Tag Archive for: Massage Therapy Act

Massage Therapy

Massage For Young Children

/in , ,

Countless studies and pediatric research have shown that massage therapy is supremely beneficial for a wide variety of conditions in young children. As a matter of fact, these studies revealed that massage therapy for young children is a crucially important supplemental treatment to conventional medicine.

However, these studies further showed that, in many cases, massage therapy on its own works better in relieving symptoms of many disturbing conditions than do medications and other standard procedures associated with Western medicine.

massage

According to the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMA), more than twenty percent of all children, from newborns to toddlers and early school year children, are afflicted with eczema at some point in their young lives and roughly the same percentage is true for infants and young children suffering from traumatic burns. For that reason, the pain and suffering of trauma burns and eczema are counted among the most common pediatric skin conditions in the United States. Most studies bring to light the following findings:

  • Young burn trauma patients who were treated with a massage therapy sessions for approximately thirty minutes before any kind of medical or nursing procedures, were more relax physically as well as mentally through the process and they, therefore, experienced less discomfort or pain.

It is important to stress here that the massage treatment was applied only to areas which were not affected by burns.

  • Young children suffering from eczema (also known as atopic dermatitis) who were given massage treatments before and while being treated with skin medications such as emollients and ointments exhibited less apprehension and they were more willing to cooperate. In addition, the physical conditions of their skins dramatically improved as redness subsided, as did lichenification, scaling, excoriation and pruritus.

The therapy in these conditions ideally consists of two phases. First phase — to ensure smooth strokes during the massage treatment, the child’s body is moisturized with a dermatitis medication. Second phase — being very careful to avoid particularly sensitive areas of the body, a series of varied massage techniques is used on the child’s face, chest, stomach, legs and arms.

The Children’s Mercy Hospital of Kansas City, Missouri has been using massage therapy to alleviate chronic pain from headaches and migraines in young children and, in the process, also relieving their levels of anxiety and distress, lowering their heart rates, improving their gastrointestinal systems, promoting the release of endorphins and bringing their entire bodies to a state of calmness. And all these positive effects seem to be immediate or nearly immediate.

Applying massage therapies to infants and young children is not at all a newly discovered concept as it has been a daily practice in the Eastern and African cultures for many generations. They understood that the first sense to develop in humans is the sense of touch and that it is essential to health and wellness. Massage treatments for the young members among ancient cultures served to heal, to energize, to calm and to reinforce close bonding and the sense of trust and security.

Having been working zealously on the subject of massage for young children for the past ten or so years, Dr. Tiffany Field and her associates at the Touch Research Institute (TRI) in Miami, Florida insist that, “Every child, no matter the age, should be massaged at bedtime on a regular basis.”

Massage Therapy

Massage Therapy

/in , ,

Massage therapy is just one persuasion from a wide array of other very effective and closely related persuasions such as Acupressure, Body Work, Manipulative Therapy, Manual Lymphatic Drainage, Structural Integration, Alternative Medical Systems, Mind-Body Intervention, Biologically Based Therapy, Energy Therapy, Shiatsu and Tui Na.

And all these as a group come under the wide umbrella of alternative medicine and body-based methods. Massage Therapy is a procedure in which various methods are utilized to manipulate soft tissues of the subject’s body such as the muscles, tendons, ligaments, skin, joints, connective tissues as well as the lymphatic vessels and organs of the gastrointestinal system.

massage

The primary goal of Massage Therapy is to affect physical, psychological and functional curative changes by performing manipulative functions which involve moving or stationery pressure, structured or unstructured force to strategic points, vibration, stroking, kneading, and so on.

On occasion, mechanical devices are used as tools of the trade, but for the most part, Massage Therapy is applied manually with the therapist’s hands, fingers, elbows, forearms and feet as the subject is fully clothed in a massage chair or partially to totally naked but covered with a towel on a massage table or on a mat on the floor.

Ancient scriptures have attested to the fact that massage therapy dates back into antiquity and it has been a fundamental practice in many different cultures such as the Roman, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Indian. Even Biblical writings from c. 493 BC speak of daily massage with olive oil and myrrh being applied to the wives of Xerxes (Esther, 2:9-12) as part of their daily beauty routine. Hippocrates of Cos, a Greek physician of the fourth century BC who is also considered the “father of medicine” and after whose teachings the famous Hippocratic Oath was named, wrote that “The physician must be experienced in many things, but assuredly in rubbing.”

Advancing to more modern times, Massage Therapy gained its popularity in the United States when it was presented by two physicians from New York in the 1800s. Their techniques were an adaptation from the Per Henrik Ling Massage Therapy which was developed in Sweden. With the introduction of new and exciting innovations in medicine during the 1930s and 1940s, the popularity of Massage Therapy waned but was revived again by the athletic community in the 1960s and 1970’s. Massage Therapy was provided as a central medical service for the first time in the United States during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.

Etymologically speaking, the word “massage” in English comes from a long line of derivatives as follows: the French word “massage” which means “the friction of kneading,” which comes from the Arabic word “massa” which means “to touch, feel or handle,” which comes from the Latin word “massa” which means “mass or dough.” The Greek word for “massage” is “anatripsis” and the Latin word is “firctio.” However, the oldest known origin of the English word “massage” comes from the Biblical Hebrew word “me-sakj” which means “to anoint with oil.”

What we refer to as Massage Therapy today has in the past been merely referred to as Massage. However, the “therapy” portion of the Massage Therapy came into being only when the illegal prostitution and sexual services in the United States began advertising themselves and their wares as “massage.” Wanting to distinguish itself, the legitimate massage became Massage Therapy while the illicit continued to be called massage.