How Does Massage Affect Your Brain? What Research Shows
Massage therapy affects more than muscles. Touch and pressure send sensory information to the nervous system and can influence brain activity, autonomic regulation, and stress-related physiology. Research suggests massage may promote relaxation and alter measures such as cortisol, while newer neuroimaging research is beginning to clarify how massage interacts with the brain.
The existing AMC article is extremely short and makes the potentially misleading leap from changes measured in saliva or urine to “brain chemistry.” The replacement below corrects that distinction while adding current neuroscience evidence.