Massage Therapy Research

Massage Therapy Research is an up and coming part of the massage profession. The Touch Research Institute was one of the first to start actively research the effect of massage. It was created by Tiffany Field. Today there are other groups such as the Massage Research Consortium.

As more research becomes available it is important to understand just what the research means. Just because there is one study done that shows massage does show some improvement in something does not mean it really does.

It is important to be able to analyze research and break it down into something more meaningful for your massage practice. Tracy Walton, a massage and cancer researcher recommends this:

To begin with read the abstract, skip to the discussion, evaluate the methods section for the massage protocol and look for authors who make more accurate statements than judgments about the study or massage results.

Look for randomized, controlled clinical trials which means that there is a control group and the subjects are assigned randomly to each group.

Look for Meta-Analysis or quantitative reviews. A Meta-Analysis is a study of many studies on massage. It provides better data than a randomized control clinical trial.

It is important to also take a look at who is doing the study. Is it funded by money from drug companies or other companies who are trying to prove something. You also have to look at the skill level of the massage therapists and how much training they have. Sometimes it is just nurses doing massage which is quite different. The 'dose' is the length of the session, frequency and how much pressure is used. I don't know how they gauge the pressure in research studies since everything feels different to each person.

Even after a study is complete it does not prove much. You can say that this study shows a strong support that massage will help this condition or disease.

See also:

Anatomy of a Research Article (pdf) by Joseph E. Muscolino D.C.- Massage Therapy Foundation

Understanding Massage Research

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