“Oh, my aching back!” If you have ever uttered this common lament—or ever feel tempted to in the future—you will want to know about the surprising results of a recent study. Participants included 401 patients, mostly middle-aged women, who had been suffering for at least three months from chronic low-back pain with no identified cause.
Patients were randomly assigned to receive either “usual care” (the standard treatment doctors typically recommend, including painkillers, anti-inflammatories and/or muscle relaxants) or hour-long massages once per week for 10 weeks. Massage recipients got either the commonly available relaxation massage (also called Swedish massage), which aims to produce an overall sense of relaxation…or structural massage, which uses specialized techniques to alleviate musculoskeletal problems that can contribute to back pain (for instance, by lengthening constricted muscles and mobilizing restricted joints).
Results: After 10 weeks, 36% to 39% of patients in the massage groups reported that their back pain was “much better or gone,” versus only 4% of patients in the usual-care group. Also, massaged patients reported spending fewer days in bed, being more active and using less medication than usual-care patients. Surprising: Contrary to expectations, researchers found that relaxation massage was just as effective as the more specialized structural massage at relieving pain and improving patients’ ability to function normally. While the benefits of massage began to decrease after treatment ended, improvement was still evident six months later.
Bottom line: Massage is a generally safe therapy that can be used alone or as a supplement to other treatments for chronic low-back pain. Though relaxation massage typically is not covered by health insurance, some policies do cover structural massage, which is considered similar to physical therapy.
Source: Daniel C. Cherkin, PhD, is a senior investigator at Group Health Research Institute in Seattle and lead author of a study on lower back pain and massage published in Annals of Internal Medicine.
http://www.bottomlinepublications.com/content/article/health-a-healing/touch-here-for-persistent-back-pain?utm_campaign=_BPYxBOB8hWut3F
No comments:
Post a Comment