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22 Health Benefits of a Massage Chair | Sleep Galleria

22 Health Benefits of a Massage Chair

A massage chair has existed in the United States market as a novelty item for too long.  New technology features have advanced the human like feel and therapeutic benefits of a modern massage chair.  The best massage chairs today can vary the speed of the massage within the same stroke, have sophisticated algorithms to respond to your body type, and provide a variety of advanced customization features to deliver a truly therapeutic massage.  
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At Sleep Galleria, we have seen first hand the health benefits massage chairs can have on both our customers and our employees. The health benefits of a massage chair can be wide ranging and have the ability to help with everything from circulation, hormonal imbalance to improving your posture.  Today we are going to share the 22 health benefits of owning a massage chair.  
1. Improves your Mood
There are over 40 million Americans today or almost 18% of the population that suffer from varying levels of anxiety. People with anxiety disorders are 3 times more likely to go to the doctor and 6 times more likely to be hospitalized for a psychiatric disorder.
  • A massage has become best known for it's ability to provide a calming and comforting effect to those that use it. A massage chair simulates these benefits and improves upon them by integrating real kneading massage, reflexology foot rollers, air compression and heat.  The combined effect of all of these items is essential to alleviating feelings of anxiety and stress and lifting your mood as a result.  A massage chair is the perfect way to disconnect from the day to day stress of life.  You can only be the best version of yourself to everyone around you when you feel great first.    
2. Loosen and Relax Muscles
  • Our muscles are all interconnected and tension and pain can develop over time that presents complex and difficult to diagnose issues.  Short term therapeutic solutions fail to address the root cause of muscle tension and pain.  A modern massage chair can reduce tension, break down muscle tissue, release lactic acid and toxins, improve circulation, and decrease secondary issues that develop from tight and tense muscles.  
3. Improved Pliability and Flexibility
  • Some advanced massage chairs through their integrated stretch and pliability programs have been shown to dramatically improve the flexibility and strength of your muscles and bones. Many massage chair were designed with input from chiropractors and physical therapists to create programs that have a maximum impact on your pliability.  We recommend utilizing stretch programs in the morning to maximize their impact!
4. Better Circulation
  • A highly functioning circulatory system has a variety of benefits for your health and wellbeing.  The zero gravity position in massage chairs plays a major role in decreasing the stress load on your heart, which naturally slows your heart rate and helps you relax.  Massage also decreases stress, hypertension, and promotes feelings of well being.  
5. Promote Lymphatic Drainage
  • Lymph fluids can build up in your body and cause inflammation and disease over long periods of time.  Your lymphatic system is important to consider as you seek to improve your health.  Massage chairs through stretching programs and vigorous massage styles can help lymph drainage and reduce inflammation in the body.  In addition, utilizing the zero gravity position in massage chairs can be a great way to reduce inflammation and improve lymph drainage.  A great example of this is swollen feet that can develop from standing up for long periods.  Raising your feet while getting a foot massage can dramatically reduce swelling and inflammation.  

6. Encourages Regular Sleep Cycles

The consistent use of a massage chairs has been shown to have a variety of impacts on psychological and behavioral measures as it relates to your quality of sleep. These benefits included deeper sleep, less tossing and turning along with subjective feelings of improved mood and acuity during the daytime. 

 

7. Dramatically Improve Posture

 

  • One of the key benefits of a massage chair stem from its ease of use.  A massage chair is available day and night, and having the therapy available for use at any time makes it much easier to stay consistent with giving your body the care it needs.  Consistent use of a massage chair can dramatically improve your body posture when sitting or standing.  We have seen this impact through our customers and our own use of the products!

8. Alleviate Joint Pain

Over time when deep touch pressure in a massage chair is continuously and regularly applied it can lead to a variety of benefits including: Increased Happiness * Better Sleep * Improved Ability to Deal with Stressful Environments * Increased Focus * Sense of Calm * Decreased Stress * Reduced Anxiety * 

    9. Promote Well Being and Calm

    No matter how difficult your day has been, the knowledge you have an escape from the day to day pressures of life is a welcome feeling that can impact how you approach each and every day.  We have found our customers love the way their massage chair makes them feel, and recommend it regularly to friends and family.  

    10. Regulate Blood Pressure

    Massage chairs destress our body by increasing oxygen levels, reducing jittery feelings, improving oxytocin levels, and generally improving our sense of calm and well being.  While high blood pressure is not tied to any single behavior, a regular massage can have a cascade effect on a variety of aspects of your lifestyle that could impact your blood pressure. 

    11. Reduces Stress

    The cousin to anxiety is stress. We all experience stress in some form or fashion, and to some degree stress is a natural and normal response to difficult situations. Excessive stress however can lead to chronic anxiety, sleep deprivation, high blood pressure, chronically high cortisol levels, among many other issues.  Massage chairs have been shown to decrease cortisol levels by up to 50%, which can improve feelings of well being and reduce feelings of stress and anxiety.  

    12. Keep Depression at Bay

    Finding a way to calm your mind and enjoy the process can be a liberating experience. A variety of our massage chairs act as a cocoon to separate you from the day to day stresses that can impact your mood.  In addition, research has found that massage chairs can reduce cortisol levels and improve the parasympathetic response of your nervous system.  

    13. Improve your Nightime Routine

    Digital devices and the impact of blue light has had a significant impact on our sleep patterns and nighttime routine.  The result is a sense of constant fatigue and anxiety, which can impact every aspect of our life.  Massage has been shown to have an impact on your sleep patterns, and introducing a massage chair into your life can have a dramatic impact on your nighttime routine.

    14. Boost your Immune System

    Strong circulation, improved sleep, low stress levels and a clean lymphatic system can boost the natural defenses of your body.  Massage has been shown to increase your body's natural immunity and resistance to illness. 

    15. Great for Post Workout Therapy

    Many of the programs in our massage chairs offer post workout therapy that assist with your speed of recovery.  An effective massage helps increase circulation and blood flow, and and also releases lactic acid build up from a long work out.  

    16.  Reduce Anxiety

    Anxiety is a very common disorder where consistently high levels of stress over long periods of time leads to a regular and chronic response situations that trigger a response.  Excessive nervousness, fear, apprehension and worry can lead to chronic and in some cases debilitating levels of stress.  A massage chair can be an incredibly effective adjunct to traditional medicinal therapy.  We have seen an impact a massage chair has had on some of our most chronically stressed customers.  We highly recommend a massage chair for those dealing with any level of chronic stress and anxiety.  

    17.  Improve your Sleep

    Sleep is an essential part to our every day life, but so often we fail to take the smallest steps to prepare ourselves for a great night's sleep.

    • Here is a quick excerpt from an article detailing the potential benefits of massage therapy to improving your sleep:
      • "But pain is just one potential cause of sleeplessness. Another is stress. “Most people I’m seeing for sleep issues suffer from stress-induced insomnia,” reports Leopold, who says the key to combating stress is toning down the sympathetic nervous system that prepares the body for activity and activating the parasympathetic nervous system that prepares it for rest. “Most of us are constantly in fight or flight, which is our sympathetic nervous system. That’s fine when you need to run from a tiger, but it’s not great when you want to calm down and go to sleep. When your body loses the ability to enter a restful state, you have to retrain it to bring the parasympathetic nervous system back online."  Whether massage can seduce the body into a parasympathetic state is unclear. On the one hand, there’s research like a 2009 study in the International Journal of Neuroscience, which examined the impact of massage on heart rate and concluded that moderate-pressure massage stimulated “a shift from sympathetic to parasympathetic activity.”7 A 2012 study in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine likewise showed that twice-weekly massage for five weeks increased neurotransmitters that stimulate parasympathetic activity, like oxytocin, and decreased neurotransmitters that inhibit it, like the stress hormone cortisol.8"

    18.  Reduce Headaches

     Neck pain, low circulation, constant stress, poor sleep patterns, and decreased flexibility and pliability all play a part in causing secondary symptoms such as headaches.  Addressing the underlying symptoms causing your headaches can eliminate the root cause and reduce or eliminates headaches that can be debilitating to your life.  

     18.  Improve Spinal Alignment

    Reducing muscle tension and constant poor posture can have a long term impact on your spinal alignment.  Improving spinal alignment can decrease short term feelings of pain, and long term chronic issues that can lead to more major issues such as back surgery.  While research on this is limited, anecdotally we have found our customers give incredible feedback on the impact massage chairs have on back and joint related pain.

    19.  Promote Feelings of Vitality 

    Stress is known to decrease vitality and diminish physicality. Lack of circulation, low energy, poor sleep cycles and impaired hormone response do not help.  A regular massage with a massage chair can impact many of the underlying issues that impact feelings of virility and physicality.  This has been a surprise benefit many of our customers have experienced owning a massage chair.  

    20.  Improve Energy Levels

      Energy levels are tied to nearly limitless behaviors that impact your day to day feeling of health and vitality.  A massage chair can serve as a foundation to improve your sense of health, wellbeing, energy and vitality.  A massage chair accomplishes this impact on your energy by impacting many underlying causes of stress, anxiety, sleep disruption, pain and joint pain, among many other problems.  We have found massage chairs to be incredibly effective at improving general feelings of energy and vitality.  

     

    21.  Improve Breathing Patterns

    Breathing exercises have been shown to be an effective method to reduce stress and anxiety.  Combining these breathing exercises with a massage chair can multiply the therapeutic effect of the exercise and improve of secondary stress related symptoms. 

    22.  Improve Oxygen Flow to the Extremities

    Utilizing zero gravity positions and stretching programs can dramatically improve circulation to your arms and legs.  Massage therapy has been shown to improve circulation to your extremities.  Stimulation of the rollers against your muscle tissues helps ease circulation and improve oxygen flow.  

    We have received incredible feedback from our consumers about the impact their massage chair has had on their life and wellness.  We encourage the purchase of a massage chair to assist with a wide range of symptoms.

    We always recommend consulting a physician for advice if you have any questions around your specific health situation.  We also recommend consulting a physician if you have preexisting back conditions before purchasing a massage chair. This blog should never substitute for the health advice of a medical professional and should considered only for the purposes of entertainment.

    We started Sleep Galleria to make it easy for anyone to experience exceptional sleep. All of our relaxation and sleep related products are designed to help you be your best self. Learn more at SLEEPGALLERIA.COM

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