Massage Professionals Article Archive

Carolyn Chambers Clark, RN, EdD  
is BellaOnline's Holistic Health Host

Headache Free

This article explores a holistic approach to headaches that really works!

There are many types of headaches and some of them work in concert. For example, a muscle-tension headaches can increase the frequency and intensity and duration of migraine and vice versa.

Searching for the ideal pain killer isn't the answer. For one thing, they have negative side effects and can create additional (rebound) headaches themselves. They are also toxic, especially the non-steroidal antiflammatory drugs (NSAIDS like aspirin, acetaminophen, ibuprofen, etc.) And can cause major trauma to your digestive track, including hemorrhage. Finally, they don't touch migraine and have only limited success in long-term cures for other types of headache.

Remember, headaches are just a signal your body is giving you that you need to eat better, rest more, get enough exercise, allow yourself pleasure, release anger and resentment and get a healthier lifestyle. Medication only masks pain and prevents you from addressing the underlying sources of your headache.

Conclusion? Like so many other diseases, a headache approach requires a multi-facted, holistic approach.

Set reasonable limits on the activities and responsibilities you can handle.
Ninety percent of headaches are due to stress or tension, according to Dr. Seymour Diamond, director of the National Headache Foundation. Tension headaches are just that---the result of too much tension. Are you just too nice? A pushover for others? If you can't limit yourself, consider professional counseling to help you get a handle on limit setting. At the very least, set aside at least 5 minutes for you every day. Go out and smell the roses or just enjoy a sunset. Let beauty, peace and joy surround you.

Avoid foods that trigger headaches.
The most common are lunch meats that contain nitrites, fermented foods (e.g., bread, cheese, beer and wine), MSG, Nutrasweet, roasted nuts, chocolate, citrus juice, coffee and tea. You may have your own sensitivities. Start a food/headache diary, charting what you eat and your reaction to it. Eliminate the foods that precede your headaches.

Use massage for tension headaches.
Give yourself a neck and back of the head massage or find a friend or massage therapist. Go ahead---you deserve to be treated well.

Try cold for migraines.
Migraines are a result of a forceful rush of blood through dilated arteries. Hot won't work, but soaking a towel in ice water, wringing it out and holding it to the back of your neck should provide some immediate relief. Ice cubes can work, too.

Try magnesium
This mineral is known to relax smooth muscle. Because of our depleted soils, we don't get enough magnesium in our diets. Low ionized magnesium has been linked to migraine headaches in at least one study (Kahn, Jason, Medical Tribune, May 18, 1995, p. 7). Unless you're eating organic vegetables, consider taking 300 mg of magnesium daily to build up your levels of magnesium (which is also good for your heart) as a preventive strategy. Older adults need 600 to 800 mg daily to help absorb calcium.

Try more B-vitamins.
In one study, people who took 400 mgms of riboflavin (a B-vitamin) decreased the severity of their migraines by 70 percent (Cephalagia, 14(5), 1994). You can take a lot of vitamins, or eat organically grown liver, chicken, peanuts, hickory nuts, soybeans, soy flour, wheat germ, whole wheat cereal/bread/pasta, fresh spinach, kale, peas, lima beans, sunflower seeds, and eggs. You can also find "stress vitamin" capsules in your health food store, pharmacy and grocery store. This is a combination of Vitamin C and B-complex vitamins.

Ingest more fish oil.
Another good reason to eat more oily fish in your meals is that fish oil has a platelet-stabilizing and antivasospastic action that has been shown to decrease migraine. If you don't like or can't eat fish, you can get fish oil capsules at your health food store.

Picture that headache going away.
Find a quiet and restful spot and use imagery to picture the color surrounding your headache and its location. Picture the headache turning into a soothing color. Then picture the headache turning into a liquid. Now let that liquid flow out of you and far, far away, someplace where it no longer has any effect on you.

Try biofeedback.
Children are especially good at controlling their headaches through biofeedback reports Lisa Scharff, PhD, of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Learning to cool their hands by controlling blood flow results in half the children reducing their migraines to half the intensity. Check out biofeedback specialists in the yellow pages.

Check your posture and pillow situation.
Some headaches are due to poor posture, huddling over a computer screen, holding a telephone between your ear and shoulder, and sleeping with too many or too few pillows.

Try feverfew.
For over 200 years, feverfew has been used to treat migraines and has been shown effective in clinical trials (Murphy and others, Randomised double-blind placebo-controlled trial of feverfew in migraine prevention, Lancet 2(8604):189-92). Feverfew appears to work by reducing the pain and swelling caused by the body's release of histamine and prostaglandins. Two 125 mg capsules daily or 60-80 drops of standardized tincture are used to prevent migraines. Find it in your health food store and double check for a standardized version and suggested dose. Not to be used when pregnant or nursing and not to be given to children under two years old.

Exercise daily.
Exercise can acquaint your blood vessels to the normal sequence of dilation, rather than the inconsistent dilation and constriction that takes place with a migraine, says Dr. Seymour Diamond, director of the National Headache foundation. Physical activity also alleviates pain by increasing endorphins and enkephalins, your brain's pain-blocking substances. Consider a daily walk, a light swim or easy bike ride as a regular hedge against headache pain. Vigorous exercise is not recommended as you can bring on an exertional headache. At the very least, stretch your neck every half hour by gently rotating your neck from side to side and shrugging your shoulders to break the tension you're holding in your muscles.

Try aromatherapy.
A blend of peppermint and lavender essential oil may relieve stress and muscle spasms. Consult an aromatherapist or get an aromatherapy book.

Breathe deeply.
Pay attention to the way you breathe. Under pressure you're apt to take short, shallow beaths that fail to send enough oxygen to your brain. Allow yourself time to sit quietly and let your abdomen expand and deflate as you breathe in and out deeply, breathing in peace and relaxation and breathing out whatever it's time to let go of.

Try acupressure.
Acupressure is acupuncture without the needles. Instead, use the tips of your fingers to press on special "point" from which nerve messages fan out and relieve your pain. Press hard enough to make the point hurt a little bit. Press the points for 15 to 30 seconds. Use either steady pressure or an on-off method, slightly decreasing the pressure, but not completely removing your fingers, every few seconds. Find the bony point just behind your ear. Next, find the big muscular groove at midpoint in the back of your neck. Halfway between these two places, on each side of your neck, you will find a small groove between two large muscles. Run your thumb up it until you come to the base of your skull. Push inward and upward hard into the groove and against the bone. Another point to press is between the outer corner of your eye and the outer end of your eyebrow. Find the ridge of bone at the outer edge of your eye socket. Move a finger's width toward your ear to a small hollow and press hard.

Homeopathic remedies may help.
Many people prefer homeopathic care because it is so safe. In one study reported in the British Homeopathic Journal, 93% of people taking an individualized homeopathic medicine experienced good results, while only 17 percent given a placebo (sugar pill) did. Try a "combination" remedy, get a self-care book on homeopathy to select the remedy most closely matching your symptoms, or seek professional homeopathic treatment.

Stop smoking.
If you're still smoking, be aware of the detrimental effects on your circulation. Find a good stop smoking class or purchase a stop smoking program or book.
As always, be sure to share your self-care plans with your health care practitioner.

Musical vibrations make gains as healing therapy

By JAN JARVIS

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

FORT WORTH, Texas - Stretched out on a recliner, Sandra McLellan could feel her pain fade as the rhythmic beat of drums pulsated across her back, around her arms and down her legs.

"I hear the music on the speakers," said McLellan, whose severe anemia is being treated with chemotherapy. "But I feel the instruments throughout my body."

These good vibrations are taking some of the nausea, anxiety and fatigue out of chemotherapy and other procedures for patients at Harris Methodist Fort Worth Hospital's Klabzuba Cancer Center in Texas.

Vibroacoustic therapy is a marriage of music and vibrations that is moving into hospitals, psychiatric facilities and geriatric settings nationwide. It is being used to relax adults with Alzheimer's disease, distract children during difficult procedures and reduce patients' anxiety before surgery.

Like yoga, tai chi and meditation, vibroacoustic therapy is part of a growing trend toward natural healing or complementary therapy in medicine.

"It plays into the whole mind-body connection," said Corrine Anderson, a pain and palliative care nurse at Harris hospital. "When you change someone's state of mind, it allows chemical changes to take place, and that makes relaxation possible."

Vibroacoustic therapy is more than a mechanical massage set to sound. The recliners, which are made by Florida-based Somatron and cost about $2,800, produce a rippling sensation throughout the body. It's this complex pattern of pulses rather than a single vibration that seems to make all the difference.

"Music by itself has the ability to relax, but when you add vibration it seems to heighten the experience and stimulate the relaxation response," said Chris Brewer, a North Carolina-based music and education consultant. "The body relaxes, the heartbeat slows, and it creates a state of relaxation."

In a National Institutes of Health study, 272 patients who used vibroacoustic therapy reported more than a 50 percent reduction in pain, headaches, nausea and tension. The patients, who had cancer, heart disease and mood disorders, also felt less depressed and fatigued.

The evidence indicates that vibroacoustic therapy reduces pain and anxiety, but it's less clear why it works.

One theory is that the sounds vibrate cells, organs and tissue, like an internal massage.

As the vibrations press on sensors close to the skin's surface, they activate a natural pain suppressant, said Dr. George Patrick, chief of recreation therapy at the National Institutes of Health, where the therapy has been studied.

"If you vibrate them, they seem to send messages to the spinal cord that confuse pain messages," he said. "It has the effect of white noise."

The music's pitch and beat also play a part. At Harris, patients can chose from the slow and steady beat of Native American drums or the sound of ocean waves splashing.

"It's not a symphony; it's more a new age soothing sound," Anderson said. "It's also music that is not associative."

After one session, McLellan said her constant pain, triggered by colitis, a disease that causes inflammation in the colon and small intestine, and numerous surgeries, decreased dramatically. The relief lasted for several days.

"It seems to relax my mind and muscles," she said. "And I know I don't have to take as much pain medication after it."

VIBROACOUSTIC TECHNOLOGY

Research and clinical programs show a variety of mental and physical benefits. Vibroacoustics has been found to:

• Reduce stress
• Reduce nausea, headache, anxiety, fatigue and depression
• Calm and soothe restless behavior
• Improve range of motion
• Promote muscle tone
• Develop sensory awareness

Source: Musicinhealth.Com

Lypossage can help erase excessive fat
BY MARIA HERNE
Staff Writer

Summer might be months away, but if the thought of donning a swimsuit makes you cringe in horror, take comfort in the fact you're not alone.

Many women are plagued by cellulite, those fatty bulges that even diet and exercise don't seem to erase.

But take heart: Massage therapist George "Jake" Koch says he has an answer to your swimsuit season problem - lypossage.

"If you exercise all the time, but still can't seem to get rid of that excess fat, lypossage can help," Koch said.

"Lypossage is an all-new, body contouring, anti-aging treatment that will help reshape your figure without invasive surgery. It's a natural, noninvasive, low-cost alternative to liposuction."

Lypossage is performed by hand on the lower body, including the buttocks, hips, thighs and lower abdomen, as well as the upper body, including the arms, face, neck and head.

"With lypossage therapy, you'll start to see results by the eighth treatment," Koch said. "I take before and after photos, and you can literally see the difference."

Koch, Schuylkill Haven, a recent graduate of the massage therapy program at Schuylkill Institute of Business & Technology, Pottsville, recently traveled to Middletown, Conn., to learn this new technique from its founder, Charles Wiltsie III, a nationally recognized massage therapy educator and practitioner.

Wiltsie derived the idea for lypsossage from a combination of physical therapy treatments, including lymphatic drainage and deep tissue releases, after noticing the effectiveness of these techniques to reduce swelling in cancer patients suffering from lymphodema.

In a year-long study of 100 female subjects, he documented the effectiveness of the technique, noting most subjects achieved an average inch loss of almost 1 inches per thigh.

"Lypossage works by cleansing the body of stagnant, stalled lymphatic fluid that can create the lumps and bulges we know as figure imbalance," Koch said. "It tones the muscles and retones and reshapes sagging tissue."

The procedure is noninvasive and mostly painless, he said.

"Afterward, it's natural to feel a little sore - like a good workout," Koch said.

But lypossage won't be effective if you're not committed to a healthy regimen, he said.

"Lypossage won't help you lose weight. It's about body sculpting, not weight loss, " Koch said. "You need to combine lypossage with diet and moderate exercise program. You have to be committed to making a change. I'm not interested in helping somebody who isn't willing to help themselves."

Koch operates his business out of the New Vision Fitness Center along Route 61, Orwigsburg, under the business name "Body by Jake."

His lypossage program, for adult men and women, includes a one-on-one consultation and body measurement diary, followed by 18 30-minute lypossage treatments, over a six-week period. The cost is $1,795 per body zone.

Koch also offers other massage therapy services, such as chair massages, hot stone massage, and deep tissue massage.

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.asp?brd=2626