How does massage work? Like if my calves are swollen and hurting from walking too much, why would pressing on the hurt part feel good or help with healing?
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Your muscle cells burn ATP (a chemical used to store energy) and a byproduct of that is lactic acid. It’s waste. Your blood and liver will filter it out eventually, but massaging moves stuff around and accelerates the process.
Getting rid of waste is generally a good thing.
Massage has a number of effects.
It causes a brief increase in blood supply to the area. A lot of repair happens while we sleep, but it isn’t on conplete pause until then.
As another commenter pointed out, it helps move cellular waste away from an area where it’s concentrated. The lymphatic fluid gets pumped where it needs to go by body movement (there’s no equivalent of the heart moving it around). The compression and decompression in massage helps with this.
Massage frees up things under the skin which are stuck to each other and which shouldn’t be. Fasica is like a thin fabric of connective tissue around organs, blood vessels, bone and muscle. Fsscia can get a little bit stuck to two things onstead of one, which reduces their capacity to move independently, which could increase pain after exercise. It’s probably better to free things up *before* the activity, but better late than never.
We also want nerves to move freely within their nerve sheaths and tense muscles can impinge them. Repeated mild compression and decompression of the muscle can help de-excite it, which can ease any pressure on nerves and can also help with general movement.
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