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A good massage is more beneficial than pain medication in treating chronic back pain [Image: Delsiegrates - Wikimedia commons]

Massage eases low back pain

Massage therapy helps ease chronic low back pain and improve function, according to a randomised controlled trial that the Annals of Internal Medicine carried out.

The study, which involved 40 people suffering from low back pain, was the first to compare the effects structural and relaxation massage. Structural massage focuses on identifying and alleviating musculoskeletal contributors to back pain, while relaxation massage uses a variety of techniques to induce a generalised sense of relaxation. The trial found that both types of massage worked well, with few side effects.

To better understand the effect of massage researchers randomly assigned to one of three treatments: structural massage, relaxation massage, or usual care. Usual care was what they would have received anyway, most often medications. The hour-long massage treatments were given weekly for 10 weeks.

At 10 weeks, more than one in three patients who received either type of massage – but only one in 25 patients who got usual care – said their back pain was much better or gone. Also at 10 weeks, a questionnaire showed nearly twice as many massage patients (around two thirds) as usual-care patients (more than one third) were functioning significantly better than at the trial’s outset.

Patients in the massage groups spent fewer days in bed, were more active, and used less anti-inflammatory medication than did those with usual care.