Benefits of Drinking Water Before and After a Session:
Keeping hydrated before and after a massage session is important for maintaining proper blood flow and healthy muscle tissue. Would you like to know why? This tissue contains tiny blood vessels (capillaries) that transfer oxygen and nutrients through our veins while releasing and filtering Lactic acid away from healthy tissue. To help you visualize, our muscles are like a fresh Tenderloin steak when healthy: supple and spongy.
When unhealthy, muscles are like a piece of dried out hard salami: tight and tough. This tissue doesn’t allow good blood flow and sluggish drainage restricts easy movement, causing stiffness. When this happens, we blame the most common conditions all of us are very familiar with: tension from stress, poor posture, injury and overuse. All of these factors lead to the development of a tight, tough, and gristly coating in the muscle and connective tissue. If this condition is not relieved, it can cause deep tissue massage to be painful. Not only does pain occur during the massage, but drainage is also affected and may lead to infection and illness. Other symptoms may also develop, such as high blood pressure, due to lack of circulation – like a kinked up hose restricting water flow.
So what does all of this have to do with drinking water before and after a massage?
Here is your answer: LaVida Massage therapists are professionally trained to find these tight “sick” muscle areas and use specific modalities and techniques to get blood flowing properly to the “sick” muscles again. As they work on relaxing your muscles, blood begins delivering oxygen and fluids to your muscle tissue. Any trace of water in your muscles is removed from your blood stream causing dehydration. While this is happening, your muscles release the built up Lactic acid into your blood stream. Some individuals may experience nausea or lightheadedness from these simultaneous impacts (dehydration and lactic acid release).
By drinking water regularly, before and after a therapeutic massage session, you:
- keep muscles properly hydrated
- help your body flush out Lactic acid which is released during the massage
- help your kidneys and other organs process substances through your body regularly
- keep your skin supple and youthful
- avoid nausea or lightheadedness associated with massage due to lack of hydration
- replenish your body’s water supply
How much is too much or not enough? Here is an easy equation you can use to estimate how much water you should drink daily based on your body weight:
Weight x 0.5 = Ounces per day – Example: 150lbs x 0.5 = 75oz
The point is this: drinking lots of water or not won’t really matter if it can’t be circulated through the cells in your body due to lack of blood flow. What does matter is obtaining and maintaining healthy muscle tissue. That is key! How do we do that: with frequent therapeutic massage from LaVida Massage professionally trained therapists. Massage can aid in stress reduction and pain, but drinking water in the process is crucial for maintaining healthy muscle tissue. So keep hydrated and drink water every day!