January 28, 2013

Massage May Help Lift Depression



(Reuters Health) - Massage therapy may help relieve symptoms of depression, a new review of the medical literature hints.
The authors of the review, however, acknowledge difficulties with research on the effects of massage, including the fact that it's impossible to "blind" study participants or care providers to whether a person is receiving massage or a comparison treatment.
Nevertheless, they say there is "good evidence to suggest that massage therapy is an effective treatment of depression."
Depression is a huge public health problem, and treatment is often inadequate, Dr. Wen-Hsuan Hou of I-Shou University in Kaohsiung, Taiwan and colleagues note in their report.
While massage can ease stress and tension and may have emotional benefits, the use of massage therapy in depressed patients is "controversial," the investigators note, and "there is no qualitative review of the treatment effect of massage therapy in depressed patients."
To investigate further, they searched for randomized controlled trials of massage therapy in depressed patients. They identified 17 studies including 786 people in all. In 13 of the trials, massage therapy was compared to another active treatment such as Chinese herbs, relaxation exercises, or rest, while four compared massage to a "no treatment" control group. Investigators also used a range of methods for evaluating mood and depression in study participants.
Overall, the studies, which were of "moderate" quality, showed that massage therapy had "potentially significant effects" in alleviating symptoms of depression, the researchers report in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
It's not clear from the analysis, they emphasize, whether a person would need to undergo regular massage therapy for benefits to persist.
There are a number of ways through which massage could help people with depression, the researchers note, for example, by reducing stress and inducing relaxation; building an "alliance" between the therapist and patient; and by causing the body to release the "trust hormone" oxytocin.
"Further well-designed and longer follow-up studies, including accurate outcome measures, are needed," they conclude.
SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, online March 23, 2010.

January 10, 2013

Seven Types of Headaches


Headache pain is the most often reported type of pain in the U.S. Learn about some of the most common types of headache pain, and if massage can help to alleviate or reduce the frequency of this sometimes debilitating infirmity.

By Linda Fehrs, LMT
Some people rarely, if ever, get headaches. Some get them every few weeks or months. Others experience them frequently, several times a week or even every day. More than 9 out of 10 adults will experience headache pain at some point in their lives. It is the most common form of pain and results in time out from work or school. A moderate to severe headache often interferes with normal daily activities.
Although there are only three main categories of headaches, within those divisions are more than 200 individual types, some of which massage therapy may help to relieve or even reduce their occurrences.

Here are seven relatively common types of headaches, symptoms and common therapies used to ease them:

  1. Tension – Tension headaches are the most frequently occurring of all headaches. They affect women more than men. The exact origin of a tension headache is not known, but it is likely a result of muscle contraction, primarily the muscles of the skull, including occipitofrontalis which draws the scalp both posteriorly and anteriorly as well as elevates the eyebrows. When a person becomes stressed – whether it be physical or emotional – so too do the muscles, which then start to spasm, causing pain. The pain is often described as band-like pressure or tightness. Even with the pain of this type of headache, a person can function normally. While massage therapy is not a cure for tension headaches, it can help to relax a person and reduce stress resulting in less frequent and less severe ones.