Massage in Women and Babies

Massage therapy are also used as a alternative medicine to improve women’s health. Massage in pregnancy is essential for the mother and baby. The goals for a pregnancy massage are to help women to alleviate stress, promote relaxation and prepare muscle and joints for childbirth. The specific techniques will help to relieve the low back pain, swelling of hands and feet, cramps, sciatic pain and insomnia. Massage can keep the body healthy, physically, medically and emotionally. Feeling healthy is all aspects make for a more pleasant pregnancy, health delivery and a happy baby.

Meanwhile, infant massage is also a great way to bond parents with baby. Researchers are finding that massage may promote better sleeping, relieve colic, and perhaps even enhance an infant’s immune system, motor skills and intellectual development. Teaching mothers to massage their newborn infants my promote maternal-infant bonding and attachment by helping the mother become more sensitive to her infant’s cues and promoting reciprocal and positive maternal-infant interaction pattern.  Serrano  et al. reviewed 9 studies of massage interventions for healthy-term infants younger than 6 months and all 9 studies suggested that massage had a positive effect on mother-infant interaction, improved infant sleep, and reduced infant crying.

Massage has been recommended to women in different age groups to improve their health. In last few decades, the female role models have changed dramatically. Stress has become increasingly implicated in a variety of physical and emotional disorders or complaints, which in turn are usually linked to changing social or occupational demands. Massage therapy has also proven to have a profound effect on women’s emotional wellbeing. One of the immediate benefits of a massage therapy is the wonderful feeling of deep relaxation and peace. In a survey among middle age women with menopause symptoms in Sydney, massage therapy was rated as the most effective therapy.  Ninety four percent of respondents considered the massage therapy moderately to very effective in alleviating menopause symptoms. The most common symptoms troubling women using massage are often associated with stress such as tenseness, sleeping difficulties, pains. Massage has been noted to decrease cortisol levels, increase serotonin and dopamine levels and reduce blood pressure and heart rate.  Massage can improve general wellbeing and quality of life by reducing the stress in modern women.