Therapeutic Massage Research Findings

 by: P. Sidney Parker

Research on massage therapy, and its benefits, continues to show that it reduces heart rate, lowers blood pressure, increases endorphins, and the circulation of blood and lymph fluids. Research has also shown that therapeutic massage relaxes muscles, and improves range of motion (ROI).

While massage does not increase muscle strength, massage can increase muscle tone. Therapeutic massage also helps the body's homostatic functions thereby decreasing the amount of time needed to recover after exercise or injury which is often caused by muscle stiffness (inflexibility). Massage helps in keeping the proper amount of fluid circulating between muscle fibers, and in rehydrating dehydrated fibers.

Joan Borysenko (www.joanborysenko.com), a medical scientist, licensed clinical psychologist, and cofounder of the Mind/Body Clinic at Harvard Medical School, had this to say when interviewed by the Massage Journal, in 1999:

"Often times people are stressed in our culture. Stress-related disorders make up between 80-and-90 percent of the ailments that bring people to family-practice physicians. What they require is someone to listen, someone to touch them, someone to care. That does not exist in modern medicine.

One of the complaints heard frequently is that physicians don't touch their patients any more. Touch just isn't there. Years ago massage was a big part of nursing. There was so much care, so much touch, so much goodness conveyed through massage. Now nurses for the most part are as busy as physicians. They're writing charts, dealing with insurance notes, they're doing procedures and often there is no room for massage any more.

I believe massage therapy is absolutely key in the healing process not only in the hospital environment but because it relieves stress, it is obviously foundational in the healing process any time and anywhere."

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