Massage Therapy During Perimenopause: Benefits, Types, and What to Expect
Massage therapy can ease perimenopause muscle pain, anxiety, and poor sleep. Discover which types help most and how to build it into your self-care routine.
Why massage is worth considering during perimenopause
Massage therapy is one of the older complementary approaches to managing pain and stress, and it has accumulated a reasonable evidence base for several of the symptoms that cluster during perimenopause. Muscle tension, joint stiffness, anxiety, poor sleep, and low mood are all areas where massage shows consistent if modest benefits in research trials. For many women in perimenopause, the appeal of massage is also partly about embodiment: this phase can involve feeling disconnected from or frustrated by a body that seems to be behaving unpredictably. Regular therapeutic touch can help restore a more positive relationship with the body, which has a genuine psychological value that is hard to quantify but easy to underestimate.
Effects on muscle tension and joint pain
Muscle tension and joint pain are among the most common physical complaints during perimenopause. Falling oestrogen reduces the lubrication of joints and the body's anti-inflammatory capacity, leaving many women feeling stiff, achy, and physically uncomfortable in ways they did not experience in their thirties. Massage works on this by improving circulation to affected tissues, reducing the build-up of lactic acid and other metabolic byproducts, and directly releasing tension in the muscle fibres. Swedish massage, which uses long strokes and kneading techniques, is the most widely available and is a good starting point for general muscle and joint discomfort. Deep tissue massage targets more specific areas of chronic tension but can be too intense for some women.
Anxiety reduction and the nervous system
Therapeutic massage activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the branch responsible for rest and recovery, and suppresses the sympathetic fight-or-flight response. For women in perimenopause who are running in a state of low-level anxiety or stress, this shift has measurable effects: studies find reductions in cortisol and increases in serotonin and dopamine following massage sessions. These changes in neurochemistry produce the calm, slightly drowsy feeling most people associate with a good massage, but they also have carry-over effects on mood and anxiety levels in the days following. Women who receive regular massage, at even a monthly frequency, tend to report lower baseline anxiety than those who do not.
Sleep benefits and relaxation
Several small studies have found that massage improves sleep quality in perimenopausal and postmenopausal women, including reductions in time taken to fall asleep and fewer night-time wakings. The likely mechanism is the combination of cortisol reduction and parasympathetic activation that massage produces. Scheduling a massage in the late afternoon or early evening may be particularly useful for women whose main sleep issue is difficulty switching off or falling asleep. The relaxation response from a session can last several hours, bridging the gap into bedtime. Some women also find that self-massage techniques, such as gentle neck and shoulder work or foot massage before bed, provide a lower-cost version of this effect on a nightly basis.
Types of massage relevant to perimenopause
Swedish massage is the most accessible and appropriate for general stress relief and muscle tension. Deep tissue massage is better suited to specific areas of chronic tightness but requires communication with your therapist about pressure tolerance. Aromatherapy massage, which combines Swedish techniques with essential oils, has some evidence for additional benefit in anxiety and mood when oils such as lavender or clary sage are used. Reflexology, which involves pressure on specific points on the feet, is popular among women in perimenopause and has some trial evidence for hot flash and sleep improvement. Hot stone massage uses heated stones to warm and loosen tissue, which some women find particularly effective for joint stiffness and general tension.
Making it practical and affordable
Private massage sessions in the UK typically cost between 40 and 80 pounds per hour depending on location and therapist. For many women this rules out weekly sessions, but monthly or bi-monthly treatment can still produce cumulative benefits. Checking whether your workplace offers an employee assistance programme that includes complementary therapies is worth doing, as some do. Community massage clinics, training clinics at accredited massage schools, and independent therapists working from home tend to offer lower rates than spa settings. Learning basic self-massage techniques for the neck, shoulders, feet, and hands also extends the benefit between professional sessions and costs nothing once you have learned the basics from a video or class.
Using symptom tracking to assess the impact
The effects of massage can be subtle enough that it is easy to underestimate them, particularly if your baseline symptom burden is high. Logging your anxiety, sleep quality, muscle pain, and mood before you start having regular sessions and continuing to track them over several months gives you a real comparison point. PeriPlan lets you record symptoms consistently so you can see trends across weeks. Many women find that their own symptom data is more persuasive than any amount of general advice, because it is specific to them and reflects what is actually changing in their experience. If massage is genuinely helping, the data will show it. If your scores are not improving, you have useful information about where to focus your energy and money next.
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