, they start asking for help from other muscles around where they are, such as the muscles in the front of the neck. These muscles then refer onto the jaw, and the jaw onto the temple, and hey presto, there’s your tension headache. The muscles at the base of the skull can also refer from the base of your skull across the top of your head, into your forehead. These tiny little muscles, only about 3cms long each, cause so many issues!

With the spring feelings in full force, and summer fitness goals fresh in everyone’s minds, the gym may have had a few more participants this last month. And if you aren’t a regular gym goer, or you’ve pushed yourself further these last few weeks, your muscles may be feeling a little bit sore now. 

Everybody knows what muscles are. They’re the fibrous, flexible tissue that contracts and extends, allowing you to move around. But why do they get sore when you exercise? And what can you do to lessen the impact?

Muscles are made of cells that line up into fibres, which, depending on the muscle, run in bundles a certain way to allow certain movements. The fibre bundles in your biceps, for example, all run from your shoulder to your elbow, so that you can move your wrist towards your shoulder. But the fibres in your pecs fan out from your shoulder joint and connect either to your collar bone or sternum (breastbone). This fan shape allows the pecs to lift your arms up, down, and pull them across your body. When you exercise, these fibres get tiny little tears in them due to the strain put on your body. How hard you exercise will affect how many of these micro tears you get. You may feel the pain from these tears as soon as you finish your workout. But it’s more likely that it will be the day or two afterwards that the full effects of the tears will present itself. This pain, in the day or two following exercise, is known as Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, or DOMS for short.The biggest impact that massage can have on the body to assist in muscle recovery post workout is for DOMS. The effects of DOMS can be lessened by massage, specifically deep tissue massage. Muscles tense up during exercise to assist in the load bearing required to complete the activities being done. Getting a massage in the days following a big workout will assist in recovery from DOMS, as it gives the muscles a chance to relax.

Your health is My priority 

I will assist you in the management of; Anxiety, abdominal pain, aches, asthma, arthritis, adrenals, atrophy of muscles,  bursitis, back pain, bronchial problems,  carpel tunnel, calcification ,constipation, corked muscles, cancer (symptom relief),  digestive problems, depression, emotional disorder, fatigue, fevers, fluid retention, frozen shoulder, facet jt disorders, gut problems,  gait assistance, gout, headaches, heel spurs, high blood pressure, hypertension, indigestion, insomnia, impingement syndrome, inflammation, jaw pain, kyphosis, kidney dysfunction, lymphedema, lordosis, lower back pain, liver dysfunction, lymphatic system, lactic acid migraine, menstrual problems, menopause, morning sickness, multiple sclerosis ( symptom relief ), nausea, neuralgia, nervous tension, nerve entrapment syndrome, osteoarthritis, plantar fasciitis, posture, queasiness, R.S.I, rheumatoid arthritis, sciatica, stress, shin splints, sports injuries, scoliosis, spurs, TMJ disorder, tendonitis, tennis/ golf  elbow, ulna nerve, varicose veins, wrist tension, wry neck, x-ray/ MRI assessment, your general health, zzzzzzz sleeping disorders, and more………