Relations of Subjective Evaluation and Changes in Autonomic Nerve Activity in Massage using Water Massage Bed

Abstract

In recent years, water massage bed which can provide full body massage is often used in physiotherapy. Compared to other physiotherapy equipment, water massage bed is particularly useful in the fact that it can directly massage the target area on the subject, thus leads to improvement in relieving muscle strain and provides a psychological relaxation effect. However, there is little research that examines the degree of relaxation effect on the human body caused by the water massage bed. In this study, we use a heart rate sensor to evaluate changes of relaxation before and during the massage. We observed that subjective evaluation is strongly correlated to the heart rate based relaxation analysis. In addition, the result of the subjective evaluation is heavily influenced by the changes in autonomic nerve activity in the first 30 seconds of the massage.