Another week, yet another really great article and conclusion to reference from the Massage Therapy Journal. From page 97 of its Winter, 2010 edition, there is an excellent article demonstrating massage therapy’s proven effectiveness in relieving chronic neck and lower back pain, and its possible effectiveness in relieving a slew of other ailments as well.
Indeed, the MTJ article (Study Concludes Massage Is Effective for Chronic Low Back and Neck Pain: How Do We Respond to the Evidence?) references an academic article from the Chiropractic and Osteopathy journal that looks at over 100 academic articles published before October 2009; the article concludes that based on the studies and conclusions from the numerous trials documented in these articles, there is “moderate to high-quality evidence” that healthcare providers can recommend massage therapy for the treatment of chronic neck and lower back pain.
Furthermore, the article states that there is “inconclusive but favorable evidence” that massage therapy could be prescribed to treat symptoms of “osteoarthritis of the knee, fibromyalgia, myofascial pain syndrome, migraine headache and premenstrual sydrome.
While some skeptics may point to this as a reason to refute massage therapy as a treatment for these ailments, in fact the article points out that “inconclusive but favorable” means that research done so far points to massage therapy being an effective treatment, but that more research should be done before it becomes a firm conclusion. This should, therefore, be seen as an “encouraging picture of massage therapy as a health care intervention” and, overall, the article cited from the Chiropractic and Osteopathy journal “will likely become a classic reference on the effectiveness on massage therapy for musculoskeletal conditions.”
Pretty exciting, but I think it’s just a start in the list of ailments massage therapy will eventually be prescribed to treat.