Massage therapy and non-specific low back pain

/
Massage therapy and non-specific low back pain

Non-specific low back pain is a difficult to treat global health burden, one of the reasons for this is that like the name suggests, there is often no clear identifiable cause. A multimodal therapeutic approach was found by the Cochrane Group to be one of the best approaches to managing low back pain. This involves a number of management strategies that include but are not limited to education, reassurance, analgesic medicines and a number of non pharmacological therapies

Read More

New Research on Massage and Cancer

/
New Research on Massage and Cancer

Last year Harvard Medical school hosted the Joint Conference: Acupuncture, Oncology & Fascia. This conference brought together experts in the fields of acupuncture, integrative oncology, cancer biology and mechanobiology. As a follow up to this conference there is now some new literature on physical-based therapies an cancer. 

Read More

Massage Therapy and Concussions

/
Massage Therapy and Concussions

This year has been my third year attending the annual See The Line Concussion Research Symposium. Every year there is something new that I learn and someone brings up old information that I have forgotten, so here I put together some of my notes so massage therapists can have a reference page if they are looking to get into working with a patient population who have suffered a concussion or is suffering from post-concussion syndrome.

Image Credit: Andreas Vesalius' Fabrica, published in 1543, showing the base of the human brain, including optic chiasma, cerebellum, olfactory bulbs, etc.

Read More

The value of evidence based practice

/
The value of evidence based practice

In any field it is common that one approach gets turned into gospel, the world of massage therapy is no exception. We have strong advocates of triggerpoint therapy, myofascial release and more recently pain science, that argue tooth and nail that their approach is far superior.

Read More

Acupuncture for knee pain

/
Acupuncture for knee pain

This week, I came across a new study published in The Clinical Journal of Pain, this study looks at the effect of acupuncture on patients with osteoarthritis, reading through the study I was impressed because the treatment approach is similar to the neurofunctional approach taught by Alejandro Elorriaga. Slowly but surely modern approaches to acupuncture are being evaluated in a scientific manner. This is a good thing, because there is a plethora of anecdotal evidence that acupuncture is effective and a growing body of scientific evidence that patients benefit from evidence based acupuncture treatments.

Read More

New Research: The Effects of Acupuncture on Chronic Knee Pain

/
New Research: The Effects of Acupuncture on Chronic Knee Pain

Here is a link to a new meta-analysis, published in The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery, this paper draws some parallels with what I have seen published in the past. Time after time it has been shown that acupuncture often has favorable results and that there are multiple mechanisms of action including, but not limited to the placebo response.

Read More