Elements Therapeutic Massage - West Linn

Client Reviews Updated Every Day

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 11:08:00 -0600

You can now see all of our client reviews! To read the reviews from real Elements Therapeutic Massage West Linn clients, please click on the Customer reviews by Systino button below:

The reviews are updated every day so feel free to visit often!

Trouble Sleeping? Try a Massage

Mon, 23 May 2011 14:37:00 -0500

Can’t Sleep? Serotonin and Massage May be the Answer

Do you struggle for hours to get to sleep, no matter how tired you are? Or do you wake up in the middle of the night and lay awake for hours, watching the clock and worrying about the next day? If so, you’re not alone. Insomnia is a very common sleep problem with more than 30% of the adults in the U.S. suffering from it; and 10% experiencing chronic insomnia (National Sleep Foundation).

Insomnia comes from the Latin words for “no sleep”. It is characterized by difficulty falling asleep, difficultly staying asleep, waking up too early and poor quality, “non-restorative” sleep. Chronic insomnia is poor sleep every night or most nights for more than 6 months.

Insomnia takes a huge toll on your energy, mood, and ability to function during the day. Chronic insomnia can even contribute to long-term health problems, such as heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure.

But you don’t have to put up with insomnia. There are a wide variety of methods recommended for treating insomnia. Many of them involve simple life-style and daily habit changes such as not watching TV in bed, avoiding excessive alcohol and caffeine in the evenings and developing a relaxing bedtime routine. Others involve a variety of medications – some over the counter; others prescriptive. But, now there are also complementary alternative medical (CAM) choices, one of which is therapeutic massage.

Serotonin plays a key role in mood, body temperature, physical coordination, appetite and sleep; and therapeutic massage can work to increase serotonin levels. A 2000 study on back pain and massage conducted by the Touch Research institute and the University Of Miami School Of Medicine demonstrated that in addition to a decrease in long-term pain, subjects receiving regular therapeutic massage also experienced an increase in serotonin levels and improved sleep*.

Therapeutic massage is a healthy and substance-free way to increase serotonin levels for the sleep deprived. Additionally, serotonin is a natural way to produce melatonin, which causes a drop in body temperature and positively influences sleepiness.

If you’re one of the 1,000’s of Americans suffering from lack of sleep, simple changes to your lifestyle and daily habits can always help. But you should also consider massage, as regular therapeutic massage sessions may prove to be the healthy, logical, safe and inexpensive way to put a stop to your sleepless nights.

Detoxing?

Mon, 16 May 2011 14:32:00 -0500

Need to Detox? Massage Can Help

Not feeling your best and not sure why? Might be time to detox.

You don’t have to go on a detox diet or drink special smoothies to detox. Start with a massage to kick-start your body’s own natural cleansing processes, which can slow down for a variety of reasons — lack of regular exercise, too little fluids or fiber in the diet … If you haven’t been taking the best care of yourself, a detoxifying massage can help set things right again.

How does massage help the body detox, exactly?

The rhythmic strokes and pressure applied to muscles, tissues and organs during massage therapy help stimulate the circulatory system. It works sort of like a sponge: When pressure is applied to the tissue and fat, toxins are literally “squeezed” out from in between the muscle fibers and cells. They’re released into the circulatory system for easier elimination.

The lymph system is key

Your lymphatic fluid system works with your cardiovascular circulatory system to flush out toxins and carry immune cells throughout the body to help defend against infections. If your lymph fluid circulation gets sluggish, toxins can accumulate and immune cells may not get carried to the areas of the body where they’re needed.

Since the lymph system doesn’t have a big central pump like the heart to keep things moving, it has to rely on gravity, exercise, breathing … and massage. So if you haven’t been as good as you should about your exercise, diet and “me time” routine (it happens to the best of us!), that can affect how you feel, causing aches, pains and swelling (lymph edema). It can also cause deterioration in organs and glands like the thymus that are vital players in your immune system.

It’s easy to see why detoxification is important to avoiding illness and chronic health conditions. So if you’re not feeling your best or haven’t been as good about your diet and exercise routine lately, try a massage to get back on track. Remember to drink a glass or two of pure water after massage to help the body flush out toxins more rapidly.

Money & Massage

Mon, 09 May 2011 16:23:00 -0500

Can Massage Therapy Save You Money on Healthcare?

You might think of a massage as a luxury. But can massage therapy actually pay for itself by reducing your medical bills?

There’s growing evidence that massage is a beneficial complement to medical treatments for certain chronic health conditions. Significant research is ongoing in this area, notes the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). While experts emphasize that the medical benefits of massage need more study, some research has shown evidence that massage therapy is effective in treating chronic health conditions that lead to billions of dollars in healthcare costs a year in America.

Ranging from back pain, migraines and fibromyalgia to anxiety and depression, chronic health conditions are costing Americans dearly in out-of-pocket medical expenses to seek relief at doctor’s offices, pharmacies and operating rooms. These are the types of conditions that massage can help with the most.

According to NCCAM, a 2008 review of 13 clinical trials found evidence that massage may help relieve chronic low-back pain.
The Mayo Clinic notes that some studies have found evidence that massage therapy is beneficial for anxiety and noted that ongoing sessions of massage therapy can reduce "trait anxiety" (general anxiety-proneness) — as well as improve symptoms of depression.
According to The Mayo Clinic, some research has shown that massage decreases chronic pain in people suffering with fibromyalgia or migraines.

Massage is even being used to help make cancer treatment less traumatic and debilitating. Massage therapy has been shown to bring a 50 percent improvement in symptoms including anxiety, pain and fatigue among patients being treated for cancer, according to the Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. And a study of more than 300 advanced-stage cancer patients in multiple hospice facilities found that massage may help relieve pain and boost mood for cancer patients.

Increase the benefits with regular massage treatments

Regular ongoing massage treatments can play a huge part in how healthy you’ll be and how youthful you’ll remain with each passing year, notes the Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals group. Getting a massage at consistent intervals is an investment in your health, and just because massage feels like pampering doesn’t make it any less therapeutic.

Think of massage appointments as one of your ongoing health and wellness habits that you do to prevent the costs, stress, pain, discomfort and upheaval associated with illness and disease.

More massage! Better health!

BENEFITS OF MASSAGE IMPROVE WITH FREQUENCY

Mon, 03 May 2010 09:44:00 -0500

ABMP autumn/winter 2009

BENEFITS OF MASSAGE IMPROVE WITH FREQUENCY

By Karrie Osborn

hat kind of massage client are you? Do you make an appointment after someone has given you a massage gift certiﬁcate? Do you try to get in every now and then for a stress-relieving tune-up? Or do you see your therapist religiously—once a week, every three weeks, once a month?

While getting a massage—regardless of how often—is incredibly beneﬁ cial to your mind and body, getting frequent massage treatments is even more powerful as a healthcare ally.

“Practicing massage therapists know that people who get massage regularly demonstrate greater improvement and notice a reduction in pain and muscular tension, as well as an improvement in posture,” says Anne Williams, author of Spa Bodywork: A Guide for Massage Therapists (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2006) and education program director at Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals.

“People regularly make a commitment to ﬁ tness. People regularly make a commitment to changing their diet. The difference they’d experience if they regularly made a commitment to massage is mind-blowing,” Williams says.

STRESS KILLER

One way in which frequent massage can improve our quality of life is by alleviating stress. Experts say more than 90 percent of disease is stress- related, and nothing ages us faster—inside or out—than the effects of stress. As stress-related diseases continue to claim more lives every year, the increasingly deadly role stress plays in modern-day life is painfully clear.

Massage is a great way to take charge and reverse the situation. Mary Beth Braun and Stephanie Simonson, authors of Introduction to Massage Therapy (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2007), explain the beneﬁ ts of massage therapy in the simplest of terms: “Healing input inﬂ uences healing output.” They note that frequent massage can reduce the accumulation of stress and improve overall health. “The beneﬁ ts of massage are cumulative,” they write.

This being the case, it only makes sense that those aches and pains you see your massage therapist for might disappear faster, stay away longer, or even go away altogether with more frequent visits. Stress might never reach those physiologically detrimental levels where the immune system is suppressed or the nervous system is sent into an alarm state if you are able to receive stress-relieving bodywork with some consistency. Not only would your body beneﬁ t by regularly unleashing its aches and pains instead of adapting to them, but your mind would have time to wash away the stresses of a life lived in overdrive. Both are critical pieces for living well.

Massage Can

Alleviate low-back pain and increase range of motion.
Create body self-awareness.
Improve muscle tone and stimulate their nerve supply.
Improve elasticity of skin and promote skin rejuvenation.
Improve sleep and calm the mind.
Increase endorphin and seratonin production.
Reduce edema, as well as joint inﬂammation.
Release negative holding patterns from previous injuries.
Stimulate lymph circulation and enhance immunity.

PREVENTIVE MEASURES

In so many ways, massage is preventive healthcare. Yes, it can address injuries, scar tissue, and chronic pain, as well as provide relief for cancer patients and reduce hospitalization time for babies born prematurely, among so many other valuable beneﬁ ts (go to MassageTherapy.com for more information on the myriad beneﬁ ts of massage). But when the healthy, and trying-tobe-healthy, among us seek out massage on a regular basis, it helps us live a proactively healthier life.

Quite simply, frequent massage puts you more in tune with your body.

stimulus enhances the nervous system’s sensory and spatial processing capacity,” he says. “That is, the person becomes more aware of their body’s movement in space and becomes more aware of tightness or pain long before it reaches a critical point of mechanical dysfunction.”

Quite simply, frequent massage puts you more in tune with your body. “The consistency of massage therapy over time creates a cumulative stress reduction effect,” Vaughn says. “The person becomes acutely aware of stress within their body long before it can create stress-driven damage.”

He says the consistency of receiving regular massage therapy has the potential to create the cumulative effect of feeling well and feeling better. “Ultimately

Since bodywork inﬂ uences every system in the body, there are enormous possibilities created by increasing the frequency in which you address those systems. It’s best to discuss your session goals with your massage therapist and together devise a plan of frequency that meets your needs, while taking into account your therapist’s best advice.

BODY AWARENESS

According to Benny Vaughn, sports massage expert and owner of Athletic Therapy Center in Fort Worth, Texas, one of the beneﬁ ts of consistent and regular massage therapy is better ﬂ exibility. “This happens because regular and when one feels good, our whole being follows suit on all other levels—i.e., decision-making is better, processing life events is better, and being happy is easier when you are not in pain or feeling ‘heavy’ or ‘tight.’”

Williams says she’s certain people’s lives would be changed if they could schedule massage and bodywork more frequently. “I encourage clients to commit to getting massage once a week for a month and then evaluate the results they get,” she says. “I guarantee they will become massage enthusiasts for life.” B

Karrie Osborn is contributing editor for Body Sense. Contact her at karrie@abmp.com.

Sleeping with the Enemy? (Hint: It's Stress)

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 13:46:00 -0500

Sleeping with the Enemy? (Hint: It's Stress)

Lying awake at night? Can’t stop your mind from worrying about what happened yesterday and what will happen tomorrow? It’s not healthy — and that’s not just a saying.

Stress and the way you react to it may be affecting your health, even though it may not be apparent to you. You may think that persistent headache or inability to focus is caused by a physical illness, but the culprit may actually be excessive ongoing stress in your life. And it can lead to serious health problems.

According to the National Institutes of Health, stress is at the root of 80 percent or more of all illness and doctor visits in the U.S.. Here's how stress increasesyour risk of serious disease, your healthcare cost and your productivity.

Health effects of stress

The health effects of stress identified by The Mayo Clinic can range from relatively minor symptoms and conditions including …

Headache
Back pain
Upset stomach
Sleep problems
Irritability
Lack of focus
Forgetfulness
Overeating

… to more acute and critical health conditions including …

Chest pain
Heart disease
High blood pressure
Depression
Decreased immunity

What can you do to reduce stress?

First, recognize that you can’t prevent stress. It’s part of everyday life — and some level of stress is actually good for you. It’s how you react to stress, as well as a lifestyle that brings a frequently elevated levels of stress into your life, that can get you and your state of health into trouble.

Health experts agree that making lifestyle changes to help you identify your stress triggers and, most importantly, better manage your reactions to stress, can bring numerous health benefits.

Stress management techniques recommended by medical experts include massage as well as exercise, guided relaxation and breathing techniques, meditation, yoga and tai chi. (please spell check)

How massage can help you manage stress

The Mayo Clinic notes that studies have found massage helpful for stress relief and for managing anxiety and depression, as well as boosting immunity. Massage has been shown to help regulate hormones including norepinephrine, cortisol and serotonin — naturally occurring chemicals in the body that are associated with stress, relaxation and mood.

Beyond the physical effects of tactile manipulation of the muscles, tissues, joints and organs, the stress-relief and health benefits of massage also come from the caring and comfort of physical touch.

These benefits of regular massage can help you cope with stress when it’s occurring — and also develop a stronger everyday resilience to the stresses life will inevitably bring.

Stressed to the max? We can help. Our team of massage therapy professionals is trained to help you identify your stress “storage” points and release the tension physically — so you can let it go more easily and feel calm, cool and in control of whatever comes at you. Life brings it on. We get it out.

Be sure to check with your doctor if you’re experiencing chronic stress. Your symptoms could be associated with a serious health condition.

Can massage therapy save you money on healthcare?

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:19:00 -0600

You might think of a massage as a luxury. But can massage therapy actually pay for itself by reducing your medical bills?

There's growing evidence that massage is a beneficial complement to medical treatments for certain chronic health conditions. Significant research is ongoing in this area, notes the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). While experts emphasize that the medical benefits of massage need more study, some research has shown evidence that massage therapy is effective in treating chronic health conditions that lead to billions of dollars in healthcare costs a year in America.

Ranging from back pain, migraines and fibromyalgia to anxiety and depression, chronic health conditions are costing Americans dearly in out-of-pocket medical expenses to seek relief at doctor's offices, pharmacies and operating rooms. These are the types of conditions that massage can help with the most.

According to NCCAM, a 2008 review of 13 clinical trials found evidence that massage may help relieve chronic low-back pain.
The Mayo Clinic notes that some studies have found evidence that massage therapy is beneficial for anxiety and noted that ongoing sessions of massage therapy can reduce "trait anxiety" (general anxiety-proneness) - as well as improve symptoms of depression.

According to The Mayo Clinic, some research has shown that massage decreases chronic pain in people suffering with fibromyalgia or migraines.

Increase the benefits with regular massage treatments

Regular ongoing massage treatments can play a huge part in how healthy you'll be and how youthful you'll remain with each passing year, notes the Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals group. Getting a massage at consistent intervals is an investment in your health, and just because massage feels like pampering doesn't make it any less therapeutic.

Think of massage appointments as one of your ongoing health and wellness habits that you do to prevent the costs, stress, pain, discomfort and upheaval associated with illness and disease.

more massage! better health!

At Elements Therapeutic Massage, we'll work with you and your practitioner to create a plan for regular, ongoing massage therapy sessions that can keep you healthy while working with your schedule and lifestyle, your health concerns and your priorities. Call or come in today and let's talk about how you can get more massage and well-being in your life. Contact us today