The Science behind Massage Therapy

Massage therapy offered by Registered Massage Therapists in Ontario has successfully faced the scrutiny of science in many well-designed, properly controlled studies that have been presented in various well-respected, peer-reviewed publications. The results have thus far been clear: massage therapy has measurable, quantifiable benefits far beyond those offered by placebo. In other words, it works!

Massage Therapy in Ontario is a science-based medical practice, focused on treating the physical body of the patient. A proper massage therapist should make no claims about metaphysical concepts (such as channeling the patient’s “energy”, for example), nor should they claim that massage therapy can treat diseases, allergies or other such ailments. A massage is generally relaxing, and relaxation has many positive benefits including offering relief to those who struggle with stress, anxiety, depression, fatigue, and can indeed increase one’s general sense of well-being. However, while these benefits are indeed very pleasant side effects of the treatment, the ultimate goal of massage therapy is to treat pain and to assist with the healing of injuries. According to science, we do a very good job at this!

Below you’ll find quotations from various scientific studies on the effectiveness of massage in treating the specific ailment they investigated. I’ve chosen just a few quotations, and have linked to a meta-analysis (a study of the results of many previous studies in an attempt to consolidate the results) that discussed these conclusions and provides proper links and citations of the individual studies.

Lower Back Pain:

“The studies included in the review demonstrated therapeutic effects for massage that exceeded or equaled those obtained from various active treatment conditions.”

“In one study (9), massage was compared with a placebo (sham laser). Massage was found to be superior to the placebo treatment. In the other seven trials, massage was compared with various active treatments. These studies showed that massage was superior to relaxation (10), acupuncture (11) and education (11).”

“The Cochrane review concluded that massage therapy may be beneficial for patients with subacute and chronic non-specific LBP, particularly when combined with exercises and education. They also noted that the results of one high quality study showed that the benefits of massage last as long as 1 year following the end of active treatment (11).” (Source)

Headaches:

“All patients exhibited significant decreases in pain total index (PTI; monthly number of headache hours multiplied by severity) and headache index (HI; monthly number of attacks multiplied by severity).”

“…for patients with migraines (n = 27), those who received massage had significantly lower PTI and HI scores than those who received acupuncture (Table 2).”

“Because the aim of soft tissue manipulation is to alter mechanical stress caused by myofascial tissue disorders, the review concluded that massage techniques may therefore be an effective therapy for tension-type headaches.” (Source)

Shoulder Pain:

“Another study (27) compared patients with shoulder pain who received six 15–20 min sessions of massage over two weeks (n = 15) to a waitlist control (n = 14). Patients who received massage improved significantly in functional disability, pain, and range of motion, whereas the control group evidenced no changes on these outcomes (Table 3).” (Source)

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome:

“The massage group evidenced improvements in pain, grip strength, anxiety and depression compared with no such improvements in the control group (Table 3). Physician assessments of carpal tunnel symptoms also indicated significant improvements in the massage group versus no change in the control group.” (Source)

Fibromyalgia:

“The massage group evidenced improvements in pain, grip strength, anxiety and depression compared with no such improvements in the control group (Table 3). Physician assessments of carpal tunnel symptoms also indicated significant improvements in the massage group versus no change in the control group.”

“The Field group has found that massage leads to improvements in pain and symptoms compared with relaxation (33) or TENS (34)…”

“Comparisons immediately post-treatment revealed greater improvements in pain, depression and quality of life in the massage group relative to controls, but no differences in disability, sleep disturbance or anxiety (Table 4). Brattberg maintained that there was a 37% reduction in pain following the massage treatment.” (Source)

Mixed Chronic Pain Conditions:

“By 3-month follow-up, patients who received massage reported less pain, depression, anxiety and tiredness relative to controls (Table 5).” (Source)

Conclusions of Massage Therapy’s Impact on Pain:

“The existing literature suggests that massage therapy may be a useful approach for pain relief in a number of chronic, non-malignant pain conditions, particularly musculoskeletal pain complaints (e.g., shoulder pain, low back pain).”

“They maintained that patients who received a course of massage and were evaluated several days or weeks after the end of active treatment exhibited levels of pain that were on average 62% lower than controls. This conclusion was based on the results of 5 studies.”

“The rigorous approach employed by Moyer and colleagues, which expressly included the calculation of between-group effect sizes and the aggregation of data across numerous trials lends confidence to their overall conclusion that multiple applications of massage therapy appears to confer lasting benefits on pain.”

“All of the studies yielded positive outcomes for pain and were methodologically rigorous, with one study including over 100 patients (25). Moreover, one of these studies was cited by Moyer et al. (30) in their meta-analysis indicating that massage therapy demonstrates significant effects on the long-term assessment of pain.”

“As discussed by Wright and Sluka (42), massage is thought to induce a variety of positive physiological effects that may contribute to tissue repair, pain modulation, relaxation, and improved mood. For example, these authors point to research showing that massage has beneficial effects on arterial and venous blood flow and edema (43). In addition, they note that vigorous massage has been shown to increase local blood flow and cardiac stroke volume (44), as well as improve lymph drainage (45); massage also appears to have an anticoagulant effect (46). Finally, Wright and Sluka maintain that massage may activate segmental inhibitory mechanisms to suppress pain and that some techniques may activate descending pain inhibitory systems (43), as suggested by gate theory (discussed subsequently).” (Source)