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“Touch is often the most neglected or assaulted sense of the hospitalized patient”.
Integrating massage therapy into a hospital setting shows how effective it is for not only treating physical pain, but how-- on deeper physical, mental, and emotional levels--it not only treats injury, but treats and respects the patient as a whole, complex human being.
From a marked improvement in the ability to rest (sleep) and thus promote speedy recovery, to much needed relief from acute physical pain, soreness--even to the extent that it is an effective replacement for pharmaceuticals-- the impact of massage therapy is wide-ranging and profound. Even more significantly, it treats the patient as a whole, relieving the discomforts of the environment (an unfamiliar, perhaps coldly clinical setting) as well as treating human conditions that are equally distressing as physical pain, such as anxiety, loneliness, depression--often overlooked in a clinical environment.
The findings of this study are fascinating, even surprising; the capacity of massage therapy to heal is much more comprehensive and profound than even previously thought.
For the full details of this study and the fascinating scope of the findings, read the study itself (originally linked from the Mayo Clinic): Read More...
ANOREXIA
Hart, S., Field, T., Hernandez-Reif, M., Nearing, G., Shaw, S., Schanberg, S. & Kuhn, C. (2001). Anorexia nervosa symptoms are reduced by massage therapy. Eating Disorders, 9, 289-299.
Nineteen women diagnosed with anorexia nervosa were given standard treatment alone or standard treatment plus massage therapy twice per week for five weeks. The massage group reported lower stress and anxiety levels and had lower cortisol levels following massage. Over the five-week treatment period they also reported decreased body dissatisfaction on the Eating Disorder Inventory and showed increased dopamine and norepinephrine levels.
ANXIETY
Field, T., Ironson, G., Scafidi, F., Nawrocki, T.,Goncalves, A., Burman, I. , Pickens, J., Fox, N., Schanberg, S., & Kuhn, C. (1996). Massage therapy reduces anxiety and enhances EEG pattern of alertness and math computations.International Journal of Neuroscience, 86, 197-205.
Adults were given a chair massage, and control group adults were asked to relax in a chair for 15 minutes, two times a week for five weeks. Frontal delta power increased for both groups, suggesting relaxation. The massage group showed decreased alpha and beta power, and increased speed and accuracy on math computations. At the end of the five-week period depression scores were lower for both groups but job stress scores were only, for the massage group.
BACK PAIN
Hernandez-Reif, M., Field, T., Krasnegor, J., & Theakston, H. (2001). Lower back pain is reduced and range of motion increased after massage therapy. International Journal of Neuroscience, 106, 131-145.
Massage therapy was compared to relaxation for chronic low back pain. By the end of the study, the massage therapy group, as compared to the relaxation group, reported less pain, depression and anxiety and improved sleep. They also showed improved trunk and pain flexion performance, and their serotonin and dopamine levels were higher.
Field, T., Hernandez-Reif, M., Diego, M., & Fraser, M. (2007). Lower back pain and sleep disturbance are reduced following massage therapy. Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapy, 11, 141-145.
Massage therapy versus relaxation therapy with chronic low back pain patients was evaluated for reducing pain, depression, anxiety and sleep disturbances, for improving trunk range of motion (ROM) and for reducing job absenteeism and increasing job productivity. Thirty adults with low back pain with a duration of at least 6 months pain participated in the study. On the first and last day of the 5-week study participants completed questionnaires and were assessed for ROM. By the end of the study, the massage therapy group, as compared to the relaxation group, reported less pain, depression, anxiety and sleep disturbance. They also showed improved trunk and pain flexion performance.
BLOOD PRESSURE
Hernandez-Reif, M., Field, T., Krasnegor, J. & Theakston, H.(2000). High blood pressure and associated symptoms were reduced by massage therapy. Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, 4, 31-38.
High blood pressure is associated with elevated anxiety, stress and stress hormones, hostility, depression and catecholamines. Massage therapy and progressive muscle relaxation were evaluated as treatments for reducing blood pressure and these associated symptoms. Adults who had been diagnosed as hypertensive received ten 30 min massage sessions over five weeks or they were given progressive muscle relaxation instructions (control group). Sitting diastolic blood pressure decreased after the first and last massage therapy sessions and reclining diastolic blood pressure decreased from the first to the last day of the study. Although both groups reported less anxiety, only the massage therapy group reported less depression and hostility and showed decreased cortisol.
Body is an interlocking system like no other.
The Dallas Morning News
All too often, we look at our bodies as a white-elephant offering rather than as a treasured gift. We'd happily pass to someone else our varicose veins, oversize nose, frizzy hair, extra-wide feet. We'd swap in a minute our pokey metabolism, our allergies, our bellies that hurt when we eat dairy products.
Yet whatever we might think, the body is, indeed, a gift. Hair and skin, blood and bones, crooks of elbows and knees, it is connections and pathways, a puzzle and a patchwork quilt.
It is a symphony and a souffle, a sunrise and sunset. Without each instrument, each ingredient, each interspersing of light and shadow, it falters a little; its magnificence a bit shriller or flatter or darker. Yet with each, it moves and heals; it rests and breathes and grows.
Dr. Tom Shires knows more than most about the intricacies and awes of the human body, and day after day he revels in them. He gave up his dream of being a rock star to become a physician. The rhythm of the human pulse has replaced the beat of his beloved string bass and trumpet — ever steady, ever true. Several times each day, in his role as chair of surgery at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, he makes gigantic as well as microscopic cuts into these masterpieces. He removes what shouldn't be there, and helps strengthen that which belongs.
Each time, he balances knowledge with mystery, putting into practice what he has been taught and what he has learned, continually struck again by enigmas that may never be answered.
"The body talks to itself," Shires says, taking a break in one of the hospital's fourth-floor waiting rooms. "I operated on a patient's 60-year-old liver recently. It had grown as he grew, and stopped growing in his adolescence. When it got a little cancer on it, I removed half of it. Somehow the 'on' switch gets turned back on and it starts growing. How does the body perceive it's only half there, and when it's fully grown it stops growing? Take 80 percent of the liver out and in a couple of months, it's back.
"It's God; it's magic. It makes you religious. Who in creation planned you'd need to grow a liver back?"
Shires talks quickly, in part because his beeper could go off any second and he'd have to leave, yet also because he seems hardly able to contain his excitement.
"This is something different every day," he says. "It's like fishing in the ocean. You cast your lines, but until you pull it up and look, you don't know what's there. What's real is what we hold in our hands, what we see with our eyes, what we smell.
"We're born and we die, and all things conspire to get us through the journey."
For most of our lives, during much of that jaunt, we tend to take our bodies for granted. We don't think to stop and marvel, though well we should: A cut that bled through a paper napkin last week is glass-smooth skin today. A baby is born, each finger and toe a perfect creation.
Floss, and you're less likely to get heart disease. Lose weight, and your body rejoices with a chorus of lowered cholesterol, brighter mood, reduced risk of diabetes. Quit smoking, and almost immediately your lungs are clearer. Get one massage and your immune system becomes more resilient.
Snap your fingers. Swim a lap. Sleep. Stand on a street corner and watch marathoners run by. Each moves forward, yet each body is different; each pace, each form, each landing of the feet on concrete. What makes one run faster than another, or a basketball player jump higher, or a piano player's fingers move in staccato steps? How do the body's parts work together to make that happen, or falter to prevent the simplest of movements?
Sometimes, it takes a breakdown in this system to draw attention to how wonderful it is. Since the end of August, my father has been in and out of hospitals and rehabilitation centers. At 83, his body has endured congestive heart failure, a broken back; one surgery was to insert a pacemaker, another to remove a melanoma. With age, his skin has become thin — not in the way his sensitive daughter's is, but quite literally. When I see him, he frequently has a new place on his arm that's bleeding.
Yet neck-and-neck with his health issues is his determination to strike back at what his body is hurling at him. Until he went to rehab, he never understood the appeal of exercise. Yet he looked forward to and excelled at the physical-therapy sessions that still help strengthen his body, and which helped get him home.
I sat in on some of them, watched a group of people brought together by fate and circumstance: The man with the half-spiral of stitching encircling his shaved head, the young woman in the electric wheelchair, the older woman on oxygen. They held tiny weights no heavier than a box of cereal, made moves however slight.
Yet their bodies responded; I could see my dad getting stronger. At the end of each three-hour session, he'd say, "Honey, that felt great."
Dad will never run a marathon; he may never walk more than a block or two. But he does what he can with what he has been given. His accomplishments — manipulating his wheelchair, rolling into bed without twisting his back — are every bit as successful as my son's when he hurls a volleyball over the net at nose-breaking speed, or triple-jumps a few inches farther than he did a month ago.
We're entrusted, each of us, to make the most of this gift which we are granted. I will never look as young, weigh as little or be as tall as I might like. My nose won't be as cute as my best friend's, my teeth straight as my son's, my feet small as my mom's.
Truth to tell and for the most part, that's OK by me. What matters is that I am able to tie my shoes in a double knot, and to pull the warm red cap my father gave me over my ears. I can start running, because even if I don't go as fast or far as I would like, I will do it, simply because I can.
It's just my way of whispering — once I get started I don't have much breath for anything else — thank you. For this most precious of gifts
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