Hi there, it's Constance with BodyTx Massage and Health. Today I thought I'd talk a little bit about a specific population, a group which are people who are in their senior years. We run into it so often that people will come into the clinic, they've not tried acupuncture or massage before in their entire life, and they're trying it out because they're in a lot of pain and really at their wit's end in terms of the medications aren't working, maybe they've had surgery and that didn't help them, and so they're sort of at their last chance here of trying to tackle whatever they may be in pain for.

So then they come in for their treatment, and the biggest comment of feedback we get is, "Why didn't I come in a long time ago?" And you know, some of it might be a little bit of the perception of alternative health methods, which is ... Some people believe that it might be a sort of spa thing that you just go in and it's fluffy and you just get yourself pampered sort of thing. And really what we're about is actual treatments, working with you to gain better health, reduce the pain, and have a better quality of life.

So specifically, with regard to people who are in their seniors, they've worked hard in their lives. They didn't have the ability to go on the internet and google up a certain condition and say, "Okay, I'll try this as a remedy, or try this." They just really had to rely on communication with people around them. But yeah, there was certainly no information highways with the web at that time.

So we're here to just encourage you if you're considering massage or acupuncture, or had never sort of thought that it could help, or if you have a parent or grandparent who is in a lot of pain and you really would like them to try something different than what they've been trying all along. Show them this video and let them know that we constantly hear from clients who have not been in for massage or acupuncture treatment. Their main comment is that they wish they had come in earlier. They come back in great spirits, because they see the benefit of the treatments. Often we can work with any pain levels that they might have, and so for example, if they're really tight in the shoulders for example, the muscles are very rigid and taut, we work to sort of slowly reintroduce flexibility and range of motion in a painless way.

So, that's where we really specialize in working with the client or the person who's coming in, and talking to them about the benefits of massage and acupuncture for them. The biggest thing is when you get older, our muscles sort of start to lose their flexibility, their strength, and also range of motion starts to reduce. So what we want to do is maximize that as much as possible and reduce any pain levels that might be happening as a result of maybe structural imbalances, or that flexibility of the muscles isn't there.

So what we see the most is that these seniors will come in, and then really want to book right away because it was such a great experience with the treatment. So sometimes we'll see them once a week, just coming in to try and really hone in on any of the issues that they have, and then slowly over time going to a maintenance treatment phase.

So I just wanted to convey that out there in that we hear it a lot that there's this perception by seniors that our massage and acupuncture treatments are sort of a fluffy thing, and that's for people who want to be pampered, but really it's not. We have a lot of background and training education in terms of opening up the soft tissue muscles and really getting people back to health.

With regard to seniors, we really can help. One thing I should also mention is that if you have someone who's sort of limited to the home and can't leave the home, we do offer in-home mobile treatments. So we have Carol, our registered massage therapist who will come into the home and discuss with the person who may have limited mobility how we might be able to help. She's able to work with however they're able to move. So if they're restricted to a bed or if they're restricted to a chair, she's able to work with that. We have so much feedback from that as well in that they're so thankful that Carol can come in and help alleviate some of their pain.

Another thing I also wanted to mention too is that even if someone is on pain medications and so on, we just would need the background of those medications, and specifically with acupuncture she can ... Sarah, our acupuncturist can work with the pain medications in conjunction with acupuncture. So, it really has ... acupuncture has no side effects. It can sometimes assist any western medication that someone might be taking, so really it's a complementary source of treatment.

So anyway, I hope that helps a little bit. If you are trying to convince your grandparent or parent to come in, then we certainly would be happy to help. Show them this video. If there's any questions, you can feel free to give us a call. It's 587-285-4411. Or shoot us an email, info@bodytx.ca and we'd be happy to answer those concerns. But like I say, the biggest comment we always receive is that they wish they came in a long time ago. 

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