Massage addresses one piece of the puzzle and to me is primarily a coping mechanism. It does not necessarily addresses the underlying problem.
It depends on the therapist; some are really good and some approaches work much better than others. But this problem is clearly not addressed properly for most people. Many suffer for years with it and a quick trip to a nursing home will confirm that.
Or rather, it depends the therapist stepping out of the role of "fixing the body" and into the role of helping the person use their body well.
"just message therapy" but message therapists these days are learning a variety of modalities, from hypnotherapy to Qigong to Rosen Work. If you are in a major city and have money to spend on body work, I'm sure you can find really skilled people.
In many ways, what's really necessary is for a person to wish to learn how to effectively use their body. But this goes against the expectation people learn in a consumer society, the majority of people expect a "plugin" fix.
Of course, each person's response is somewhat different. Some people seem to do well being "fixed" once a month.
I didn't mean to imply that massage, and only massage, would rid you of pain permanently.
You need to take good care of yourself in general in order to stay healthy - eat right, sleep well, keep yourself hydrated, and sit/work comfortably.
It just seems to me that a lot of programmers already take care of some of these items - the fact that I've even heard of Herman Miller chairs is evidence that at least some programmers take these things seriously - but RSI is still a huge concern in the industry.
I think if you're already sitting right and taking care of yourself, you could still be slowly damaging yourself because you're still locked in a static position for large portions of the day. Your muscles get used to working together as a single muscle, and they start locking together and essentially becoming that single muscle. Massage helps relieve muscles in spasm, and deeper massages will help break the "supermuscles" apart so they act individually again.
RSI is an issue every programmer (or any other person sitting at a computer all day) needs to be aware of, and the more preventions and cures we can throw at it, the longer we'll be able to stay healthy and productive.
sorry, didn't mean to say you implied. just reiterating something.
Sitting all day is just an aggravating cause, not the underlying cause. A muscle gets stiff under a light load only when circulation is impaired. A muscle with good circulation will not get stiff.
So it isn't that we sit for long periods. Its that we haven't fully exercised our full range of motion on a regular basis. We haven't kept the normal deposition of collagen from essentially gluing our muscle sheaths into something stiff enough to impair blood flow to the muscles inside them.
That's my theory anyway. And part of my understanding is that this situation is totally reversible.
Reversibility is dependent on the type and extent of the damage. If the damage is isolated to the muscle, then it probably is reversible to a certain extent. First, the muscles in spasm (constant state of tension) need to be massaged back to pliability, then you need to focus on stretching the muscles so they can better manage repetitive stress, and once the muscle is relatively healthy again you can begin strengthening it to withstand added tension and pressure and to heal itself better. As programmers, we're constantly abusing our arm muscles, and they will wear down over time. The trick is to minimize the abuse, and maximize your ability to regenerate, and hopefully you can get to a state where you heal more at night than you damage in the day.
Now, prolonged stress and inflammation (and certain physical abnormalities) can cause damage to the nerves themselves and nerves suck at healing. If you start having problems with sensation (feeling cold or numb), that's the result of nerves under attack. Prolonged attack equals irreversible damage.
As far as your notation about collagen gluing muscles, that sounds about right to me, and is sort of part of what I was saying earlier. Also, collagen is largely made up of water, and this is why it is so critical to keep yourself hydrated.
Also, muscles locked in static positions (I assume as a result of spasm) can begin to act as a single unit rather than individual muscles. When this happens, your body can actually try to sort of "heal them together" and the muscles can literally begin to bind to each other. Massage, particularly deep tissue massage, can help to break these bands apart so your muscles become independent again.
That's my understanding, anyway. I'm definitely no expert in this, and my knowledge largely comes from online research, and the book "It's Not Carpal Tunnel."
It depends on the therapist; some are really good and some approaches work much better than others. But this problem is clearly not addressed properly for most people. Many suffer for years with it and a quick trip to a nursing home will confirm that.