Getting a massage does more than put your muscles at ease.
[Recent research has f]ound that a single session of massage caused biological changes. Volunteers who received Swedish massage experienced significant decreases in levels of the stress hormone cortisol in blood and saliva, and in arginine vasopressin, a hormone that can lead to increases in cortisol. They also had increases in the number of lymphocytes, white blood cells that are part of the immune system.