Experts scrutinizing the studies warn not to read too much into them. The studies are small, few and not well-controlled, they say.
"The only thing I can say with certainty is that a lot of people receiving massage believe there's a benefit, but we don't have solid answers yet," said Albert Moraska, an assistant research professor at the University of Colorado at Denver, who has helped conduct many of these studies.
"We're not able to pinpoint the effect people say they are having, or the results practitioners claim they provide, but I believe that proof will come in time. How often, what type and for whom are all questions the field is working to answer."
And what people believe makes a difference.
"Participants enrolled in these studies and randomly assigned into control and treatment groups need to believe that either treatment could be equally effective," said Dr. Michael Irwin, professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. In fact, in most studies, one group has massage and the other group has nothing. That sets up what scientists call an expectation effect, which can skew findings.
In other words, participants say that massage helped because they think it's supposed to.
--
Belief in massage
Most people, however, don't need convincing. In a random survey conducted by AMTA in 2007, 85% of Americans surveyed believed massage had health benefits, and 1 in 4 reported having had a massage in the past year.
Linda Neumann of San Diego is one who swears by her massage therapy. Since age 7, the now 50-year-old marketing consultant has had chronic hip problems and pain, which has resulted in four surgeries. She's had to take anti-inflammatory or pain medication daily, until recently.
Six months ago, she started seeing a massage therapist who practices a rigorous type of Chinese massage called tuina. After a couple of sessions, she said, she was pain-free. She goes every three weeks, and for the first time in 40 years, is not taking any medication. "The pain had affected me my entire life, and now it's gone. I'm a total believer."
Success stories like those are what draw practitioners to the profession, therapists like Wojskowicz, who will continue to ignore the disparaging innuendoes, and do the legitimate therapeutic massage she was trained to provide.
