massage therapy for pain?

november17, ASN, RN · Mar 28, 2007

My wife is a massage therapist. She has several clients she sees every week who visit her for pain relief.

Check google scholar for scientific articles about it, and you will find all of them support massage as being effective for pain relief for all types of pathophysiological problems.

Is massage as effective as analgesics? Probably not - Although much anecdotal evidence exists of this that I hear from time to time (some practitioners in the naturopathic community often make these type of claims). I don't think massage therapy would work to reduce pain on a newly post-op patient. In combination with pharmaceuticals I think it is a highly effective non-pharmacological pain intervention that nurses can do.

WDWpixieRN, RN · Mar 28, 2007

My husband is a chiropractor and a big believer in massage therapy and acupuncture for relief of pain...however, he's obviously been trained heavily for this type of therapy...I know after an accident where I was rear-ended last year, I benefited from both of these while under the care of staff in his office!

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Mar 28, 2007

Because of a pinched nerve in my hip I get degrees of pain and muscle spasm in either my pisaform muscle (really, ouch!) or other muscles in my hip and sacral area. Pain medication really doesn't help. One chiropractor sent me to a massage therapist who did deep muscle massage which helps to release the muscle spasms. I noticed a difference when I would get off the massage table immediately afterward, but the relief only lasted a short time. My current chiropractor has been doing some deep massage of some sacral muscles when he detects a spasm to induce the muscles to relax. I have to say that the worst was that dog gone pisaform muscle spasm. I have heard that runners who get spasm of this muscle have better results from stretching it rather than performing any massage.