Massage Therapy: Does It Do Anything?

When appropriate the inclusion of massage therapy as a readily accessible adjunct to regular medical care may be of benefit for several conditions.

Massage Therapy: Does It Do Anything

Massage therapy has a growing body of evidence supporting its effectiveness in reducing pain and improving health-related quality of life in a variety of health conditions, including but not limited to symptoms of depression in people with dementia (Watt et al., 2021), low back pain (Qaseem et al., 2017), lumbar spinal stenosis (Bussières et al., 2021), persistent headaches (Côté et al., 2019), temporomandibular joint disorder (Randhawa et al., 2016), and chronic pain (Busse et al., 2017).

In terms of clinical responses to massage therapy these therapeutic outcomes may be attributed to specific effects (affective touch, mechanical factors, neurological factors) and contextual factors (placebo effect, natural history, regression to the mean) (Bialosky et al., 2018;Vigotsky & Bruhns, 2015).

References

Bialosky, J. E., Beneciuk, J. M., Bishop, M. D., Coronado, R. A., Penza, C. W., Simon, C. B., & George, S. Z. (2018). Unraveling the Mechanisms of Manual Therapy: Modeling an Approach. The Journal of orthopaedic and sports physical therapy, 48(1), 8–18. doi:10.2519/jospt.2018.7476

Busse, J. W., Craigie, S., Juurlink, D. N., Buckley, D. N., Wang, L., Couban, R. J., Agoritsas, T., Akl, E. A., Carrasco-Labra, A., Cooper, L., Cull, C., da Costa, B. R., Frank, J. W., Grant, G., Iorio, A., Persaud, N., Stern, S., Tugwell, P., Vandvik, P. O., & Guyatt, G. H. (2017). Guideline for opioid therapy and chronic noncancer pain. CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne, 189(18), E659–E666. https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.170363

Bussières, A., Cancelliere, C., Ammendolia, C., Comer, C. M., Zoubi, F. A., Châtillon, C. E., Chernish, G., Cox, J. M., Gliedt, J. A., Haskett, D., Jensen, R. K., Marchand, A. A., Tomkins-Lane, C., O’Shaughnessy, J., Passmore, S., Schneider, M. J., Shipka, P., Stewart, G., Stuber, K., Yee, A., … Ornelas, J. (2021). Non-Surgical Interventions for Lumbar Spinal Stenosis Leading To Neurogenic Claudication: A Clinical Practice Guideline. The journal of pain, 22(9), 1015–1039. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2021.03.147

Côté, P., Yu, H., Shearer, H. M., Randhawa, K., Wong, J. J., Mior, S., … Lacerte, M. (2019). Non-pharmacological management of persistent headaches associated with neck pain: A clinical practice guideline from the Ontario protocol for traffic injury management (OPTIMa) collaboration. European journal of pain (London, England), 23(6), 1051–1070. doi:10.1002/ejp.1374

Qaseem, A., Wilt, T. J., McLean, R. M., Forciea, M. A., Clinical Guidelines Committee of the American College of Physicians, Denberg, T. D., Barry, M. J., Boyd, C., Chow, R. D., Fitterman, N., Harris, R. P., Humphrey, L. L., & Vijan, S. (2017). Noninvasive Treatments for Acute, Subacute, and Chronic Low Back Pain: A Clinical Practice Guideline From the American College of Physicians. Annals of internal medicine, 166(7), 514–530. https://doi.org/10.7326/M16-2367

Randhawa, K., Bohay, R., Côté, P., van der Velde, G., Sutton, D., Wong, J. J., … Taylor-Vaisey, A. (2016). The Effectiveness of Noninvasive Interventions for Temporomandibular Disorders: A Systematic Review by the Ontario Protocol for Traffic Injury Management (OPTIMa) Collaboration. The Clinical journal of pain, 32(3), 260–278. doi:10.1097/AJP.0000000000000247

Vigotsky, A. D., & Bruhns, R. P. (2015). The Role of Descending Modulation in Manual Therapy and Its Analgesic Implications: A Narrative Review. Pain research and treatment, 2015, 292805. doi:10.1155/2015/292805

Watt, J. A., Goodarzi, Z., Veroniki, A. A., Nincic, V., Khan, P. A., Ghassemi, M., Lai, Y., Treister, V., Thompson, Y., Schneider, R., Tricco, A. C., & Straus, S. E. (2021). Comparative efficacy of interventions for reducing symptoms of depression in people with dementia: systematic review and network meta-analysis. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 372, n532. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n532