The truth behind those viral pictures of a hairdresser's painful looking back
Earlier this week, an image of a hairdresser’s ‘back injuries’ went viral after her inflamed skin seemed to reveal the damaging impact of her job.
“Because you spend hours standing with your feet rotated forward, whilst holding a brush in one hand and a hairdryer in the other for hours and hours, your muscles develop and start holding your skeletal system in an unnatural off centre position,” Leicester-based massage therapist Hitesh Patel wrote in a Facebook post.
However, the pictures shared on Facebook were taken after a Gua Sha massage (a Chinese medical procedure which involves scraping the skin with a tool to improve circulation) from Patel.
As a consequence to mass confusion, Patel has since removed the post from the social media platform.
The massage therapist explained to the Standard that the painful looking marks are the signs of toxins being released from a muscle tissue called petechiae.
“You only get the marking appearing where you have stagnation in that muscle group,” Patel explained. “If it’s a light pink colour it just shows normal everyday fatigue, the darker the colour going to purple and black shows more old stubborn damaged tissue.”
He does however hope that the images he shared of the hairdresser’s back raise awareness of the benefits of the Gua Sha method.
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