What’s the News: If you’ve ever been told been that a massage is good for “releasing toxinsâ€â€”or to sound more scientific, “lactic acidâ€â€”from your muscles, then you’ve been told wrong. Turns out muscle cells do like a good massage, but it has nothing to do with lactic acid.
In the first study on the cellular effects of massage post-exercise, researchers found that massage bolsters chemical signals reducing inflammation and promoting repair of muscle cells.
How the Heck:
Strenuous exercise actually tears your muscle fibers; that’s why an intense workout can leave you sore for days. (Don’t worry—it’s normal and it generally heals fine.) The researchers wanted to study how massage affects this muscle damage, so they made 11 healthy young men cycle to the point of exhaustion.
Then, finally, relief! Sort of. One leg on each man was randomly chosen for a 10-minute massage. Unfortunately more pain was then in store for these volunteers. A tissue sample was taken from the quadriceps muscle (often known simply as “quadâ€) of each leg 10 minutes and 2.5 hours after the massage.
Researchers looked at the level of different mRNA, or messenger RNA, transcripts in these tissue samples. mRNA carries the …
from Discover Magazine