Tanning-Bed Addiction Found

Massage therapists are on the front lines of helping prevent skin cancer, by noticing suspicious moles and lesions on clients’ skin. About 120,000 new cases of melanoma are diagnosed in the U.S. each year, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation.

But it doesn’t take the sun to create skin cancer; the uptick in tanning-bed use over the last decade is creating new cancer cases, especially among young adults. In 2009, The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer moved UV tanning beds to its highest cancer-risk category, “carcinogenic to humans.”

New research shows tanning-bed users exhibit brain changes and behavior similar to addicts.

“This could explain why some people continue to use tanning beds despite the increased risk of developing melanoma, the most lethal form of skin cancer,” noted a press release from UT Southwestern Medical Center. “The brain activity and corresponding blood flow tracked by UT Southwestern scientists involved in the study is similar to that seen in people addicted to drugs and alcohol.”

People younger than 30 who use a tanning bed 10 times a year have eight times the risk of developing malignant melanoma, the investigators noted, adding, “While public knowledge of these dangers has grown, so has the regular use of tanning beds.”

Research Exclusive: Aquatic Exercise for Multiple Sclerosis

For people with multiple sclerosis, a recent pilot study has shown that an aquatic exercise program is both feasible and beneficial, resulting in improved motor function among the subjects.

The study, “Community-based group aquatic program for individuals with multiple sclerosis: a pilot study,” involved 11 adults with multiple sclerosis, 10 of whom completed the entire intervention. Inclusion criteria for the study included a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, a medical clearance for exercise participation and limited physical activity prior to participation in the study.

The aquatic exercise program used for this study was designed by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and approved by experts in physical therapy, occupational therapy and sports science, as well as a certified aquatic instructor with 15 years of experience conducting classes for people with multiple sclerosis.

Subjects in the study attended this one-hour group aquatic exercise class twice a week for five weeks. At the start of each class, the participants warmed up, then performed the aquatic exercises, and then there was a cool-down period, all of which took place in the pool.

Evaluation of the study’s subjects took place before and after the five-week aquatic intervention. The 10-Meter Walk test, the Berg Balance Scale, the Timed Up and Go, a grip-strength test and the Modified Fatigue Impact Scale all were used to assess results of aquatic exercise. Participants also filled out a satisfaction survey in regards to the aquatic exercise classes.

An analysis of the data showed significant improvements in walking

speed, balance, functional mobility and grip strength following the five weeks of aquatic exercise. There were no significant changes from baseline to post-intervention in terms of fatigue.

Data from the satisfaction survey showed high approval ratings for the overall experience, and none of the subjects reported any adverse effects related to the aquatic exercise.

“The findings demonstrate that a community-based aquatic program for individuals with multiple sclerosis is feasible, beneficial and safe to implement and may serve as a good model for community-based wellness programs for people with disabilities,” state the study’s authors.

The researchers speculate the significant improvements in motor function may be due to the fact that the subjects were able to engage in exercises in the water that would not have been possible for them to perform on land.

“The positive outcomes from this study justify a multi-centered study to further examine the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of the aquatic program,” state the study’s authors, “and to determine the cost of running short-term group-based aquatic exercise programs compared to long-term individual aquatic sessions.”

Authors: Yasser Salem, Anne Hiller Scott, Herbert Karpatkin, George Concert, Leah Haller, Eva Kaminsky, Rivky Weisbrot and Eugene Spatz.

Sources: Department of Physical Therapy, Department of Occupational Therapy and Division of Sports Sciences, Long Island University, Brooklyn, New York; Department of Physical Therapy, Hunter College, City University of New York. Originally published online in Disability and Rehabilitation (2010).

Marketing Gift Certificates for the Holidays

The fall and winter seasons are the busiest time for many massage therapists. Gift-certificate sales can be brisk for the holidays, and massage therapists may see more new clients compared to any other time of the year.

Although you can’t directly charge for your services as a student, you can still receive valuable experience marketing gift certificates. Experimenting with gift-certificate promotions can do a number of things for you as you look toward building your practice.

1. It will get people in the habit of thinking of your services as a wonderful gift.
2. When people come to see you with a gift certificate, it helps you build your list of contacts and potential clients.
3. By learning how to market gift certificates now, you won’t lose valuable time learning this skill once your practice is up and running.
4. You’ll make mistakes, learning what to do and, maybe more importantly, what not to do.
5. It will help you learn how to talk to clients about how you can help them as well as other people they know.

As many massage therapists will tell you, speaking to clients about booking their next session or buying a gift certificate can feel awkward in the beginning. “I’m a massage therapist, not a salesperson,” you might say. While this may be correct, it is also true that if you care about clients feeling better, you will encourage them to receive bodywork. This goes for their friends and family, too.

Create a gift-certificate promotion
How do you express the idea that giving a gift certificate is giving the gift of health?

1. Start by researching why people seek massage. Ask your friends or clinic clients why they carve time from their schedules to receive massage. Listen carefully. They are giving you clues to what motivates people to get massage—and, consequently, to buy gift certificates for other people.
2. Link those concerns to the benefits of what you do. Here are some examples of complaints massage therapists frequently hear:

• I’m stressed to the max.
• My back (neck, feet, shoulders) hurt.
• I’m exhausted and drained.

3. Now draw the conclusion: Massage can help reduce pain, relieve stress and help people feel better as a whole. The secret is you have to tell them that.

Practice marketing at the clinic
Give yourself a practice marketing assignment at your student clinic.

1. When appropriate, gently remind clients gift certificates are available.
2. Ask if you can put up a gift-certificate display. On it, display the clinic’s gift certificates along with messages that will speak to the clinic’s clientele. Adjust the messages below to echo the concerns you heard from your clients.
   a. We live in a fast-paced world. To keep going, the people you care for need a time and space to let go. Give the gift of massage.
   b. Lighten up for the holidays. If your special someone has not been feeling his best, make the holidays better for everyone. Give him (or her!) the gift of massage.
   c. Have a friend or loved one in pain? Give the comfort of massage therapy.
   d. Reduce your holiday shopping stress. Give a beautiful gift certificate to a friend or loved one.
3. Market clinic gift certificates online, using some of the same messages you used in your display.

Practice using gift certificates on your own
If you are doing practice massage before receiving your license, consider offering friends and family members a chance to give the gift of your services to others—for no charge, of course. Make or purchase gift certificates. Give them to some of the people you have practiced on, but be selective. Give them to people you enjoy working on, either because they respond well to your favorite techniques or because you are especially able to help them with their particular challenges. These are the people who are most likely to use gift certificates, and who are most likely to pass them on to other people who will respond well to your work.

Gift certificates are basic to marketing bodywork at the holidays, and that goes for Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, too. Get a jump-start on understanding marketing gift certificates. Do what you can to practice now, so you have the skills later as you begin to build your practice.

5 Management Must-Haves

There is a “must-have” list for nearly anything these days. Any fashion show will call out must-have colors, textures, accessories for the upcoming season. Wired Magazine has must-have gadgets, mobile applications and tech-tools. Shopping for a new car comes with a must-have list of things like satellite radio and great gas mileage.

As a manager and business owner, I have my own must-haves to keep me on top of my game and found a short, but powerful, list I think can help any professional. These are the tools that, no matter where you are, you could still manage your business and slip back into your well-run practice.

1. Blackberry, or other smartphone. A Blackberry, iPhone or other smartphone allows you to stay in touch with the business side of your practice while away from the office. If you’re traveling and you want to check your messages or check in with employees, having such a phone will allow you to keep your business on track.

2. E-mail guidelines. It’s hard to imagine management of a business without e-mail because communication is so critical to the success of any project. However, when it’s not managed effectively, e-mail can become a time drain. It’s important to create e-mail guidelines in your business. Depending on the culture of your practice, develop e-mail rules that ensure that the communication is saving time and not wasting it.

A great guideline to set in place is to put the action items in the beginning. This sets the tone of the e-mail and offers the most important information upfront. As they say in journalism, don’t bury the lead. Make sure that what’s most important is in the first paragraph. Also, your communication should be something short, sweet and to the point, or else your message will not be received.

3. A collaborative space.Good project management (especially if you manage employees) is about collaboration and communication. We use a wiki, which is an online collaborative workspace. There are many implementations of wiki software–and most are both open source and free. Our wiki is a central hub for our work, where we coordinate our projects and processes, providing a central place to remain in touch with one another’s duties and status.

There is also Twitter and other social media platforms that can be used well for work purposes.

4. Project agreement. A project agreement will always keep projects from running amuck and to keep things running flawlessly in anyone’s absence from the business. Without a project agreement, other people might not be on board or know what their objectives are, or their roles, responsibilities and timelines. Defining a project at the beginning is critical. It’s okay if things change, and they often do, but when you have a project agreement, you have a foundation to build on and work from.

5. Project management scorecard. We use an online project management scorecard that looks at three kinds of performance: business, project and project team. The scorecard gives you a comprehensive look at all three dimensions, so you know where and how to improve within your business. Accountability and the ability to measure ensure that you will know when you’ve arrived at the destination called success.

Other than yearly reviews, people often forget to take a moment to think about what did and did not work so that future business projects have a better chance of succeeding. It’s imperative for personal and professional growth and to continue succeeding.

The Importance of Self-Care for Massage Therapists

Massage school can be an exciting time, with many techniques and approaches to learn. The skills you learn in your training will enable you to help clients maintain their health and well-being. But what about your health and well-being? Have you thought about what it will take to deal with the physical and emotional demands of your new career as a massage therapist?

Massage is a rewarding profession that places considerable demands on the therapist. As a result, 77 percent of massage therapists experience symptoms or injury during their careers.1 With such a high rate of injury in the profession, learning effective self-care and injury-prevention techniques is one of the most important things you can do to have a successful career. Proven methods exist that have been shown in decades of research to prevent work-related musculoskeletal disorders.

While you’re still in training is the best time to start learning these methods. If you start integrating self-care and injury-prevention techniques into your life now, while you are still a student, taking care of yourself will become second nature. It’s much easier—and less disruptive to your career—to prevent injury from happening in the first place than to deal with an injury once it has occurred.

When an injury happens in a massage career, it’s nearly always the result of certain factors. A successful prevention strategy will need to address all of these factors. For this reason, using just one strategy—such as good body mechanics or conditioning exercises—is usually not enough by itself to keep you from getting injured. In combination, however, a variety of tactics can be very effective.

Here are six steps you’ll need to take to stay healthy in your career as a massage therapist:

1. Maintain awareness of the risk of injury in your work. Reading this article is a good start. It’s important to acknowledge risk exists, so you can learn how to best protect yourself.
2. Understand how risk factors can cause injury. You may have personal risk factors like a previous injury, for example, that can increase your injury risk. Massage work carries a number of risk factors, including repetitive movement, awkward postures and hand force. Particularly in combination, these risk factors can lead to injury.
3. Reduce risk factors through ergonomics.Because the work of a massage therapist is so physically demanding, workplace risk factors are often the primary cause of musculoskeletal disorders. While you can’t do anything about such risk factors, such as your age or a previous injury, you can usually modify
   1. your working conditions or workplace setup to reduce work-related risk factors. The science of ergonomics concentrates on fitting the work to the worker using proven methods that can be remarkably effective in reducing injury risk.
   2. Develop good body mechanics and work practices. Once you have used the principles of ergonomics to optimize your workspace and work life, you need to reinforce those principles by using your body properly in that workspace. Good ergonomics and good body mechanics go hand in hand. For example, if you don’t have enough room around your table, you won’t be able to use good body mechanics—and if you don’t use good body mechanics at your table, you won’t get the full injury-prevention benefit of having your workspace set up properly.
   3. Take care of your general physical and emotional health. You need to be in good general health to be able to withstand the physical demands of your work. Getting enough sleep and exercise, eating well and not smoking are among the healthy practices that can help your body heal quickly after a long day at work. You’ll also need to do a combination of exercises and stretches designed to keep you in shape for the rigors of your work. Avoid burnout and seek help for depression and anxiety, as these are also risk factors for injury.
   4. Recognize and treat injury symptoms. Remember, more than 75 percent of therapists experience symptoms. Be sure to listen to your body and seek effective treatment as soon after an injury as possible. With early, effective treatment, the majority of therapists are able to continue their work and get back to health.

   It is possible to prevent injury as a massage therapist, and following this six-step program will put the chance for recovery on your side.

   Balancing self-care with client care is one of the most important lessons you can learn as a massage therapist. Learning this vital lesson at this stage, when you have your whole career ahead of you, will give you a major head start toward having a long, healthy career.

Massage Therapy Relieves Stress

Stress management is a key component for anyone striving to achieve a healthy lifestyle. Massage therapy has been proven to be one of the most effective methods for achieving stress relief. Research studies show massage therapy actually boosts the body’s immune system, which can become compromised from extended periods of stress.

Enrolling in a reputable massage therapy program leads to significantly increased energy levels, the reduction of nagging pains, and the improvement of our overall physical and mental performance.

Stress Relief Benefits

• Lowers Heart Rate
• Lowers Blood Pressure
• Relaxes Muscles
• Increases Endorphins

Courtesy of http://www.massageenvy.com

MASSAGE THERAPY BENFITS- DIGESTIVE SYSTEM

All aspects of the digestive system can benefit from massage. Jaw tension can be reduced by massaging the muscles of the jaw, neck and scalp, aiding chewing and swallowing functions. Massage of the abdominal organs can improve their functioning. Soothing physical stimulation to the liver and gall bladder can assist their maintenance, decreasing toxification and increasing efficiency. The muscles of the stomach and the esophagus can have their tone improved through massage, increasing the capacity of these organs to operate. And by stimulating the supporting muscles and tissues which suspend and hold the digestive organs within the abdomen, massage can contribute to the overall integrity of the digestive system.

Courtesy of http://www.beomed.com

Massage Therapy Relieves Headaches

In the United States alone, more than 60 percent of the 45 million Americans who suffer from chronic headaches suffer from migraines. The disorder can be debilitating and typically results from high stress levels and/or lack of sleep.

Massage has two roles when it comes to treating migraines and tension related headaches. In a proactive role, massage treatments are performed on a regular basis to help the body maintain an optimal level of relaxation and stress-relief. This approach reduces the chances of migraine attacks and tension headaches significantly by relaxing muscle spasms and trigger points. In a comfort role, massage is done to ease the pressure brought on during a migraine or tension related headache. By focusing on the neck, shoulders, and head, massage can decrease the pain and discomfort brought on by migraine or tension headache.

According to the American Massage Therapy Association:

A recent study showed that massage therapy recipients exhibited fewer migraines and better sleep quality during the weeks they received massage, and the three weeks following, than did participants that did not receive massage therapy. Another study found that in adults with migraine headaches massage therapy decreased the occurrence of headaches, sleep disturbances and distress symptoms. It also increased serotonin levels, believed to play an important role in the regulation of mood, sleep and appetite.

Relief of Tension-Related Headaches Benefits

• Decreases occurrences of headaches, sleep disturbances and distress symptoms
• Allows one to maintain a level of relaxation and stress-relief, reducing the chances of stress induced migraines
• Reduces muscle spasms and trigger point