Diabetes & Massage

Series Summary

Massage therapy is a practice with a multiplicity of benefits. Whether it’s a quick rubdown or a full-body treatment, the human touch has practical applications for promoting both physical and emotional well-being. The basic idea behind massage is the use of motion, pressure, tension and vibration on certain areas of the body, localized around muscles or joints in pain or under stress. This allows a release of tension and a return to a homeostatic condition. Therefore, massage is very important for general stress relief, pain management, muscle injury prevention, and it encourages physical and emotional healing and improves circulation. In this free video series on massage techniques, massage therapist Sundae Thomas demonstrates several massage techniques for alleviating stress and tension throughout the body. Thomas begins by discussing how massage can help treat people with diabetes, headaches and sore neck muscles. She explains how to make massage oils, set up a massage business, restore a massage table, decorate a massage room and massage various muscles throughout the body. Watch these free videos and learn more about massage techniques today.

Video Transcript

"Have you ever wondered how you can incorporate massage into a diabetic lifestyle? I'm Sundae with Natural Sundae and I'm here to give you a few tips. Now diabetes is a disease that affects the carbohydrate metabolism in your body. And this is a result of not having enough insulin in your body. An insulin is the hormone that converts the food you eat into energy for yourself. And this means that within the food you eat, there are sugar. And if there is not enough insulin to carry it to yourself, yourself starves. There are many long term complications associated with diabetes, such as damage to the cells in your eyes, your heart, your kidneys, your blood vessels and your nervous system as well as the connective tissue that surround your muscles. Now massage can be a wonderful therapy for diabetics because it cannot only bring you emotional comfort, but physical comfort as well. Now massage is wonderful because it helps you relax and with a disease like diabetes that requires constant monitoring, relaxation can be a real gift. It can help calm and soothe your nervous system and it's just a wonderful thing for diabetics to experience. It can also help bring physical comfort as well because that connective tissue that becomes hard, you can retain some elasticity and retain some mobility and it's just a wonderful physical feeling. Now I would recommend one thing is to please consult your doctor first. And when you get to your massage therapist's office, check your blood sugar before and after because during your massage your blood sugar will drop; but you want to make sure before you leave, your blood sugar's at a safe, stabilize level. I'm Sundae with naturalsundae.com."