Massage is among the very earliest of manual healing arts known to humankind. Today, massage is one of the gentle alternatives to conventional back pain therapy. It has long been known that massage relaxes tight muscles, fascia, and adhesions, normalizing dysfunctional connective tissues, relieving spasms, improving mobility and circulation, facilitating the flow of interstitial fluid, helping to eliminate toxins, and is a major contributor to healthy homeostasis.
   See scoliosis. See back pain. See instructions on massage with MD4.
   Many people have soft tissue problems in their back and don't realize it until they get a good massage and feel the difference after treatment. Top quality neuromuscular therapy (NMT) treatments are expensive and unaffordable to most people.

Medical News and Back Massagers

   Massage techniques are as old as the animal kingdom itself. Observing lower life-forms will reveal this. One therapist learns from another, all the way back to prehistory. Modern massage therapists learn from those who learned from chiropractors and osteopaths like Stanley Leaf, who evolved his techniques from "Pranotherapy" by Dewanshard Varma, a practitioner of Hindu manipulation in Paris during the 1930's. Leaf learned from common sense and intuition. It is like scratching an itch. You just have to know how to do it the best way as it happens. We all have the ability for massage, too. Diagnosis and treatment in massage are both intuitive.

   Most soft tissue back problems are neuromuscular lesions that inhibit circulation and reduce the pain threshold. Neuromuscular therapy (NMT) breaks down collagen fibers of connective tissue lesions associated with chronic contractions, tensions, adhesions, muscle spasms, fibrositic contractures, fibrous infiltration, and hard indurated tissue. The resulting release normalizes nerves and increases circulation to excrete toxic fluids and bring in oxygen and nutrients.

   The University of Miami School of Medicine Touch Research Institute, devoted solely to the scientific study of touch and its application in the fields of science and medicine, has published over eighty research studies regarding the benefits of massage therapy. With a team of distinguished researchers representing Harvard, Princeton, Duke, McGill, and Maryland Universities, research began in 1982 and continues today showing that massage has numerous beneficial effects on human well-being.
Briefly, besides the obvious benefits stated above, the conclusions are that massage:

  • improves mood
  • decreases depression and anxiety
  • improves sleep patterns
  • increases natural pain killers
  • enhances alertness
  • strengthens the immune system

   Published abstracts and detailed research studies on massage can be obtained from:
University of Miami School of Medicine Library • 305-243-6441
or from Tiffany Field, Ph.D., Director, Touch Research Institute
University of Miami School of Medicine
PO Box 016820 (D-820)
1601 NW 12th Avenue
Miami, FL 33101
Tel. 305-243-6781 • Fax. 305-243-6488