Research Overview:
This comprehensive evidence-based compilation outlines the multifaceted health benefits of skilled massage therapy across various populations. Supported by peer-reviewed studies and clinical trials, massage therapy is proven to significantly reduce pain, anxiety, and cortisol levels while supporting immune function, sleep quality, and mobility. From managing chronic conditions like fibromyalgia, arthritis, and hypertension to aiding post-surgical recovery and cancer care, professional touch serves as a safe, non-pharmacological cornerstone in modern integrated healthcare.
For some, massage therapy is a short-term intervention to help with injury and rehabilitation. For others, massage is their salve to reduce the stresses of a hurried and chaotic life. Wherever you are on the spectrum of health care, massage offers many valuable benefits to those who receive it. This resource will provide a bit of background about massage therapy in general, and then we’ll look at what scientific research says about benefits of massage for specific populations.
From the earliest days of humankind, when one person reached out to soothe another, we have known that welcomed physical contact is good for us. The loving touch that occurs between infants and their caregivers helps to create a sense of safety in the world that follows us for a lifetime. Touch that occurs between humans helps us to build our foundational relationships, supports social interaction, enables emotional sharing, and provides many other benefits (Gentsch, Brendtro).
By contrast, prolonged touch deprivation is connected with failure to thrive and the inability to create social attachments when it happens in infants and young children (Jakubiak), and with shorter lifespans and more illness in isolated elders (Butts).
The need for healthy touch is so important, and the consequences of touch deprivation are so dire, that groundbreaking anthropologist Ashley Montagu gave our drive for this form of human-to-human interaction a name: “touch hunger” (Montagu). We know that touch is a basic human need, but we live in a society with few appropriate venues for physical contact. Massage therapy is an intervention that meets that need.
Defining massage turns out to be a tricky proposition. Many cultures across the globe have traditional touch-related protocols designed to promote health, but not all practitioners of these arts would consider their work to be massage. For our purposes, we will consider massage to include any skilled hands-on interventions that work toward improving a person’s well-being and/or function through manipulating skin, fascia, and muscles.
For this resource we have pulled together findings from small-scale projects that might have just a few participants, substantial clinical trials, and large-scale systematic reviews and meta-analyses—these are compilations of multiple studies that combine results. Each study comes from a peer-reviewed academic publication. We arranged information by population groups, but diseases and conditions don’t occur by themselves; there’s always crossover, so any single study might address multiple issues.
While most research is conducted in the context of illnesses or conditions, some studies have looked at bodywork for healthy people, and concluded that massage therapy for wellness or for stress relief is consistently effective in a variety of ways:
Several studies have looked at what benefits occur when massage therapy is offered in the workplace. Through these we see that onsite massage can help to:
The research about massage for athletes is not always consistent; it seems to depend a lot on the sport in question, and the type of athlete being studied. In general, massage appears to be a better choice after an event instead of before it (Mine):
Muscular aches and pains drive many clients to seek massage. Here is a synopsis of what the most current research says about this intervention:
Much of the research about massage therapy as a way to manage sleep quality and insomnia has been done in the context of other conditions. For instance, one study found that massage helped reduce insomnia symptoms for women who are postmenopausal (Hachul). A systematic review concluded that massage could improve sleep quality for women who are pregnant (Hollenbach). Several studies find that massage helps people to sleep better while they deal with complex medical conditions such as breast cancer (Kashani, Tarrasch); congestive heart failure (Sable); or chronic health conditions in children (Brown).
Massage therapy for pain in general has a strong evidence base, led by a massive systematic review comprising nearly 70 studies that found it compares well with several other interventions for pain and restored function, and that it has the added benefit of having a low risk of adverse events (Crawford). Another systematic review found evidence in favor of massage, along with several other nonpharmacologic interventions, for chronic noncancer pain (Lin).
While it was once considered an indulgence for healthy people, or a short-term intervention to help with a musculoskeletal injury, massage therapy is now often integrated into conventional health care for people who live with chronic conditions:
Massage therapy has a surprisingly robust body of evidence showing benefits for people with depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and other mood-related challenges. Much of this research has been done in settings where depression, anxiety, and stress are part of a larger health picture (such as among hospital patients, or in the context of chronic pain), although one study looked at the effects of massage therapy on 70 women diagnosed with anxiety and depression who underwent a month of spa treatments; not surprisingly, their stress-related hormones and other biochemical changes suggested that massage can be helpful in this circumstance (Bicikova).
Many older people view massage therapy as a helpful and welcome relaxing treat. One study compared 15 minutes of hand massage to 15 minutes of foot massage. Both interventions led to pleasant, relaxed, refreshed feelings (Nakano). This is reinforced by a systematic review of 14 clinical trials that concluded that massage offers benefits for health and well-being of older people in residential care facilities, and may promote increased engagement with others (McFeeters).
We used to think that because many types of massage claim to boost circulation (this is not strongly supported by research, by the way), and because cancer uses the blood and lymphatic systems to spread (it does, but it is an extremely complicated and multifactorial process), then massage therapy must be dangerous for any and all cancer patients. Research has revealed that carefully applied highly skilled massage therapy for people with cancer may offer many benefits, including these:
The benefits of massage therapy are so well demonstrated in the research that massage and manual lymphatic drainage are recommended in clinical practice guidelines, specifically for women in treatment for breast cancer (Greenlee). In addition, we have evidence in favor of massage for cancer-related pain, chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, and lymphedema. Massage therapy also appears to have many benefits for caregivers for patients with cancer.
Massage therapy in hospital settings is a relatively new field, but from dialysis facilities to outpatient clinics to surgical suites, massage is being used to promote wellness, lessen the risk of complications, and possibly to reduce reliance on pain medications.
"This review of research is by no means comprehensive; it is just a brief overview of the work that has been done in the relevant contexts. A vast amount of research about massage therapy is not touched upon in this collection, simply because the studies didn’t fit in the categories we decided to include. The field of massage therapy research is growing quickly, and each new publication helps us to understand more about how we can use massage therapy to promote health and to integrate with massage therapy with conventional health care."
The structure of this review was inspired by "A Massage Therapist’s Guide to Pathology", 7th ed. published by Books of Discovery.