Book Review : Massage Efficacy Studies at the Touch Research Institute

by Carl Nelson

Massage Efficacy Studies at the Touch Research Institute

Anne Kent Rush, Massage for Total Well-Being: Massage and Meditation for the Seven Centers of Health, with photographs by Victoria Rauhofer, (New York: A Byron Preiss Book, Universe Publishing, Rizzoli International Publications) Nov 2000.

In this book Anne Kent Rush cites the medical studies about the efficacy of massage therapy conducted by Dr. Tiffany Field and her staff at the Touch Research Institute, University of Miami School of Medicine, in collaboration with researchers at the Duke University School of Medicine and at the Harvard Medical School. They discovered that massage (1) improves health in premature babies, (2) helps asthmatics breathe better, (3) lowers anxiety in the depressed, (4) improves students’ ability to concentrate, (5) reduces fear in trauma patients, (6) boosts immune function in HIV-positive patients, and (7) reduces agitation in Alzheimer’s patients. The work in improving the health of premature babies with massage is particularly impressive and has clear implications for treatment of people of all ages. The babies receiving massage are more alert, active, and responsive than the infants that aren’t massaged. These babies also sleep more deeply, are less disturbed by noise, gain weight 47 percent faster, have fewer episodes of breath cessation (apnea), and leave the hospital six days sooner than the control group. In light of these findings, the traditional medical community is beginning to recognize as well as to recommend massage as an integral part of everyone’s daily health regimen.

Summarized in 2001 by Carl W. Nelson