Stress and Immune System

"There is a relationship between stress and the immune system. If stress hormones are chronically elevated, the [hormone] cortisol will destroy the healthy immune cells that fight viruses and tumors and keep the immune system healthy. If you can reverse that, you not only reduce stress but also reduce stress hormones, allowing the immune system to bounce back and do its job, which is to heal the body and keep it healthy."

"From my perspective, one of the most important research findings from our studies is that massage therapy increases natural killer cells," Hernandez-Reif says. "These cells are constantly traveling through our body looking for foreign objects and tumors to destroy. Massage therapy naturally boosts these cells. This has tremendous implication about the benefits of massage for keeping people healthy."  

 PubMed: nccam.nih.gov/