Sanyo massage chairs have an interesting twist on the body scan technology. As with most of the finer massage chair manufacturers, Sanyo has a height, weight, and muscle tone assessment feature in their body scan technology, but they have added something else that is quite interesting and that patients seem to get a kick out of…the heart/pulse rate, perspiration, and temperature scan.

Sanyo has added an additional remote that sits in a caddy of the main remote control of each chair. This remote has a couple of areas on the back of it that are shiny silver in color over which the user places his/her right hand. You would hold it as though you were holding a small walkie-talkie. This is what the sensor uses to determine your heart/pulse rate, perspiration, and body temperature.

While you are being scanned, the massage chair technology will display the results of that scan, along with the typical height, weight, and muscle tension scan, on the main remote control display. There is a figure of a seated body with blue dots all over it’s back side, indicating the places of the body that are being scanned.

The scan results are displayed as red circles around the blue dots on the body drawing on the remote control. So, during the scan, red circles will show up around the blue dots representing the parts of the body just scanned. Once the scan is complete, the user can do one of two things:

1. Put the scanner back onto the cradle and just enjoy the massage, or
2. Continue to hold the scanner throughout the massage and see what happens to the red circles on the body figure on the remote. It surprises us to see that as the massage chair focuses on the areas of the body where the red circles are found, the red circles begin to disappear over the course of the massage session. In other words, as the massage chair works on the rough areas of the spine and fixes them, the body sensor can actually tell that it is better and the red circles are then removed. Now, if the rough spots are really bad, it may not get rid of the red circles during just one session. It may take a few sessions. But, the fact that the chair can tell right away where the improvement is being made is quite impressive.

The patients just love this feature. To use the vernacular of my teenage years…it’s pretty “cool”.

What is always interesting to us when we have a new client sit in the Sanyo massage chair, is that when the scanner displays the red circles on the person’s spine on the remote control display, based on the scan findings, the user always says “Yep, that’s where I hurt!”…that happens pretty much every time!

By the way, there is no fixed timer on the Sanyo massage chairs because of this scanner technology. Whereas other chairs have a fixed 10, 15, 20, or even 30 minute massage setting, the Sanyo varies between 20-25 minutes because the massage program is catered to the findings of the body sensors. It just might take a little longer on some of our spines because our spines just might be a little more messed up than others.

Dr. Alan Weidner

www.massage-chair-relief.com

Every upper end massage chair nowadays has a scanning feature of some sort that checks out your spine prior to beginning your massage session. The feature is designed to get a feel for your height, weight, and muscle tight spots to figure out how intense the chair will decide to massage you. Very fascinating, actually.

What this means, is that each person that sits on a massage chair could have an entirely different massage than any other person that sits on the same chair. What is even more interesting, each person that sits on a massage chair will have a different massage each time he/she sits on the massage chair if the musculature of the user has changed from session to session.

For example, if I sit on a massage chair in the morning, after a good night’s sleep, the massage chair will scan me based on the relaxed musculature of a night’s rest. If I have a tough, stressful day, that very same day, or if I become injured playing basketball or get in a car accident, and my musculature changes accordingly, the reading of the massage chair scan could be completely different. Thus, my massage at the beginning of the day and my massage at the end of the day may be completely different.

This personalizes the massage that much more. I think this is a development in massage chair technology that just further adds to the effectiveness of massage chair recliners and further allows the chairs to compete with real therapists. Of course, nothing we have in the industry, right now, completely mimics the hands of a licensed and trained massage therapist or even a chiropractor, but I can tell you…they are working on it!

I will discuss individual manufacturer’s body scanning technologies in subsequent blog entries. Though most of the quality massage chair manufacturers have body scan technology in some shape and form, they are different and proprietary for each company.

Dr. Alan Weidner
www.massage-chair-relief.com