Massage therapy can ease chronic back pain

The findings drew from a randomized controlled trial are published in the July 5 issue of the 'Annals of Internal Medicine,' the premier internal medicine journal.

Chronic low back pain
Chronic low back pain is a very common complaint in many households. The severity of the pain can range from mild pain to relentless, excruciating in nature and it may be caused by obesity; pregnancy; or job-related stooping, bending, or other stressful postures.

To reach their findings, researchers carried out a randomised controlled trial to compare structural and relaxation (Swedish) massage, and found that both types of massage worked well in relieving chronic low back pain of the participants, with few side effects.

"We found that massage helps people with back pain to function even after six months," said Daniel C. Cherkin, PhD, a senior investigator at Group Health Research Institute that carried out the clinical trial.

"This is important because chronic back pain is among the most common reasons people see doctors and alternative practitioners, including massage therapists," he added. "It's also a common cause of disability, absenteeism, and 'presenteeism,' when people are at work but can't perform well."

Study details
For the study, Dr. Cherkin and colleagues enrolled 400 Group Health Cooperative patients, aged 20 to 65, who had suffered low back pain for at least three months. Their pain was "nonspecific," meaning with no identified cause.

The participants were randomly assigned to one of three treatments for the nagging condition: structural massage- which targets injured ligaments and muscle; relaxation massage- which is the most common form of massage; or usual care- which mostly involved medication.

Patients in both massage groups received hour-long massage treatments weekly for 10 weeks.

Findings
At 10 weeks, it emerged that more than one in three patients who received massages said their back pain had lessened or ceased, while only one in 25 patients who got usual care reported the same.

The researchers also observed that massage recipients spent fewer days in bed, were more active, and took fewer anti-inflammatory medications.

"As expected with most treatments, the benefits of massage declined over time. But at six months after the trial started, both types of massage were still associated with improved function," Cherkin said.

"For people who've tried more conventional treatment with no results, massage is a reasonable thing to try," he said.

It is believed that both structural and relaxation massage therapies stimulate injured tissue and calm the central nervous system.