Being sidelined is never positive, whether you’re a semi-pro, a weekend warrior, or a paid, professional athlete. Anyone with a passion for sports understands the sheer importance of recovery—and just how important it is for your body to be in peak physical condition to perform well. While it is a part of training to experience stress and fatigue, it’s also crucial to care for your body to really improve in your passion.
Are you wondering how best to reduce inflammation? While it is common to head to a doctor, many medical professionals often find that drugs are the best way to manage inflammation and pain. This, however, is synthetic and anything but positive—which could ultimately not be good for your body!
Reflexology
On the other hand, reflexology is a natural choice that is incredibly helpful. Each of the body’s primary systems, from circulatory and lymphatic, to muscular and respiratory, are balanced out and relaxed. By applying pressure on certain key points, a reflexologist will be able to target individual nerve centers that correspond to a specific gland, joint, muscle, or organ—which then alleviate pain and improve circulation!
This helps give your physical health and overall well-being a positive effect. To truly understand how it works, here are some positive effects that reflexology provides:
Deep Relaxation
By default, the body needs eight hours of sleep per night. Even when your eyes are open, you need to impose some downtime to keep sane!
People who don’t spend enough time to rest and relax often wind up complaining about increased anxiety, stress, and tension. All of those side effects are unfortunate harbingers of burnout and injury!
As reflexology stimulates the nerves along one’s feet, it helps the body’s circulatory system to be triggered. This allows for the enhancement of nutrients flowing through your system, and refreshing tissues as well! Secondary effects include the likes of decreased cortisol (the stress hormone) and reduced blood pressure, alongside sleep being improved through an increase in serotonin.
Increased Blood Circulation
When the flow of blood throughout your whole body improves, your body’s natural healing ability does too. An increase in your blood flow equates to higher levels of enzymes, hormones, minerals, nutrients, and oxygen circulating in your body, which boosts your immune system. That fosters what is essentially one of the best ways of recovery for runners and athletes.
Lymphatic Draining
As strenuous routines and heavy workouts occur, your body ends up producing waste that needs to be removed from the muscles in order for healing to happen. The natural effect of your lymphatic system is enhanced by reflexology, forcing your system to break up any blockages and move the waste material outwards to your lymph nodes, where they will be destroyed. The sooner waste is eliminated, the sooner your system can fully focus on recovery.
Conclusion
Injuries are a natural part of an athlete’s journey, and so is feeling a particularly stressful workout’s effects. It is very important to reduce pain in a timely manner, which reflexology can help you achieve naturally. Reach out to a health specialist so that you can experience the benefits of reflexology today!
Are you looking for more advice on how to improve your overall health? My name is Meg Parker, and I’m an intentional health and wellness coach. I’m ready to help you improve your life by supplying you with my knowledge and skills to get you to a healthier you. Reach out to me today to learn how I can help you!
