The RMT Education Project is Helping people manage sports injuries with confidence through creative and innovative health education.
This blog features post on massage therapy, acupuncture, myofascial release, pain science, cupping, IASTM, sports massage, deep tissue massage.
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 MoreIn the Rio Olympics, American athletes were sporting cupping marks and this sparked a media frenzy. Some of the articles had a positive spin and some of the articles had a negative spin. One of the main arguments against cupping was that cupping lacks scientific evidence. Here is a suggestion for the pragmatic clinician, rather than writing it off completely, a more rational response would be to put treatments in perspective without actually dismissing them, and discuss a hypothesis that is inline with the current scientific understanding of how the body works.
Read MoreThis 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.
Last week I provided some studies that look at the effect of acupuncture on patients with knee osteoarthritis. It is clear that the placebo response is a big part of why patients feel better, but it is also a within the realm of reasons that patients have a complex biopsychosocial response to acupuncture that INCLUDES but is not LIMITED to placebo.
Read MoreIn 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 MoreThis 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“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
*This blog post is meant as an educational tool only. It is not a replacement for medical advice from a qualified and registered health professional.
Richard is a Registered Massage Therapist in Petrolia Ontario who is experienced in the assessment and treatment of sport injuries. Richard uses a Adaptive Manual therapy which means that myofascial release, acupuncture, cupping, sports massage and IASTM are used in an individualized one on one treatment.
