THE MASSAGE: HISTORY, BENEFITS, INDICATIONS AND CONTRAINDICATIONS OF THE MASSAGE - MASSAGE-TECHNIQUES

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The massage

Edited by Dr. Giovanni Chetta

History of massage: the oldest and most natural treatment system

The word massage seems to derive from the Arabic "mass" or "mash" (rub, press) or from the Greek "masso" (knead, handle). The physical and psychological benefits of this practice have been recognized since ancient times, so much so that it can certainly be said that the medical art began precisely with massage.

In the "Kong Fou", a Chinese text of 2698 BC, physical exercises and various types of massage are described, the purpose of which was to achieve a perfect psycho-physical balance. In the eighteenth century BC, in the sacred text L "Ayur-Veda, Brahama recommended massage for hygienic purposes to his disciples. Even the medical literature of Egyptians, Persians and Japanese often contains references to the beneficial effects of massage.
Relying on limited knowledge of the functions of the body, the first doctors were nevertheless able to use massage effectively for the treatment of fatigue, illness and trauma. Hippocrates (406 BC) - Greek physician father of modern medicine - described "The" anatripsis ", literally" upward friction ", as a more effective practice than the same movement performed downward on the limbs, demonstrating that he has understood the mechanism of lymphatic and blood circulation later demonstrated by Harvey at the beginning of the 17th century century AD In his writings, Hippocrates confirmed the virtues of massage by dedicating important observations to the practice of massage therapy, which were also confirmed many centuries after his death.He wrote "doctors must be experts in many things, among them without doubt also massage" and, again, "The remedy is applicable to acute illnesses as well as to chronic ones and to various forms of weakness, since these treatments have a renewing and invigorator. It often seemed to me, while I was thus treating my patients, as if my hands had the singular property of extracting the waste products and the various impurities collected in the diseased parts ”. In Europe, for the entire duration of the Roman Empire, this practice was an important element for health care, so much so as to place the “massista” on the same level as the doctor, and there is much talk of it in the documents of that period.
While in the East the tradition of massage was carried on, in Western countries the cult of this practice was interrupted during the Middle Ages, when the "obscurantism led to despise and deny the needs of the body and the pleasures of the flesh, focusing exclusively on the spiritual sphere (creating thus a fracture in the individual); it was therefore necessary to wait until the Renaissance and the 16th century to see the return of massage in the therapeutic field (mainly in France and northern Europe).
In the twentieth century, the great advances made by conventional medicine initially overshadowed traditional therapies, which had been practiced for centuries, so that most of the Western population, dazzled by this, until a few decades ago, hardly knew the therapeutic value of human contact.
However, massage is currently experiencing a moment of vigorous rebirth, thanks to a strong need to return to “natural” values, especially as a reaction to the conditions of intense stress and drug abuse imposed by today's society.
Today, modern scientific research has definitively recognized massage as an effective therapy, defining its mechanisms of action, clinical indications and contraindications. Not only that, the increasingly numerous and recent discoveries on the importance of the extracellular matrix and connective system in the " entire physiology of the human body, are bringing those who are able to act deeply on them (with movement and / or massage techniques), to the ancient role of primary importance in the field of health.

Indications of the classic massage

Massage therapy - or therapeutic massage - has numerous applications in rehabilitation, sports, vascular, aesthetic medicine and in rheumatology, even if the global action of massage means, as previously mentioned, that its field of application is actually more vast than is normally imagined.

Contraindications and areas off limits to classic massage

The massage can involve, in the following cases, the accentuation of the symptoms:

recent trauma (it is necessary to wait for fabric repair),
acute inflammatory processes (of traumatic, infectious or allergic origin),
severe phlebopathies (phlebitis or thrombophlebitis),
heart failure with edema in the lower limbs (edema of a secondary nature),
evolving central nervous system (CNS) pathologies spastic (in reality, more correctly, this contraindication is to be referred only to certain manual skills, in particular to those that involve an increase in muscle tone),
severe necrosis (due to the danger of excess elimination of protein substances),
febrile processes (due to the danger of local temperature rise),
neoplasms (due to the supposed but not proven danger of lymphatic spread of metastases),
dermatitis or dermatosis (due to the danger of irritation, relating to dermatitis and pruritic dermatoses, and of contagion, relating to infectious dermatitis).

They usually define themselves areas forbidden to massage (as it could be annoying or harmful): all the bony prominences (malleoli, crest and tibial plateau, patella, greater trochanter of the femur, iliac crest, spinous process of the vertebrae, sacrum, sternum, clavicle, scapula, elbow-olecranon) and points of outcrop of vascular, nervous and lymphatic organs (popliteal cavity, inguinal cavity, axillary cavity, retro-claveolar cavity or fossa), sexual organs.
Semi-closed areas to massage, or to be massaged with particular caution, the following are considered: the antero-lateral face of the neck, the retro-auricular area, the tibial sulcus and the anterior area of the elbow.