Is it safe to get foot reflexology everyday?

[Ol Jackrabbit]

a woman in my office does foot reflexology on me everyday.. it is her idea and man it feels so good... i do feel better afterwards but someone said it can be dangerous to do reflexology everyday.. is this true? if so why

 

[brokendown321]

no it isn't dangerous, it's just massage. there's some suggestions that it could release a blood clot in the foot, but in most normal healthy people this should not be a concern.
most articles calling reflexology "dangerous" are referring to the fact that relying on it to actually cure diseases will only make you sicker since a massage, while it feels nice, can't actually cure anything.

 

[Stef Von B]

No it's not dangerous, it's good for you. Just drink a lot of water!!

 

[FUHummer]

No. It's not dangerous every day. I used to go out with a woman who was a reflexologist and she was always doing it on me. Many times a day. We'd be at a restaurant and while waiting for our food to come, she'd do reflexology on my hands for example. She usually had me drink water afterwards because there are some oxalates or some toxins that get broken up under your skin when you have reflexology...those are the hard spots under your skin that the reflexologist tries to break up and soften.

But I suspect even if you didn't drink water right after the reflexology session, you wouldn't suffer any real problems as a result. Depending on how sensitive you are, you might feel a bit of stomach malaise or queasiness I suppose, or slight headache, although I didn't always drink water after my girlfriend did reflexology on me and don't remember feeling any effects from any toxins being released into my system.

Think about it this way, if you walked barefoot a lot on the beach, or in thin sandals, you'd sort of be doing a form of foot reflexology all the time....they also make "reflexology" sandals and inserts you can put in shoes, etc. with bumps on them which you can wear everyday. These are putting some degree of constant pressure on the bottoms of your feet when you wear them...the heavier you are, the more pressure, I suppose.

I used to enjoy walking on hiking trails in sandals or sneakers because i could purposely step on rocks, etc. embedded in the trails and get some "foot reflexology" in while I was enjoying the hike.

I suspect that the person who "warned" you of these supposed dangers of receiving reflexology everyday does not know much about it or is generally a bit wary of "alternative" therapies. Reflexology has been practiced since Ancient Egyptian times....personally, if I could receive chiropractic, or massage or reflexology or acupuncture treatments every day...if i could afford the time and the money...I would be extremely happy. I think these types of bodywork are fantastic. Go for it!

BTW....I take issue with the answer above which says that massage and/or reflexology will "only make you sicker" since they can't "cure" anything. Even on a purely logical level that doesn't make sense since something that couldn't "cure" you would not necessarily make you "sicker".

Such a comment suggests a lack of experience and/or research into massage and reflexology and other well established and scientifically validated forms of alternative treatment. Whole body massage is even more pervasive than reflexology and think of all the people who go for massages on a regular basis. Why would they spend the money and take the time if it didn't enhance their physical and emotional well-being??

What about "medical massage"?. This is used in "regular" hospitals, where they sometimes won't even let you take vitamins if you're an inpatient. Maybe certain people feel it's only legitimate if it has the word "medical" in front of it. I guess that is a convincer for them.

The fact is that massage and reflexology and a lot of other body works do indeed cure certain conditions...as do other modalities such as chiropractic, acupuncture and so on. I had a friend whose father was a fairly narrow minded traditional doctor and happened to suffer from chronic back problems. The only thing that really helped him was acupuncture. I suspect that he didn't mention this fact to his patients however, as it wouldn't have been in his best interest to do so, financially speaking.....

Reflexology is somewhat akin to acupuncture without the needles. Acupuncture has been used to cure ailments that traditional Western medicine is unable to.

Practitioners of reflexology, acupuncture, chiropractic, massage, etc. wouldn't waste their time and money to go to school to learn their healing arts if those arts were bogus and didn't heal people. Nor would the millions of people who seek out these forms of treatment waste their own time or money if these types of bodywork had no basis in physiological science.

"Alternative" does not mean ineffective. Quite the opposite. That is why some very rigid, traditional mainstream Western doctors feel somewhat threatened by these other forms of treatment. They know that they work and are afraid that if more and more people find out, they will not be able to buy their wives fur coats and drive around in Porsches anymore.

Personally, I am a longtime user of homeopathic remedies and am aware that at the turn of the 20th century in this country there were hundreds of homeopathic hospitals in this country, and they were all eventually forced to shut down because of a disinformation campaign launched by the AMA, which was threatened by the fact that a lot of people found homeopathic medicine to be more effective than allopathic medicine in the treatment of many ailments.

The AMA , FDA, pharmaceutical industry and allopathic mainstream doctors have historically had a very cozy relationship based on mutual financial enrichment, often at the expense of people's health and even lives.

Drugs and surgeries approved by the FDA and pushed by doctors have killed many people at worst, and often not proven very effective at best. I'm not aware of anybody ever dying from homeopathic remedies, or reflexology or many other alternative healing practices. That should tell people something.