If you’re having a hard time sleeping, you know the frustrations that can come with tossing and turning in bed for what feels like ages, yet unable to fall asleep. Having poor sleep, especially on a regular basis, can cause a person to feel various symptoms, such as fatigue and irritability, and leave them feeling drained throughout the day.
If you’ve tried other assorted bedtime rituals to improve your sleep, but find them ineffective, consider seeking out a massage therapy. By seeing a Vancouver massage therapist on a semi-regular basis, you can improve the overall quality of your sleep. Here’s how.
Massage Boosts Dopamine and Serotonin
Studies have shown that massage therapy can create positive changes in the body’s biochemistry, with results showing decreased cortisol levels and increased levels of both serotonin and Dopamine.
Serotonin is a hormone that helps stabilize a person’s mood and increase feelings of happiness, relaxation, and well-being. While raising these positive feelings, serotonin also helps to lower and control anxiety, reduce depression, and aids digestion. With all of these factors, a person with improved levels of serotonin caused by a massage is more likely to sleep better. You can get an electric massager to conveniently relax at home.
Meanwhile, Dopamine acts as a messenger through your nervous system and helps affect essential functions of your body such as heart rate, blood flow, mood, motivation, and sleep quality.
Deeper Sleep with Less Disturbance
A study was conducted to show that undergoing a short 30-minute massage twice a week for five weeks had a multitude of benefits, including less back pain, relaxed nerves and lower anxiety, improved mood, and deeper sleep. With lower back pain and other bodily pains reduced, a person tossed and turned less, thus allowing for fewer disturbances and deeper sleep.
Side Effects to Improper Sleep
Improper sleep can have a long list of negative side effects associated with it, especially if poor sleep is a consistent issue. Some of the health issues that may occur can include:
Memory Loss
Without proper sleep, the prefrontal cortex of the brain is affected, which can affect your short-term and long-term memory.
Mood Alterations
Almost anyone can attest to feeling a little cranky after a poor night of sleep, which can cause mood swings such as irritability, stress, and overly emotional feelings. When dealing with chronic sleep issues like insomnia, these mood alterations can worsen and lead to conditions such as general anxiety disorder.
Compromises Your Immune System
Chronic sleep issues can lead to a weakening of your immune system, allowing viruses to infiltrate your system and allowing you to catch flu and cold symptoms more easily, as well as other types of viral infections more easily. Likewise, poor sleep will worsen these illnesses and slow down their recovery periods as well.
More Severe Health Conditions
More than irritability and the common cold, prolonged exposure to chronic insomnia can lead to very serious health conditions such as heart diseases, higher blood pressure, diabetes, and strokes.
For these reasons and more, it can be beneficial to seek out massage therapy to help you treat troubles you may have with sleeping.
