Guess what science has discovered about back pain …

According to the UK’s Office for National Statistics the UK  economy loses almost 31 million work days per year which costs the UK economy £14 billion to bad backs, neck & other muscle problems.  A bad back is of the most common causes of absence and 80% of p will suffer with people will experience back pain at some point in their lives.  At Vitality Therapy we find back pain is something we treat on a regular basis.

I know a lot of my clients and potential clients are interested in what the latest scientific research is on how effective massage is for treating back pain, becuase they don’t want to waste their time and money if massage isn’t going to help them.

Until now scientific studies of the effectiveness of massage were conducted in controlled research situations.  However in a recent study, a physician sent patients to a massage therapist.  The massage therapist designed and provided a series of 10 massage — at no cost to the patient — in a clinical treatment environment.  This clinical treatment environment mimicks the experience of people who choose to seek massage in the real world.

More than 50 percent of those who participated in the study experienced clinically meaningful improvements in their low back pain.  The reasearches concluded that the study gives primary care providers (i.e. GPs) the confidence to tell patients with chronic low back pain to try massage, if the patients can afford to do so.

References

http://www.nhsemployers.org/news/2015/04/bad-backs-cost-the-uk-31-million-days-of-work

Elder WG, Munk N, et al, 2017, Real Wold Massage Therapy Produces Meaningful Effectiveness Signal for Primary Care Patients with Chronic Low Back Pain: Results of a Repeated Measures Cohort Study, Journal of Pain Medicine, 18(7):1394-1405

 

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