Why is facial massage important?
Facial massage is an important part of your rehabilitation programme especially in the early stages when the muscles are weak and floppy (flaccid stage) or just recovering their shape and tone (paretic stage).
The overall goals of facial massage
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- Maintain good muscle health by keeping facial muscles mobile and elastic
- Keep the brain engaged with the face (prevent neglect of the affected side), so when the nerve recovers electrical messages travel to the correct muscle for each movement/expression
- To allow the person to become familiar with how their muscles feel and move, whether there are any changes and to pinpoint when and where muscle releases should begin
Keep the muscles moving
Facial massage is the most effective way of keeping the muscles moving. It is called passive movement and good quality massage can mobilise every tiny piece of muscle.
When a facial muscle stops moving or hardly moves at all the brain begins to ignore it and may start to forget the address of each muscle. When the nerve recovers, messages from the brain start to reach the muscle to signal a specific movement, for example, smile. The brain has to recall the address of the smile muscle/s so that signals travel through the correct nerve branches and stimulate the correct muscles for smiling. This becomes much harder if the brain has been allowed to neglect the affected side of the face which may inhibit the recovery of normal movement patterns.
Engaging the brain
Touching the face also provides the brain with feedback about the position of muscles. It is an effective way of keeping the path of communication open between the brain and the face. Link to massage video so that when the nerve recovers the brain will remember the address of the muscles.
Get familiar with the muscles
Another important aspect of massage is that using your fingertips to massage your face allows you to become familiar with how the muscles feel. You need to think about how easy it is to make muscles move, whether there is any tenderness in any of the muscles, how the affected side of the face compares to the uninjured side.
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Photo by Max van den Oetelaar on Unsplash