Closer To Truth: Are Handheld Massagers Safe?

If you're a fitness warrior who gets up and hits the gym hard 5 times a week, you're no stranger to sore tendons and stiff muscles. It’s a part of the fitness battle. You bruise, you recover, and you hit it hard again. The only trouble is the recovery time. Many of us don’t give our muscles and deep tissues enough time to recover before we’re in a hard session again. Enough time in the gym does not guarantee gains. To reap maximum reward, you need a dedicated R&R (rest and recuperation) plan. So what can you do to speed up the recovery process?

The New Recovery & Refuel Strategy

Good recovery and refueling are as significant as the reps and sets you bank in training. Your muscles need to relax, untie the knots and replenish with glycogen. To speed up the recovery process between workouts, a vast number of muscle recovery tools have come under the highlight. But nothing has come under the spotlight more than the handheld gun massager. These have hit the front pages of every fitness magazine and reached celebrity status.

Pro athletes, trainers, coaches, fitness buffs, and wellness enthusiasts endorse them - and physical therapists like Joshua J. Bruner from Orthopedic Institute give them a big thumbs up. Joshua remarked, “The mechanism behind these massage guns involves increasing blood flow and nutrients to the tissues, stimulating receptors to decrease muscle stiffness, increasing production of relaxation hormones, and reducing pain perception in the nervous system,”.

Handheld Massager - Is It Safe? Can It fill in for your therapist?

When it comes to applying anything new to your body, you should always check if it’s safe. The same thing goes for supplements as new ones overfill the shelves. So, how safe are these handheld massagers?

Let’s start by taking a look at what handheld massagers are and what they do. Massage guns are in effect percussion massagers for percussive vibration therapy. These offer similar countless benefits of massage without leaving home or emptying your bank. You can get an entry-level decent handheld massager for around $100 - $150. I strongly recommend not to skimp on a tool that’ll be kneading your muscles and tissues. Get one that’s FDA-approved like the Vortix Melo Massager.

A quality-controlled handheld massager offers countless benefits. Josh Shadle, a massage therapist and CrossFitter from Boulder, Colorado says his massage gun is key to his recovery. He uses it regularly, “sometimes for hours …. it’s just like a mirror of a really good massage therapist.” Like therapy massage, the handheld massager digs deep (if not deeper) into the muscles to loosen and relax. It can also help reduce inflammation by flushing extracellular fluids such as lymph fluid and venous blood out of the muscle tissue and into the circulatory system.

A recent study by Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research showed that percussive therapy can be just as effective as massage in preventing DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness). So, that was the answer to your question. Are handheld massagers safe? Yes, they’re safe, and not only that, they’re highly recommended. The massage gun was designed and developed for athletes and fitness enthusiasts but more and more everyday people are reaping the benefits of at-home therapeutic massage.