“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
.
POSTED: 7:00 PM WED, JANUARY 5, 2011
BY MARYLANDREPORTER.COM
BARBARA PASH
Massage therapists are balking at proposed changes to their continuing education requirements, which they say would increase the cost of licensing by adding additional training requirements.
The changes were approved by the Maryland Board of Chiropractic and Massage Therapy Examiners last February, and published last month in the Maryland Register. The required 30-day public comment period ends Jan. 18, when the proposed changes go to the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for a final decision.
“There is widespread opposition to the changes within the massage therapy community,” said Cher Hunter, a licensed massage therapist and member of the board of the Maryland Chapter of the American Massage Therapy Association. The group is spearheading a letter-writing campaign to get the department to reject the changes.
Hunter contended that the proposed changes would limit the options for continuing education. Massage therapists need to get 24 hours of continuing education credit for each two-year license renewal period.
Under the proposed changes, only courses determined by the board to meet professional standards are acceptable for continuing education credits. Courses given by the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork and by Maryland schools accredited by the Maryland Higher Education Commission would not be accepted — unless approved by the board at least 90 days before the class starts and for a $25 per credit fee. Hunter said this red tape and expense would limit the number of courses and deter national providers from entering the state scene.
“The Maryland changes are much stricter than most states’ requirements,” Hunter said.
The proposed changes would also increase the cost of massage therapist licensing by adding requirements for CPR and first aid training. Hunter estimated this would cost $100 per renewal period, creating an economic hardship. She said the state’s nearly 4,000 massage therapists already pay significantly for their licenses.
“The initial fee is $450 for the state process and $225 fee for the national certifying examination, making the $675 for a state license the most expensive in the country,” Hunter said. In addition, therapists pay $250 every two years for license renewal, plus the cost of continuing education courses.
James Vallone, executive director of the Board of Chiropractic and Massage Therapy Examiners, said that the proposed changes are consistent with the 2008 statute that combined massage therapists and chiropractors under a single board.
The act also changed massage therapy from a practice requiring certification to one that is licensed, and gave the board responsibility for regulating it.
“The proposed changes emanate from that” act, said Vallone.
The board “has to develop implementing regulations that affect that statute,” Vallone continued, “and a review is required by the state to keep the regulations in compliance with the profession and the board’s budget.”
Vallone said the board has been getting “some comments” from the massage therapy community, but that is to be expected whenever changes are proposed. These changes would make massage therapy continuing education requirements consistent with requirements for chiropractors.
Vallone acknowledged that all continuing education units will have to be approved by the board to get credit. “That being said,” he said, providers have “several different options” to enable them to pay a single, $25 fee for multiple offerings.
“The board looked at the cost — whether it would diminish the availability of quality courses — and came to the conclusion that it would not,” said Vallone. “We are not eliminating any certifying agency.”
Shaky Evidence Behind Massage Therapy for Autism
(Reuters Health) - Massage has become a fairly popular alternative therapy for autism, but there is only limited evidence suggesting it is helpful, a new research review shows.
Researchers say some studies did find benefits -- for instance in language and social skills -- but small patient samples and other problems make the results unreliable.
Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are a group of developmental disorders that, to varying degrees, hinder a person's ability to communicate, socialize and build relationships.
There is no cure, but special education programs and behavioral and language therapies are standard. Often, parents also turn to alternative approaches for additional help, including special diets or art and music therapy.
In general, massage or "touch" therapy is thought to have both physical and emotional benefits. For children with autism, it could have effects on the nervous and hormonal systems that may help ease some of their difficulties, explained Dr. Myeong Soo Lee of the Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine in Daejeon, the lead researcher on the new study.
And parents seem to be putting some hope into that idea: Two recent U.S. studies of children with ASDs found that 11 percent to 16 percent had undergone massage therapy.
But whether it actually works is unclear.
In their search of the medical literature, Lee and his colleagues found only six clinical trials that tested massage therapy against standard therapies for children with autism.
There were some promising findings, Lee said. Children who received massage plus special education, for instance, improved their social abilities and "daily living" skills, like dressing and feeding themselves.
And those who had massage added to language therapy made bigger strides in communicating than those who had language therapy alone.
However, all of the studies had fundamental shortcomings, according to the researchers: None included more than 50 children and they lasted only between one and five months.
There were also problems in the studies' methods that put them at a high risk of bias. In some cases, for example, the researchers assessing the children knew which ones had gotten massage therapy and which ones had not, so they might be more inclined to see progress in the former.
The bottom line, the researchers write, is that "firm conclusions cannot be drawn" as to whether massage therapy aids children with autism.
On the other hand, the researchers are not advising parents against finding a massage therapist with experience in working with children with autism.
If parents are interested in the therapy, Lee said, he knows of no serious potential risks of massage for children with autism. But as far as effectiveness, more rigorous studies are warranted, he and his colleagues write.
SOURCE: bit.ly/ggn3tm Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, online December 28, 2010.
