The Effect of Red Ginger Essential Oil Used for Massage After Exercise on Leukocyte Value in Athletes

Athletes who train with maximum and tiring training intensity to face a match are often unable to continue to the next match due to illness or injury. Extended and rigorous training might lead to a functional deterioration in immune cells' ability to react to elevated infection risk. Physical exercise will cause changes in homeostasis in the body which will affect the immune system. The tolerance limit for changes in homeostasis in the body is narrow, therefore giving heavy intensity physical training loads, both during training and during heavy competitions can cause interference with the immune system. This can affect the athlete's performance, and ultimately cause the athlete to fail to achieve peak performance. The research subjects were cricket athletes, Twenty to twenty-two years old, with a healthy VO2 max level, were not smokers and were willing to be research subjects by signing a consent form. Approximately twenty athletes were split up into two groups. Group P1: athletes after training were given sports massage therapy and lotion without red ginger essential oil; group P2: athletes after training were given sports massage therapy and red ginger essential oil as an oil for topical use. The physical exercise and massage treatment was carried out for 2 weeks, the frequency was 3 times a week and the duration of the physical exercise was 60 minutes and the duration of the massage was 15 minutes.