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Massage - It's real medicine

KingMerv00

Penultimate Amazing
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According to cnn.com:

Having your honey rub your back is sweet, but it's tough to compete with the hands of a pro. A good massage therapist can make you feel like a new person. And now research suggests massage can ease insomnia, boost immunity, prevent PMS, and more. Maybe that's why hospitals are making it a standard therapy.
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One thing that jumped out at me though:

It sounds like a no-brainer, but rubdowns are especially effective for aches like low-back pain. Researchers at the Group Health Center for Health Studies in Seattle, Washington, found that massage works better than common treatments including chiropractic therapy and acupuncture. It's not clear why, but several studies show massage reduces levels of the stress hormone cortisol while boosting the feel-good hormones serotonin and dopamine. Those changes slow your heart rate, reduce blood pressure, and block your nervous system's pain receptors. Massage also increases blood flow to the muscles, which may help them heal.
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Emphasis mine. Any comments?
 
KingMerv00 said:
According to cnn.com:



One thing that jumped out at me though:



Emphasis mine. Any comments?
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There are different types of massage:
1) erotic - may be great fun :)
2) wellness - it feels good and you feel better afterwards, it seems to relax tensioned parts of your body. An example:
I am violinist as a hobby (but studied it) and playing concerts several times a year. Short before a performance my girlfriend, who does wellness massage, massages my hands, stretching and turning my fingers in a certain pattern with a considerable amount of force for about five minutes, and afterwards my hands are warm and dry and I can start playing a difficult program with relaxed and responsive fingers.
3) medical - should be prescribed by a doctor and carried out by a specifically trained masseur (right word?). I don't know anything about that, so I'll keep my bloody mouth shut :)
 
KingMerv00 said:
According to cnn.com:
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CNN is not a reliable source of health information.
KingMerv00 said:
One thing that jumped out at me though:
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This refers to a comparison of massage to chiropracty and acupuncture:
Researchers at the Group Health Center for Health Studies in Seattle, Washington, found that massage works better than common treatments including chiropractic therapy and acupuncture. It's not clear why, but several studies show massage reduces levels of the stress hormone cortisol while boosting the feel-good hormones serotonin and dopamine. Those changes slow your heart rate, reduce blood pressure, and block your nervous system's pain receptors. Massage also increases blood flow to the muscles, which may help them heal.
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Can you provde reliable citations?
 
When my good friend FRan was in the hospital, just days from death (though at the time we thought she had much longer), the ONE thing that really made her happy was when the massage therapist came in and worked on her for 30 minutes.

Up until she showed up, her husband and I were at a loss on how to help her pain from having been bedridden for so long. She wasn't in pain from her cancer, it was from her poor body being stuck in bed.

This therapist was wonderful. FRan was able to find relief, and sleep a natural happy sleep after her massage. The hospital signed her up for morning and late afternoon massage everyday. When she went home, hospice arranged for a massage therapist. Sadly Fran did not live much longer and we only wish she had massage therapy earlier.

Medicine is not just about curing things. It's about helping people LIVE with things, like pain. Or even just helping them relax without always doping them up. I've had a massage where I've fallen asleep I've been so relaxed.
 
JJM said:
CNN is not a reliable source of health information.
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I know. I was just pointing out what CNN was saying. The fact that they compared massage to chiropracty (sp?) and acupuncture made my ears perk up.

I am not an advocate for alternative medicine.

Can you provde reliable citations?
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Nope. It is their article.
 
What we know about massage is that it stimulates blood flow which can ease pain in some cases. There have also been studies shown that neonates that have skin to skin contact do better in the ICU. They are less stressed, heart rates go down, respiratory effort decreases and oxygen saturation levels go up. It's not suprising that massage shows positive benefits under certain conditions.

Anectdotally many people will tell you that just being hugged makes them feel better and that a quick shoulder rub or if you are really lucky, a foot massage, can do wonders for their stress level.

Chiropractic manipulation that involves stretching and massage to loosen back ligaments and muscle are effective treatments as well for certain conditions. It's only when chiropractic manipultion is used to cure things like cancer, etc that it crosses into woo.


One of the biggest problems is that some folks will take a grain of truth like massage can do certain things under certain conditions and use that to make all sorts of claims that may only be tangentally related, if at all.



Boo
 
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Massage Therapy is real. I woudn't call it Alternative. It not only complements medical treatments, it's better for many musculoskeltal conditions (like strain injuries, for example) than surgery.

Of course there are a lot of poorly researched and outright quack modalities under the Massage Therapy banner. The massage journals frequently have articles about Polarity Therapy, Cranio-sacral Therapy, Shiatsu (Acupressure) and the like.
But don't let that frighten you away from a good therapist.
 
Boo said:
Anectdotally many people will tell you that just being hugged makes them feel better and that a quick shoulder rub or if you are really lucky, a foot massage, can do wonders for their stress level.

Boo
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Depends on who is giving the hug and what they look like. :p
 
Actually, any good massage therapist should use stretching to help muscular tightness, not just chiropractors.

I use stretching a lot as part of physical therapy, but I am also a Sports Massage practitioner and I use a lot of soft tissue release to help tight muscles release using active client movement. I find that when working with athletes, myofascial release techniques to stretch the fascia and soft tissue release with active movement works best. I also give them stretches to do following a treatment.

Massage and Sports massage are good modalities that have been researched and I would not call them alternative.
 
I think that depends. If you go along to your average ITEC (common UK qualification) massage class you will find it somewhat woo-filled. They teach that you can feel "crystals of lactic acid" in muscles, that you can "remove toxins" etc etc. At least they did in my classes. I had to bite my tongue a lot during lessons
 
Ok, I did a lot of my training over in the States and it is all physiologically based there, but I think that when you study Sports Massage, it does take massage to another level.
 
Hyparxis said:
Massage Therapy is real. I woudn't call it Alternative. It not only complements medical treatments, it's better for many musculoskeltal conditions (like strain injuries, for example) than surgery.
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This is why it's important to draw a very thick line between complementary medicine and "alternative" medicine. There is no such thing as alternative medicine, there is medicine that works (that evil western stuff) and medicine that doesn't (like acupuncture and chiropractic). Alternative medicine is simply all the stuff that has either been proven not to work, or sometimes jut hasn't been proven either way yet. Complementary medicine is entirely different. As the name suggests, it is not an alternative to real treatment, it merely complements it. Massage therapy is a great example of this. A massage will not cure you of cancer and it will not help your bones mend faster, but it will help you feel better while real medicine is helping cure you.

Unfortunately, complementary and alternative medicines are lumped together far too often, and medicine is often divided into two groups - CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) and real medicine. In reality the two groups should be RAC (Real and Complementary Medicine) and crap.
 
Physiotherapist said:
Ok, I did a lot of my training over in the States and it is all physiologically based there, but I think that when you study Sports Massage, it does take massage to another level.
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Massage, the ordinary types, is riddled with quackery in the USA:
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/massage.html

However, as long as they don't pretend to diagnose or prescribe, or otherwise offer medical advice, I don't mind what they think. (Except- I would hope that, like barbers, they learn to recognize serious dermatological conditions and simply tell people they could have a problem and they should to go to a doctor.)

Too many chiropractors, and other quacks, tell customers that they have to come in for "maintenance" to prevent the "yet" disease. As in- does your leg hurt yet? People go to rational masseurs/masseuses just because they like it.
 
Supplemental
Complementary
Alternative
MedicineS

Ought to be avoided.
(With a tip o' the hat to Rolfe and Eos)


But a good rubdown feels good and can benefit you. With or without a happy ending.
 
I'm pretty sure the only medically-trained professional that does massage is a Physical Therapist--and they usually don't call what they do "massage" but something more specific (grade 4 mobilization of L4, for example).

I have trouble with people who have no medical training calling anything they do "therapy". It feels good, and things that make you feel good with no negative effects (except maybe financial) are probably healthy, but that's not the same as having a therapeutic effect.

As for all the benefits touted for massage (prevents insomnia, boosts immune response, etc.), my guess is a nice relaxing bath probably has a similar effect for most people.
 
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