Can I Just Say Deep Tissue Massages Suck

Before all you amazing massage therapists wade in, lotion guns at the ready, to take me down, hear me out.

I love massages. Who doesn’t? Well, some people on the Spectrum for whom it’s too much stimulation, and my sister, who bruises if you give her a hard stare.

I’ve had all kinds of massages in many places. Okay, calm down, you know what kind of places I mean.

I’ve had massages in Santa Fe, Fort Worth, Cancun, Sedona, Atlanta, Mexico and more. My family invented chronic muscle pain, or just caused it in me. And my jobs/careers have been stressful.

I was also a martial artist for 20 years starting at age 35. Deep tissue felt necessary to “penetrate” the muscles I developed.

Granted, once I leapt off a massage table when the sports’ masseuse dug her thumb into a place in my behind where a gamma globulin shot when I was a kid left a hole. Muscle eaten away. Just tissue and bone. OUCH.

Since that incident, there’s a tattoo designating that hole, and I warn all masseuses to stay away from the bear claws in the yin/yang circle. So far that’s working.

They say, deep tissue massage is designed to encourage your muscles to release stored toxins. I’m all for that, if it’s true. I just didn’t think through what all that meant to an old(er) woman, who within six months had been through the stress of breast cancer surgery and a move to another state three months later. Yes, they got all the cancer, and the move was three months ago, but OMG I forgot what owning an older home in the early days was like. Never. Ending. Stress.

Then, let’s pile on the ongoing, persistent, unavoidable — even if I wanted to, which I don’t — stress of the news of the current administration working to destroy our country and life as we know it. And did I mention I’m a psychotherapist? How much stress and possible resulting toxins can my body hold, after all?

Apparently, a lot.

I’m aware of all the ways to prepare for a deep tissue massage, and about self-care after. Drink before and after — although doing it before interrupts the massage when I have to get off the table and go pee. Soak in Epsom salts, stretch, and rest.

Only this time, I didn’t get a chance to do the after care. Except for the rest part. I came home, drank some water, ordered food, and had absolutely no desire for the food. I was even repulsed by the smell.

I was also exhausted, so I took a two hour nap, then got up, fed the kitties, and went to bed. That was my routine for the next two days, in between seeing some of my clients online. I couldn’t do more than two a day. Two hour naps at a time, then bed at 8:30.

The minute my head went down, I was asleep and into REM. I haven’t done that since I was breastfeeding my newborn 30 years ago.

The cats were thrilled that mom was sleeping as much as they do. We made a huddle most of the day on the couch, then in bed at night. They were NOT thrilled that I didn’t follow their feeding schedules to the minute, or play at all.

Being something of a hypochondriac, my immediate thoughts went to Hantavirus. Yeah, I know, but I do live in Santa Fe now.

Then I wondered if it was my second case of COVID, even though I’m vaccinated. When Dr. Internet brought up symptoms for those viruses, they didn’t fit, so I decided to check out aftereffects of deep tissue massage.

Scouring the internet brought up many articles about how you can have flu-like symptoms after deep tissue massage.

Sore muscles (The most obvious, and the one I did not have until 3 days later)
low-grade fever (Who knew? But yes, I checked that box)
Nausea (Yep. I couldn’t even stand to smell food)
Fatigue (If you call sleeping 18 hours out of 24 fatigue, then yeah)
They didn’t mention diarrhea, but let me tell you, “getting rid of toxins” meant, in my case, diarrhea. I had one massive “accident” at a time I didn’t physically feel like dealing with the cleanup

I definitely did feel like I had the flu. I now feel exactly like I have in the past when recovering from the flu. Which sucks.

That’s why I say, for me, deep tissue massage now sucks.

And I’m not the only one.

“People routinely suffer from varying degrees of soreness and malaise following firmer massage therapy, a phenomenon known as post-massage soreness & malaise, or PMSM.23 The worst cases feel like a full-blown flu, except it doesn’t last nearly as long. Severe PMSM is really unpleasant, even serious, and so it’s probably safe to assume that something goes wrong, a significant and poorly understood side effect of massage.

“Fortunately, we do know that good massage is intrinsically satisfying as a sensory experience, and that is probably a good enough reason to put up with some side effects. However, I am also sure that I don’t want to dial up the PMSM and embrace it either. It can mostly be avoided with gentler treatment, and probably should be.”— Paul Ingraham, a science writer in Vancouver, Canada. A Registered Massage Therapist for a decade and the assistant editor of ScienceBasedMedicine.org for several years.

Paul goes on in the linked article to theorize that rather than releasing trapped toxins, deep tissue massage may be causing the pressured muscles to create toxins, which then need to be released from the body. Sometimes this release is difficult, and sometimes it’s possibly dangerous. I don’t have his expertise, and you’ll need to read his article for his theory.

What I can tell you, is that I did not feel sick before the massage, have never previously felt sick after a massage, and have trouble believing that someone who lives as I do has this level of toxicity in my body needing to be released.

If anything, the stress of enduring the pain of deep tissue massage increased my overall stress.

So, will I keep getting massages?

The simple answer is yes. But never again a deep tissue one. A nice relaxing massage, with music and a warm table, and a nice, quiet massage therapist is one of my ideas of heaven.

Does a relaxing massage help with my stress level? Yes. Does a deep pressure massage increase my stress? Again, for me, yes.

How about you?

. . .

Click on https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4145795/ for more information on the benefits and dangers of massage.

In all fairness, the deep tissue massage did reduce edema in my left ankle significantly.

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This post was previously published on New Choices.

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