Power of Massage The Healing
From Body Repair to Reversing the Blues by Case Adams
I
n 1886, Dr. William Murrell stated in the British Medical Journal, “Massage is of such inestimable value in the treatment of many intractable diseases that it is regretted that so little is known about it in this country, and that it is so rarely employed as a therapeutic agent.”
A 2013 survey by the American
Massage Association (AMTA) showed that a majority of us are choosing mas- sage therapy to treat such conditions as stress and pain management, according to Winona Bontrager, the association’s immediate past president. Of 1,007 adults surveyed, 75 percent opted for it within the previous year for stress or medical reasons, and 88 percent view massage as effective for pain relief. “A growing body of evidence
shows that massage therapy can be effective for a variety of health condi- tions,” reports Bontrager, adding that massage is rapidly becoming recog- nized as an important part of health and wellness. Cody Landis, a licensed massage
therapist and instructor at the Swedish Institute’s College of Health Sciences, in New York City, explains, “In the last few
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years, massage therapy research has been focusing more on the mechanisms by which the potential health benefits may be occurring—looking at the re- sponse of the brain, the immune system and the mechanisms of repair inside of muscle cells themselves.”
Relieves Stress An AMTA survey reported that 32 percent of positive respondents used massage to relieve stress, and numer- ous recent studies have confirmed this. Research from Harvard Medical School shows that massage reduces pain and anxiety while increasing sleep and quality of life among metastatic can- cer patients. Boston Medical Center researchers saw similar results among 60 cancer patients that underwent port placement surgery; 20-minute mas- sages before and after surgery reduced participants’ stress and anxiety. Australian researchers reporting
in the Journal of Thoracic and Cardio- vascular Surgery found that massage reduced pain, anxiety and muscle tension following heart surgery among 152 cardiac surgery patients. A study from Japan’s Toho University School of
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