Reduce Stress and Anxiety Symptoms With a Massage Chair

What is stress? Stress is our response from a stimulus in the environment. Your body uses stress as a way of preparing the body for action. When you react to stress your body kicks into a higher state of alert. Everybody reacts differently depending on the type of stimulus, but the symptoms of stress are fairly consistent across individuals. Most common are aches, stiffness and pain in the back and shoulder areas. Massage chairs provide various massage treatments to reduce the tightness, soreness and discomfort.

One of the challenges of modern times is our brains can run away with situations causing our bodies to alter physically to deal with the stress. The stress is these situations is held in the body and no release is given to the stored up energy. We may waffle over situations and not find immediate solutions to working these out. Meanwhile the body is getting tied up in knots.

One major area causing stress and anxiety stems from our relationships. The trials and tribulations of getting along with others sets off many physiological issues. Sometimes we put ourselves into bad situations and sometimes others put us in them. Either way we perceive these situations as difficult which causes an increase in stress and anxiety.

How do our bodies react physically to stress? Our body goes into self-protect mode and releases hormones like adrenalin and glucocorticoids. The effects of these hormones is increasing heart rate, blood flow and energy. When the body releases these hormones it is assuming the fight or flight reaction. In these situations, your body needs increased energy to fight or run. Modern day stress is less about fighting or running as it is about our mind ruminating over a current issue.

There are also psychological effects produced by stress and anxiety. Some psychological effects are immune system suppression. With your immune system suppressed, you become more susceptible to getting sick or becoming infected. It has also been linked to erectile dysfunction or ED in men and can also disrupt the menstrual cycle in women. In situations where stress is chronic, this can impact the brain and impair normal learning, memory and judgment. It is obvious, certain functions of the body do not work well under stress.

Physically you may feel the effects of stress and anxiety with tight muscles and other aches and pains. Stress points tend to concentrate in the back, neck and shoulders. These areas become very tight as the muscles are held in a stressed position. As the muscles are flexed over long periods of time they become tight and fatigued.

Massage chairs are very effective to help relieve the symptoms of stress and anxiety. A massage chair is equipped with many massage techniques that perform different modes of massage. Some are designed for deeper tissue relief, where others are for invigoration and others are for soothing. The back, neck and shoulders can be targeted for focused relief at the touch of a button.

The flexibility of your muscles need to be restored when you are under stress or suffering from anxiety. The muscles are tight from the stress. They need to be soothed and stretched. The stretching can sometimes become painful, if the muscles have been taut for a long time. As flexibility is restored, then the discomfort goes away and the fatigue ends.

When you feel that you are coming under stress, take a seat in a massage chair and let it relax your body and mind. You need to have a place where you can relax and let go of your troubles. We are faced with unprecedented changes in the economy. We need a convenient method of relieving stress and anxiety and massage chairs provide us that option.

Stress and anxiety seem to be with us in the modern age. Our challenge is to find a consistent means to release the effects of stress and anxiety. Massage chairs provide the most convenient method of relief as it builds up. Periodic relief from massage chairs help to balance out the incoming source of stress with an outlet for the stress.

Social Anxiety Disorder Symptoms

Anxiety disorder is a recent entrant in medical analogy not because it is new, but because earlier it was confused with agoraphobia or fear of market place (derived from the Greek language). Those suffering from agoraphobia would do anything to avoid being in a crowd.

On the other hand, when you suffer from SAD you lead a normal life on the surface, though you would experience extreme anxiety symptoms every time you would interact with people. Somehow, though you normally tend to brave it out, people would make you nervous and restless.

This condition came into public recognition only in the 1970s when the teen American Idol, Donny Osmond talked about his insecurity when in front of a crowd. He had mentioned then that he felt everyone was judging him, therefore it made him anxious and uncomfortable when he was surrounded by a large crowd. Some of the symptoms you would expect with SAD are:

1. Loss of control - everything is about control with all the anxiety disorders. Here too, you would feel that you are likely to loose control in public, which for you would be catastrophic.

2. Fear of interacting with people - you feel safe as long as people stay where they are and leave you alone. Whenever somebody tried to befriend you, talk with you, and interact with you at any level you would feel the anxiety rise.

3. Fear of being judged - you would never enter a crowded party place because you would not be able to bear so many eyes on you when you make your entry. You would be horrified to think that all these people would be scanning and judging you from head to toe.

4. Fear of being ridiculed - you would rather not speak, sing, dance, play or whatever it is there that you have to do - because you fear you would make a mistake and people would laugh at you. The thought of being ridiculed would make you cringe; therefore, you would avoid everything that would give the slightest chance for you to fail in front of any crowd.

5. Fear of being in crowded places - every time you find yourself surrounded by a sea of people, you find yourself vulnerable. What if somebody from this crowd watches you intently and find out your flaws (whatever you think these are)? What if somebody out there in the crowd is laughing at you? What if somebody out there is judging you? You have no cover, no way to protect yourself, no defense.

Fortunately, among all the anxiety disorders this is the least harmful and the easiest to treat. Often a few sessions of therapy would be able to help you lead a normal life. The key to finding the right treatment is to get to the root of the cause of SAD in your case. This is most often than not investigated and treated successfully with the help of hypnosis, counseling and mediation.