Massage for Sinus Relief

Massage has been around for centuries. I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t feel better after a massage, whether it is just the feet, the neck or of the full body.

Many studies have been done of the massage given to professional athletes who must continue to achieve top performance. It is hard to win the game if the muscles are painful.

New technology has recently been applied to determine exactly what kneading does on a physical, objective basis. Dr Mark Tarnopolsky of McMasters University in Ontario, Canada, examined muscle tissue, after strenuous exercise in human volunteers. He compared muscles that had been massaged and those that had not.
In the exercised muscle he found an inflammatory protein called NF-kB. In the massaged muscle this and other inflammatory products were reduced; factors such as pro-inflammatory cytokines and interlueken 6 were among the reduced factors.

He also found a product called PCG-1 Alpha that stimulates mitochondria to produce good factors of healing and function. This product was increased with massage and was deficient in muscles without massage.

These factors are independent of any effect from reducing edema and lactic acid. The objective evidence is that massage reduces the factors of inflammation, and increases the factors of healing. The added benefit of massage is relaxing the body, reducing stress chemicals.

This study. that appears in Science Transitional Medicine helps explain why irrigating the nose and sinuses with a massaging solution–a pulsing wave –has helped so many sinus sufferers who were not relieved by other means. With pulsatile irrigation there is a massaging effect, similar to what is given to muscles by massage. Reducing the inflammatory products and increasing the healing products would explain the effectiveness of pulsatile irrigation for sinus problems. Imagine waves of water pulsing the muscles as in a Jacuzzi. That is the effect in the nose when it is irrigated by thewaves of a pulsing stream.

For example the Hydro Pulse® Nasal/Sinus irrigator has a massaging wave, that is designed to restore nasal cilia. The cilia may be very slow or even inactive before the irrigation. Patients usually remark after the irrigation that the nose feels so much better, their airway is opened up. Based on the above studies, the massage of the pulsing wave reduces the inflammatory factors so that the swollen nasal tissue shrinks and opens the airway. Whether these nasal factors are exactly the same chemicals as in the muscle, or somewhat changed, it is reasonable that the success of the Hydro Pulse® has as much to do with reducing inflammatory products and increasing healing factors as it does to do with removing bacteria, allergens, biofilm and unwanted thick mucus from the nose and sinuses.

This research of the inflammatory factors aided by massage explains why after pot and squeeze bottle sinus therapy fails, pulse wave massage therapy is successful; inflammation in the nose is reduced and healing products are increased.

After a nasal irrigation with the Hydro Pulse®, because the nose opens up and feels much better, you get relief that reduces any feelings of stress. This stress reduction encourages better healing too.