Massage Therapy

Massage therapists should understand how the autonomic nervous system (ANS) STRESS influences disease, and how massage therapy influences sympathetic STRESS. For example, sophisticated broad spectrum Electro-cardiogram (ECG) measurements before and after massage therapy sessions (N=10) recorded a n 11% increase in sympathetic index STRESS levels post massage therapy in pain patients.

These soon-to-be-published results are seen over a large sample of massage therapy patients. In the first sample, massage alone provided 66% immediate relief from pain, but the efficacy drops to only 43% 48 hours later. The reason why? Massage increased stress levels.

When under <5 minutes of stress reducing MPS is integrated prior to a massage session, the immediate pain relief outcomes increased from 43% to 69% 48 hours later. This 60% increase in pain outcomes is why MPS is the perfect pre-massage adjunctive modality to be added into clinical practice to de-stress patients prior to manually working on any pain patient.