Does Massage Therapy Help for Chronic Back Pain?

The answer is yes. A news release from Indiana University reports that low back pain is the leading cause of years lost to disability in the United States. They report that one third of back pain sufferers develop persistent back pain and 15 percent develop chronic back pain that causes significant physical limitations. 

As study published inn the journal of Pain Medicine looked at the use of massage therapy to treat chronic low back pain. The study found that more that 50 percent of adults enrolled in the study experienced clinically significant reduction in their low back pain and the disability associated with their low back pain. 

In this study patients were referred by doctors to a massage therapist. The low back pain patient received 10 massage therapy treatments at no cost. Some interesting individual characteristics were found to influence the effectiveness of massage therapy for low back pain. Patients who were taking opioid medication such as Oxycontin were two times less likely to show clinically meaningful improvements when compared to patients who were not taking opioid medications. Obese patients had significant improvement of their low back pain with massage therapy but the improvements were not retained over time. Older patients and "Baby boomers" tended to be much more likely to have clinically significant improvements with massage therapy than did other age groups. 

The study clearly showed that massage therapy benefits  people with chronic low back pain. Chronic low back pain is very complex and can be caused by many bio-mechanical and physiological conditions. Back pain can be the result of one or a combination of problems. Back pain can be caused by disc herniations, disc degeneration, osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, trigger points, muscle spasm, muscle weakness, poor posture and many other physiological and degenerative conditions. Most chronic back pain requires a maintenance-type approach to treatment. It is often an ongoing problem that can be managed but is not completely fixed by any treatment or combination of treatments. Spinal manipulation by a doctor of chiropractic combined with exercise and massage therapy have been shown to provide significant relief from both acute low back pain and chronic low back pain. Acupuncture has also been shown to be beneficial in the treatment of both acute and chronic back pain. 

http://ftcollinschiropractic.com/massage-therapy.html
http://nationalpainreport.com/real-world-massage-good-for-low-back-pain-study-says-8833396.html

Greg L. Crawford D.C., D.A.B.C.O. Foothills Chiropractic, 1337 East Prospect Road Fort Collins, CO 80525 (970) 493-2105 http://ftcollinschiropractor.com