Three Tips For Keeping a Massage Regimen For Your Arthritis as Effective as Possible

While appointments with a chiropractor can often be a dramatic help with any arthritis symptoms you're having, they'll go well with additional massages specially designed to relieve joint inflammation. However, unless you order both your physical and your mental life properly to accommodate the massages, you won't get as much out of them as you could. To keep a massage regimen for your arthritis as effective as possible, use these three tips.

Get All Your Chores Done For the Day Before You Go In

The massage will be most effective at relieving joint pain if you don't have to move your joints very often for the rest of the day. This is because a massage therapist generally works by relaxing the muscles in a tense area. If you're just going to make them work hard again, both the muscles and the joints they're close to will get back into the same knot that they were in before.

Schedule the massage appointment as close to the end of the day as you can and do extra chores in the days leading up to it so that you won't have as much to do in the morning and early afternoon. This will also give you plenty of free time to complement the massage during the rest of the day by taking a long warm bath and resting.

Perform Some Brief Stretching Exercises to Relax Your Body

If it's your back that suffers the brunt of your arthritic pain, lay on the floor facing upward and bring your knees as close to your chin as you can manage before you drive to the appointment. This will prepare your back muscles for any further kneading that your therapist does, increasing the pain relief you'll feel at the end of the appointment.

Practice a Meditation Technique During Your Massage

It can be hard to completely relax all the muscles in your body during massage therapy if you're not used to it. In the worst case, even ambient music won't be enough to prevent you from raising your shoulder blades and twisting your back while the massage therapist works.

Fortunately, there are many meditation techniques out there that you can try during your massage. A simple one is to focus all your mind on the sensations felt by one particular part of your body for a few minutes at a time. This is an especially good technique for a massage.

If you have any questions about what you should do before a massage and your chiropractic adjustment, consider contacting a local specialist, such as Excellence In Health Chiropractic & Rehab Clinic, to discuss your concerns.

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