Barb is an administrative staff, hard working on a stressful job, over 8 hours a day in front of computers for the past 15 years. She came to massage to relive her stress in her neck and shoulder, and her last massage was 4-5 years ago.

She had her massage, and she liked it.

“I should come a long time ago”

She said it is very comfortable and she really like it.

But a week later I got a call from her,

“I felt terrible the next day after the massage,
it was like beaten up by someone for the next three to four days.
But after that, I felt much better. “

When I asked her about the detail of the pain, it is like the pain after exercise too much.

Why does this happen?

Here is my answer to:

Why does it hurt after massage

Some masseuse are not trained, and they could use too much pressure on patients, causing bruises under the tissues. This is not the case I am talking about.

Assuming all massage therapist are well trained, they will not use excessive pressure on someone who is not able to take it. Therefore there shouldn’t be damage to tissues after treatment.

Why does it hurt?

Well, we need to take the entire treatment to the basic of Anatomy & Physiology of muscles, blood vessels, and other tissues.

Regular muscle tissues have arteries and veins run between muscle fibres. The arteries will bring nutrients and oxygen into the muscle tisues, muscle tissues use the nutrients and oxygen to work, and produce metabolic waste, such as lactic acid, cabonic acid, and veins take the waste away from the muscle tissues.

When a person who had undergone a long period of stress, especially the ones with very stressful work / life / school, and never had massage for at least 6 months, their muscles may be very tight, pinching on the arteries and veins. This causes a lot of metabolic waste build up. You probably know lactic acid is a by-product of lack of oxygen. when the arteries are not able to bring more oxygen to the tissues, lactic acid build up goes up in the muscle tissues; when the veins are blocked, these garbage can’t get out, potentially causing muscle soreness.

This person chose to do a very nice massage; the therapist not only release the tension of the muscle tissues, but also squeeze the garbage out of the muscle tissues.

Arteries will be able to bring more nutrients and oxygen to tissues — a good thing

But the vein can’t keep up on the sudden excessive amount of metabolic waste in the blood stream.

The accumulation of lactic acid and suddenly released into blood stream is very similar to the exercise pain. When you exercise in an anerobic exercise, you will create a lot of lactic acid, which could turn out to be very painful in the next few days. This is the same type of pain these patients experienced.

How to prevent it?

You can easily prevent it by take warm shower and drink a lot of warm water, to allow the blood circulation to take the metabolic waste out of your body.

Why warm? Warm water will dialate blood vessels and allow the blood flow easier.

If you have pain after your massage, it is best to ask your therapist right away.