5. The virus can be asymptomatic. Here’s what that means to your massage.
Asymptomatic means you have a condition, but you don’t feel bad and there are no outward signs of being ill. Viruses have incubation periods that begin the moment you’re exposed to the time you begin to have symptoms. During this time, the virus is replicating and your body is beginning to fight it off.
Whether you’re contagious or not depends on the type of virus you may have. COVID-19 has an average incubation period of 5 days, with patients becoming contagious 2–3 days before symptoms appear, but this varies from person to person. It also means that you could become contagious within a day of being exposed even if you’re unaware that you’ve come into contact with it.
Massage therapists will work in close contact with between 2 and 10 or more people per day, and those who don’t follow suggested protocols for disease prevention leave themselves and their clients open to risks.
6. There are dangerous symptoms that your massage therapist can identify, and so can you.
Before you go to your massage, and in addition to the typical symptoms you’ve likely read about, consider the following signs: Do you have any new, unexplainable rashes, or purple or red dots (petechiae)? Do you have a history of or signs of a blood clot, including swelling or redness in one leg, but not the other. If you have any of these signs, reschedule your massage and seek immediate medical attention.
Note: massage therapists are not qualified to make a diagnosis!
7. Be honest with your medical screenings and background information.
Massage can have effects on many of your body systems, and if your therapist doesn’t have a full view of what this looks like, massage can actually become harmful to your health. For instance, if your therapist does deep work on your legs not knowing that you have varicose veins, they will be pushing blood through already strained veins that could cause them to rupture. If you have a cold coming on, massage may seem like a good idea because it boosts the immune system. However, while massage manually moving metabolic waste is usually a good thing, if your body is already fighting off viruses then adding to the load of things it needs to process will overwhelm it and leave you feeling worse.
8. Ask about your clinic's medical privacy policy and how they store and use information.
If you’ve ever been to see a doctor then you’re probably familiar with health information privacy covered under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), but what you may not know is that spas are not considered covered entities under the HIPAA Rule. Most therapists, however, follow these guidelines out of professional courtesy. Learn more about what entities are covered at https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/covered-entities/index.html