Massage Magazine
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By Karen Menehan December 2, 2016


A new report indicates the U.S. has a big problem with sleep deprivation—a problem that has “a significant effect” on the American economy.
Why Sleep Matters—The Economic Costs of Insufficient Sleep, released Nov. 29 by RAND Corporation, quantifies the economic losses due to sleep deprivation among workers in five different countries: the U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany and Japan, according to a press release.
The U.S. topped the list with the most workdays lost to bad sleep, and the biggest financial loss—up to $411 billion; it was followed by Japan, then Germany, the U.K. and Canada.
We all know what a restful night’s sleep feels like compared with one that is restless; sleep supports physical, emotional and mental functioning. Studies have indicated that sleep disturbances are associated with obesity, depression, cardiovascular risk factors and neurological disorders.
Among the RAND report’s findings:

• Sleep deprivation increases the risk of mortality by 13 percent and leads to the U.S. losing around 1.2 million working days a year.

• Higher risk of mortality and lower productivity levels caused by bad sleep have a significant effect on a nation’s economy.

• Increasing nightly sleep from under six hours to between six and seven hours could add $226.4 billion to the U.S. economy.

Massage for Sleep?The questions for massage therapists—and clients—are, can massage therapy help people get a better night’s sleep? And can massage therapy increase a person’s ability to fall—and stay—asleep, on a regular basis?
So far, research indicates the potential for massage therapy to benefit sleep, a benefit especially related to massage therapy’s ability to reduce stress and effect the relaxation response—outcomes that have been studied more than massage and sleep have been.
The effect of stress on sleep has been investigated, with researchers having looked at insomnia impacted by post-traumatic stress disorder, for example.
And an earlier study by RAND, a nonprofit that conducts research and analysis, Chronic Stress is Prospectively Associated with Sleep in Midlife Women, released in October 2015, noted, “Chronic stress is prospectively associated with sleep disturbance in midlife women, even after adjusting for acute stressors at the time of the sleep study and other factors known to disrupt sleep. These results are consistent with current models of stress that emphasize the cumulative effect of stressors on health over time.”
In his article, “How Soft Tissue Manipulation May Contribute to A Good Night’s Sleep,” (MASSAGE Magazine, August 2015), Roman Torgovitsky, Ph.D., wrote, “Many of the relaxation effects of massage therapy are likely to be mediated by the vagus nerve, according to Tiffany Field, Ph.D., director of the Touch Research Institute (TRI), at the University of Miami School of Medicine in Miami, Florida.”
Torgovitsky recounted that Field had told him, “‘The vagus nerve is a major parasympathetic nerve that sends efferent signals of relaxation to most vital organs … Stimulating pressure receptors in various parts of the body sends signals to the vagus nerve in the brain, [and] activation of the vagus nerve lowers heart rate, reduces blood pressure, increases gastric motility and relaxes muscles of the face and voice.’
“Numerous studies conducted by Field and colleagues show that massage reduces levels of stress hormones such as cortisol,” Torgovitsky continued. “TRI has not conducted research specifically on massage and sleep; however, cortisol can increase arousal and wakefulness, and interfere with deep sleep.”



Studies on Massage for SleepSome research has looked at the effect of massage therapy and related complementary health care practices on sleep quality, but primarily for specialized populations, rather than the general population.
Such studies include:

• “Massage Improves Sleep in Postpartum Women”
• “Massage Improves Sleep, Decreases Pain and Substance P in Fibromyalgia Patients”
• “Massage Enhances Sleep Quality for Hospitalized Adolescents with Cancer”
• “Massage Therapy, Occlusal Splint Reduce Sleep Bruxism Pain”
• “Acupressure Improves Sleep Among Menopausal Women”
• “Aromatherapy Improves Sleep”

Sleep-Related HelpThe new RAND report does not recommend massage for sleep improvement; it suggests that individuals wake up at a set time consistently; limit the use of computers and smartphones before bedtime; and exercise during the day. It also says employers could offer nap spaces to employees, and that public authorities could “support health professionals in providing sleep-related help.”
The report is in part based on VitalityHealth’s Britain’s Healthiest Workplace study, in which RAND Europe and the University of Cambridge conducted analysis and research support. The report Why Sleep Matters—The Economic Costs of Insufficient Sleep involves independent research and analysis from RAND Europe.


About the AuthorKaren Menehan is MASSAGE Magazine’s editor in chief. Her recent articles for massagemag.com include “New Massage Continuing Education Plan Met with Opposition” and “Massage Therapy for Military Veterans.”

Massage Magazine
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By Amy Bradley Radford, L.M.T., B.C.T.M.B. December 1, 2016


Inflammation is something we as massage therapists witness daily in the clients on our tables.In a sad way, inflammation creates job stability for massage therapists, because inflammation oftentimes results in pain; accompanies arthritis and other conditions; and is growing in prevalence.
Inflammation is also an aspect of diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, heart disease and vascular dementia, which can make effective massage treatment and outcome difficult.
According to researchers C.R. Green and L.F. Nicholson, “a number of chronic diseases, including neurodegenerative, cardiovascular and metabolic disorders, are associated with genetic susceptibility. Some may originate on exposure to an environmental stimulus. Regardless of genetic predisposition or external stimulus, these chronic diseases, once triggered, share an inflammatory component making them effectively persistent ‘wounds.’
“There is also increasing evidence that the presence of one disease can cause activation of another apparently unrelated disease, leading to multiple disorders via activation of an immune response that ‘fast forwards’ disease progression,” they added. (“Interrupting the inflammatory cycle in chronic diseases–do gap junctions provide the answer?” Cell Biology International, 2008.)
However, I think the real question in your mind is probably not “What is inflammation?” I believe what more therapists want to understand is why some people heal from inflammation while others do not. And, of course, how a massage therapist can facilitate that healing outcome.
I believe a two-part understanding of how massage affects inflammation and which massage approach can help is best.


Acute and Chronic PhasesEach person is biologically programmed to heal. Our bodies have an amazing method to heal themselves from just about anything, and that process is called inflammation.
This process has a governor—the immune system, which supplies the necessary, raw materials to start, work through the pre-organized steps, and finish the inflammatory process.
The involvement of the immune system helps you understand why those with autoimmune issues have inflammatory system issues, from overactive inflammation, to inflammation failure.
There is a three-month healing phase for acute healing and a phase that can last up to two years—or more—for chronic phase inflammation, according to many sources.
The chronic phase, and why it takes so long for some clients to finish it, is what I would like to talk about.
There is more to inflammation than just the period of time that you see the classic signs of redness, pain, swelling and heat. Those presentations exist during the acute phase—and this phase is about damage control; pain control; cleanup; large-scale remodeling and rebuilding of tissue, or scar tissue replacement; bacterial or viral control; and security and welfare of the tissue and body as an organism. There is a tremendous amount of energy allocated to this intense, 12-week process.
Chronic phase inflammation is really about detailed repair, long-term strength of a tissue, ability to withstand wear and tear, functionality, mobility, bacterial or viral control, and many other functions that occur once the body knows it is out of danger.
The energy allocated to the chronic process is much less than what is allocated during the acute process. The body is out of danger. Continued tissue remodeling and healing at this point must be integrated into the multitude of bodily functions of daily life.



When Good Inflammation Becomes BadThere is much study today on the harmful effects of long-term chronic inflammation. As mentioned, there can be an increase in heart disease, joint disease, immune system issues and many other deteriorating factors that come from the body always being in a chronic state of inflammation.
The inflammatory process becomes harmful to the body when the chronic phase never finishes its remodeling phase. Re-injury occurs, causing inflammation to return to the acute phase, starting the process over again, according to many sources.
The inflammatory system was never meant to be turned on to that degree all the time. A few of the factors that force the body to maintain this constant setting are:
1. More injury occurs to the tissue. This can be damage from overuse, not enough time to heal an area before using it again, reinfection from bacterial or viral invasion, or autoimmune components.
2. Medications that repeatedly stop certain chemical reactions from completing their processes in the chronic phase of healing, such as overuse of anti-inflammatory medication.
3. Unresolved pain. Pain plays a huge factor in how inflammation turns on and off. (See the section titled “Inflammation, pain and massage,” page 45.)

The Connection Between Inflammation and Energy DepletionThere will always be one common denominator with the chronic inflammation process, in my professional opinion: There is just not enough available energy to finish the job.
Energy is a lot like money. We all have certain bills that come due every month. Typically, you plan and budget for those expenditures, allowing yourself a certain amount of spending cash. If you handle your money responsibly, you also have a savings account that you regularly contribute to for unforeseen future needs or special events.
When the day comes that you need money for a car repair or medical bill, you have it available so that it does not have an impact on your monthly budget. You have set aside the necessary surplus to cover your needs.
If you don’t have a savings account, you still have to pay the additional expense to fix your car, and that directly impacts your monthly budget. The typical scenario outcomes are that something gets a partial payment, put off until next month, or not paid at all. You get behind because there wasn’t enough money to pay for everything.
We have all been there. We do our best to spread out the effects of not having enough money across the board, trying to put a little bit toward everything so that we remain in good standing with our credit. However, the total required amount cannot be paid at that time. We just hope that sometime in the future we can catch up—or we have to find more money to catch up.
Our bodies do exactly the same thing; just replace the word money with energy.
When there isn’t enough energy to cover everything we need to do, then the body starts allocating partial energy disbursements to different functions. Yes, the liver is running—but not cleansing as well as it should. The muscles are moving—but pain-reduction chemical production is lowered or depleted, and you have more muscle stiffness and achiness. Chronic inflammation is still healing an area—but its processes are slowed, prolonging the completion of the remodeling phase, creating a weaker area that is set up for injury again in the future, according to Maureen A. Hardy, author of “The Biology of Scar Formation,” published in Physical Therapy in 1989.
If you have several areas of chronic inflammation occurring at the same time, severe energy depletion occurs and the body is unable to finish the healing process. Breakdown occurs, the acute phase of inflammation restarts, and more energy is required again. This is when we start to see the disease process begin.



Inflammation, Pain and MassageIn the last 20 years, I have learned that one of the greatest contributors to creating an energy surplus is pain reduction. I have a favorite saying that simplifies how we affect the inflammation process with massage: “The body can either fight pain or heal. It does not do both, at the same time, very well.”
As a massage therapist, you have the ability to use your hands to directly affect pain, and, therefore, energy. I believe that is the essence of how massage creates the opportunity for natural healing.
Massage can therefore be seen basically as debt management. It can be like someone stepping in to help you figure out how to spend more wisely or finding a way to make more money to pay more off. Whichever way you look at it, healing is a process that requires you to get yourself out of energy debt before it can occur.
Massage creates many small changes that, when you add them together, have a total overall effect on the amount of available energy the body can use to heal itself.
It isn’t so much that massage heals the body; it is that massage can free up displaced energy expenditures so that the body then has the required surplus of energy it needs to heal itself.
In a general massage session, a client’s body can experience several of the following:
• A drop in heart rate.
• A drop in the rate of nerve impulses.
• A decrease in the amount of perceived stress—with a correlating drop in pain perceived.
• A direct impact on an area of pain—physically, mentally and emotionally. You feel taken care of; your pain has been touched and validated; relief is given; you have helped yourself.
• A change in hormone—including cortisol—output that soothes and calms the body.
• Improved and increased digestion.
• Lymph drainage.
These effects of massage therapy compound when added together to create an energy surplus that the body then uses to heal itself. The more pain, inflammation and healing required, the more repetition is suggested to help the body naturally.
This is one of the reasons why fibromyalgia sufferers do better with frequent, short massage sessions. These clients have much energy debt occurring, and the more times massage can create an energy surplus for the body, the closer the client can get to finding a way to manage his or her pain.



Massage and Stress ReliefA couple of years ago, researchers determined that chronic psychological stress is related to the body “losing its ability to regulate the inflammatory response.”
As we know, massage therapy relieves stress by helping activate the relaxation response; inspiring the release of oxytocin; and simply giving clients the opportunity to tune out and relax.
A research team led by Carnegie Mellon University’s Sheldon Cohen, Ph.D., summarized: “Stress wreaks havoc on the mind and body. Until now, it has not been clear exactly how stress influences disease and health. Now researchers have found that chronic psychological stress is associated with the body losing its ability to regulate the inflammatory response.”
According to a Carnegie Mellon press release, “Cohen argued that prolonged stress alters the effectiveness of cortisol to regulate the inflammatory response because it decreases tissue sensitivity to the hormone. Specifically, immune cells become insensitive to cortisol’s regulatory effect. In turn, runaway inflammation is thought to promote the development and progression of many diseases.
“‘When under stress, cells of the immune system are unable to respond to hormonal control, and consequently, produce levels of inflammation that promote disease,’ Cohen said. ‘Because inflammation plays a role in many diseases such as cardiovascular, asthma and autoimmune disorders, this model suggests why stress impacts them as well.’”
He added, “Knowing this is important for identifying which diseases may be influenced by stress and for preventing disease in chronically stressed people.”

Pressure, Time and TechniquesMy next favorite saying about massage in general is, “You can give and take away at the same time.”
What this means is that you must be selective as a therapist with what type of bodywork you apply to each client based on the different levels of inflammation and energy depletion.
Realize that therapeutic inflammation, or aggressive pressure techniques, for people who are exhausted and in pain will typically result in more inflammation, pain and exhaustion. You are giving them energy through the basic application of massage, but also creating more inflammation, which requires energy to heal.
At the end of the session, the massage given to the body created healing energy but forced it to allocate it to another area by creating acute inflammation in a muscle. Being able to create a positive change in the body, and chronic inflammation, requires using the appropriate pressure, time and techniques for a healing outcome to occur.
Sometimes, for massage to be effective in pain management, its application needs to be different from what some massage therapists might believe is correct. It may not be about applying more pressure, creating more inflammation, and energy debt. It can be simple and basic—which brings me to my last favorite saying, “create the healing energy for the body and then let it heal itself.”


About the AuthorAmy Bradley Radford, L.M.T., B.C.T.M.B., has been a massage therapist and educator for more than 20 years. She is the owner and developer of Pain Patterns and Solutions Seminars CE courses. She has authored several books, including Defining Expectations for Massage Therapists. She wrote “Better Barter: How to Create Positive Trades” for MASSAGE Magazine (May 2016) and “At the Table, Always Be Polite” for massagemag.com (June 1).

!by John Weeks, Publisher/Editor of The Integrator Blog News and Reports

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The banner under which the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine (the Academy) gathered for its conference the past two years announced ambition: People, Planet, Purpose. Since the intent to create the organization was made public by former board certified integrative cardiologist and integrative medicine physician Mimi Guarneri, MD (pictured) in October 2013, the idea has always been grand.
Picture it: one huge “big tent,” with a global reach for virtually all of the licensed integrative health and medicine professions – from medical doctors to chiropractors, nutritionists, nurses, acupuncturists, social workers, naturopathic doctors and more. Also envisioned under the tent’s umbrella: consumers, educators, researchers, policy makers, and others. The historic hierarchy of vertical relationships would be turned horizontal and mutually respectful. The movement would shift from the USA-Eurocentrism to a respectful global embrace of WHO-backed strategies for traditional medicine products, practices and practitioners. For a movement with a tendency toward grandiosity – I include the present writer among the afflicted – this AIHM vision seemed to double down on the wishful transformative influence.
In early November, I joined with 1,050 others from 19 professions, 23 countries and 45 states and attended the week-long 2016 iteration of AIHM’s gathering. The experience offered a chance to evaluate how AIHM is doing. I am not a disinterested observer. I was involved deeply in the organization’s planning starting in October 2013. I then served on the founding board until January of 2016. I was honored to be asked to deliver a plenary on the opening day of the conference this year.
Herculean challenges
Creating the Big Tent has not always been easy. Guarneri, the founding chair Danny Friedland, MD (below right), and the founding membership chair Molly Roberts, MD, each spoke during the 2016 conference to the excitement and challenges of bringing 20 chiefs and veterans of many fields and battles into one expansive, founding board of directors. Most of us brought decades of differing experience – and baggage! – informing the dreams and recommendations we projected into the vessel of possibility the AIHM vision represented.
We experienced quickly how, though we were aligned in a shared mission of transforming medicine, the cultural-economic experiences and power contexts arrayed representatives of different professions in very different places in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Integrative doctors, for instance, struggle to create saner and health-creation focused practices while knowing that the skills for which they were educated guarantee them a good living, even if not optimal. Their livelihoods are secure.
Meantime, those in non-MD fields still ponder fundamental issues of inclusion and survival. Can they gain insurance coverage? Licensing in all states? Will their modalities be co-opted? Adding a layer of complexity was that a tight group of holistic and integrative MDs were in the driver’s seat – reasonably, as they had brought the start-up funding and membership to the table. They chose to open their power center to others from different professions less empowered by the surrounding culture. This was new terrain for all of us. All this took place, and continues to, against a backdrop of a new organization’s requirement to move from generous start-up from philanthropic gifts to operational stability and sustainability. In total: these are clearly Herculean challenges, that the Academy is intent on addressing.
Positive Signs
Simple measures of accomplishment for AIHM were the size and diversity of the conference turnout. The participants – members and non-members – filled the main hall to overflowing at the Paradise Point Resort and Spa in San Diego. At the annual AIHM membership meeting, Roberts reported, as noted above, that the “over 1050 attendees” hailed from 45 states, and 23 countries. This is a fine reach for a young organization. Roberts added the organizational accent on interprofessional to the assessment of diversity. While the preponderance of participants were medical doctors exploring integrative strategies, “over 19 professions were represented.”
While I haven’t exact numbers, in a call out to the audience during my plenary it looked like over 60 percent had not been present the prior year. These likely newcomers to integrative health and medicine were attracted by a remarkable set of luminaries that AIHM is able to draw: Hyman, Ornish, Dossey (Larry and Barbara), VA leader Lisi, Guarneri, Bonakdar, Meeker, Hanaway, Lowdog, and Pizzorno. Those at a post-conference jointly sponsored with the Consciousness in Healing Initiative, heard from a dozen leaders in biofield medicine, including Beverly Rubik and author Deepak Chopra.  Certainly, many were magnetized by the names as well as by the organization.
The positive evidence that the Big Tent is shaping up is most evident in AIHM’s signature project besides its conference: the kick-off of what AIHM calls “the First Truly Interprofessional Fellowship for Integrative Clinicians.” AIHM forged a relationship with the remarkable Oregon Collaborative for Integrative Medicine to deliver the onsite content. A presentation at the conference from course director Tieraona Lowdog, MD and associate director Seroya Crouch, ND, reportedly drew hundreds of interested participants. AIHM is presently signing up its new cohort.
The interprofessional infrastructure was further reinforced this year with more significant integration of its core leadership team. Under founding chair Friedland’s leadership, Bill Meeker, DC, MPH, the president of Palmer West and the former director of the NIH funded chiropractic research initiative is now AIHM treasurer. Meeker is also a member of the board of the interprofessional Academic Collaborative for Integrative Health and brings the work of its 17 North American organizations into the room. The board secretary is now integrative nurse Lucia Thornton, RN, ThD, a past president of the American Holistic Nurses Association. Thornton also provides AIHM a direct line to the Integrative Health Policy Consortium and its 19 Partner Organizations, with which AIHM netted a formal Memorandum of Understanding on policy issues.  These changes were made during a challenging decision to more that halve the original board to what was deemed to be a more functional unit.
Another interprofessional project this year was AIHM’s partnership with Integrative Therapeutics (IT) and the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians for the Integrative Wisdom project. All year long, the project has published a series of now scores of 1-3 minute snippets of “wisdom” from multiple integrative leaders from interviews recorded at the 2015 AIHM People, Planet, Purpose. These begin to capture a collective sense of the mission of the movement. Fun project. Take a look.
Policy Positions from a Global Event and from the Association Leadership Council
An area of challenge for AIHM in 2016 was the maturation of the Association Leadership Council (ALC). This functional entity was envisioned by many of us as a kind of general assembly for potentially scores of member associations with a stake in the integrative health movement. Some of us envisioned this as a perhaps raucous, democratic, “House of delegates” to explore and collaboratively set and advance policy priorities for the field.
Friedland, the founding AIHM chair, explained to 2016 attendees to the pre-conference Council meeting that AIHM’s need to focus resources on the internal restructuring, on the heavy lifting of the Fellowship, and generally on developing of a sustainable business model meant resources were retracted from the Council. He noted that AIHM remains deeply committed to the ALC. The 15-20 organizational representatives gathered and agreed on some core resolutions:

• Support for an initiative led by Integrative Medicine Consortium to keep access to products from compounding pharmacists.
• Support for Integrative Medicine Access and other efforts to reach patients underserved by integrative health and medicine.
• Support for a program to develop a resource of expert witnesses who might be available to individuals whose practices are unjustly challenged.
• A letter of support for naturopathic physician licensing.

Perhaps the most significant policy related move grew out of AIHM’s first global foray, the June 2016 integrative conference in Stuttgart that drew 650 practitioners. Among those presenting was Zhang Qi, MD, who heads the WHO’s traditional medicine strategy, and parallel leaders from the Pan American Health Organization. At the meeting, AIHM’s director of education Tabatha Parker, ND and others announced a historic Stuttgart Declaration on Integrative Health and Medicine. The document called on government agencies and non-governmental organizations, such as the WHO, to adopt and promote an integrative model.  A petition at Change.org has gathered 6,355 signatures as of November 6, 2016. This was part of a global connectivity that AIHM leaders initiated through attendance at the WHO General Assembly.
Comment: As a conference, the 10-year-old, annual Integrative Healthcare Symposium produced by Diversified Communications, the same company that sponsors this blog, is the field’s most interprofessional of gatherings – and boasts a similar level or practitioner turnout. The difference here is that AIHM is a not-for-profit membership organization – for both individuals and organizations – with a much grander vision and mission. What distinguishes AIHM from other conference companies is its mission of “engaging a global community of health professionals and health seekers in innovative education, training, leadership, interprofessional collaboration, research, and advocacy that embraces all global healing traditions, to promote the creation of health and the delivery of evidence-informed comprehensive, affordable, sustainable person-centered care.”
One huge challenge is in the area of economics. Many in the interprofessional integrative mix are challenged to pay the fees for the conference and for the fellowship. AIHM has worked diligently to find scholarship resources for the latter. It has had an Ambassador’s program to bring in leaders of other disciplines. Solutions are challenging, even as the rest of medicine’s efforts to move ”from volume to value.” The organization’s sustainability needs meant radical challenges to the provider mix had to, reasonably, take a back seat.
In addition, to reach the ends which AIHM promotes requires not only “declaring” but also bringing to fruition the kinds of policy engagement promoted globally in the Stuttgart Declaration and nationally through the resolutions of the Association Leadership Council. This is AIHM’s most distinctive work – moving with and through such collaborations as that with the IHPC 501c4 lobbying organization on major change initiatives. What priorities would such a “General Assembly” of integrative health stakeholders set? What might be accomplished if AIHM – perhaps with designated philanthropic backing for this policy engagement – worked with IHPC to create the space to empower such an assembly? It’s a risky and messy business, democracy.
These steps forward for AIHM are good. I personally look forward to the time when AIHM has the resources to more deeply invest in its work as an interprofessional, activist, listening, broad-based, general assembly-excited membership organization. This is when its distinctive destiny will unfold. AIHM is presently the N of 1 as a Big Tent, individual membership-based operation, in the IHM space.  If you haven’t yet, explore joining and taking this ride.

By John Weeks|

​November 17th, 2016|Featured, News and Commentary|1 Comment
Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!About the Author: John Weeks
John Weeks is a writer, speaker, chronicler and organizer with 32 years of experience in the movement for integrative health and medicine. the long-time founder/editor of The Integrator Blog News & Reports, a primary connective terrain for the diverse stakeholders and professions in the field and was invited in May 2016 to serve as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. Besides his Integrative Practitioner column, he presently writes for Integrative Medicine: A Clinician’s Journal, the Huffington Post and elsewhere. He increasingly enjoys teaching and mentoring. He has keynoted, led plenary sessions, breakouts and offered guest lectures for dozens of organizations ranging from the Bastyr University to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the UCLA School of Medicine to the Institute for Health and Productivity Management, the AANP and AIHM to the American Hospital Association. He has consulted with insurers, employers, professional organizations, universities and government agencies at all levels. As an organizer, Weeks convened the Integrative Medicine Industry Leadership Summits (2000-2002), directed the National Education Dialogue to Advance Integrated Care (2004-2006), fund-raised the start-up of the Integrated Healthcare Policy Consortium (2002), and co-founded the Academic Collaborative for Integrative Health, which he directed 2007-2015. In 2014, three consortia and others combined to grant him a Lifetime Achievement Living Tribute Award. Four academic institutions have granted Weeks honorary doctorates for his work. Seattle-based, he considers himself a particularly lucky soul to have worked remotely while living with his spouse Jeana Kimball, ND, MPH, and their children in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Puerto Rico for 6 of the last 15 years.

By MASSAGE Magazine December 13, 2016


Two different Swedish massage protocols both resulted in significant decreases in markers of anxietyamong a group of healthy women, according to recent research.
The study, “Comparing the effects of two Swedish massage techniques on the vital signs and anxiety of healthy women,” involved 20 healthy women. These subjects were randomly assigned to either a back, neck and chest massage group or a leg, arm and face massage group.
Study participants received three 30-minute massage sessions per week for four weeks during the first stage of the study, followed by a six-week washout period. Then, the women who were in the back, neck and chest massage group were switched to the leg, arm and face massage group and vice versa. Again, the subjects received three 30-minute massage sessions per week for four weeks during this second stage of the study.
According to the researchers, the back, neck and chest massage consisted of 15 minutes of back massage, 12 minutes of chest massage and three minutes of neck massage. The leg, arm and face protocol comprised 15 minutes of leg massage, 10 minutes of arm and hand massage, and five minutes of face massage.
The main outcome measures for this study were blood pressure, pulse, respiratory rate and body temperature. In addition, the participants’ anxiety levels were measured before and after each massage therapy stage.


Results of Regular Swedish Massage SessionsResults of the research revealed women in both massage groups exhibited a significant decrease in systolic blood pressure in the first stage. However, only those in the back, neck and chest massage group showed a significant decrease in diastolic blood pressure as well. As for mean average body temperature, this outcome measure showed a significant drop in the leg, arm and face massage group in the first stage.
Pulse and respiratory rates decreased significantly among the women in both massage groups during the second stage. There was no significant difference in anxiety scores before and after either stage of massage therapy.
“Massage therapy caused a decrease in systolic [blood pressure], pulse and respiratory rate,” stated the study’s authors. “It can be concluded that massage therapy was useful for decreasing the vital signs associated with anxiety in healthy women.”


About the StudyAuthors: Farzaneh Gholami-Motlagh, Mina Jouzi and Bahram Soleymani.
Sources: School of Nursing and Midwifery, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Iran; Department of Nursing and Department of Medicine, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Iran. Originally published in July 2016 in the Iranian Journal of Nursing and Midwifery Research, 21(4), 402-409.