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Massage therapy and other holistic health care practices are gaining traction in health care. As they become more popular, so too does the push to support the observed benefits of these practices with scientific research on massage therapy.
When it comes to the human body, things get
complicated and murky pretty quickly. We know a lot about the body. But there
is likely much more about its workings and operations that we have yet to
uncover. There has long been a large and ever-growing body of empirical and
anecdotal evidence in support of massage therapy. Now, massage therapists are
looking for these results to be backed by hard science.
The use of precise massage therapy protocols
to measure and show best results are gaining greater interest. We now have a
wave of small-scale studies that examine massage therapy in highly specific
contexts. The scientific research on massage therapy has begun!
Massage therapy organizations such as
the American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA) are working on getting massage therapy accepted as a
standard form of health care (hello, insurance companies, we see you…).
Getting massage therapy to be covered by insurance the same as other practices
will largely depend on what science has to say about it.
