Well, I slept off the chocolate brownie diabetic haze and I am ready to blog. The title isn’t that catchy. Just plain old “blog” but for now it works. My favourite blog title of all time has to be “Bob Loblaw’s Blog” (say it 3x fast and you’ll see what I mean).
Anyway, I’m seeing a few athletes today so, let’s start with something really simple and enjoyable to do, but has big benefits. Epsom salts. It’s not really salt, and no you can’t just substitute table salt if you run out. And they would probably taste terrible on your eggs or dinner. But they are a great therapeutic tool that everyone should use. Epsom salts are high magnesium content crystals that look, well, like salt. Easy to use too. Just add a cup to a bath tub of hot water, let them dissolve, and then have a good soak for about 10 minutes. While you are just chilling out and blissing out, the epsom salts will be busy drawing out the lactic acids and metabolic waste products from your sore and achy muscles while the hot water will be flooding your muscles with fresh oxygenated blood.
I am a big believer in the salts and soak my hands in a basin of epsom salts after a hard day of work. Many professional athletes have one after a good workout as part of their regular training regimen. I advise my clients to have one after a more therapeutic massage, but it is hard to convince them to do so. I am noticing a funny pattern that typically the ones that complain about feeling sore after the treatment didn’t have an epsom salt bath. At the same time, clients that I am afraid will feel the soreness after a treatment have very little to complain about if they have an epsom soak after. In fact, I have a 100% success rate with epsom salts. I have never heard a complaint of post massage soreness from a client that had an epsom salt bath after the treatment. So, go ahead and have one. Even if you’re a “shower” person not a “bath” person, give it a try. Don’t think of it as hygeine. Think of it as therapy. And for those of you that simply enjoy baths for relaxation and stress relief, add some epsom salts to increase the bath’s therapeutic value.
Ken Shim, RMT
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I’m a Massage Therapist in Oregon, & love this article! I’ve recommended Epsom salt baths lots of times over the years myself, & if someone has rock hard shoulders that are slow to relax, suggest they check their supplement labels & see if they’re at least getting the RDA (500mg)
http://www.krispin.com/magnes.html is a lovely article on the various functions of Magnesium – again – if they DO decide to look into it, & start taking more, they usually have almost immediate results!
Lovely site