Sports Massage: New Study Shows Positive Benefits of Massage Therapy Treatment on Athletes

A new scientific study shows that sports massage provides anti-inflammatory and pain-reducing benefits. Offering healing relief for pros and recreationists alike, massage therapy now has empirical evidence illustrating its advantages for the treatment of athletes.

Anecdotal and experiential evidence have long shown that massage therapy can provide healthful benefits to both amateur and professional athletes. Until recently, there has been little scientific research performed to confirm these findings. However, with a new study published in the February 1 edition of Science Translational Medicine (online), there is now empirical data supporting the long-held belief that massage techniques can provide relief following strenuous physical activity.

This study, a collaboration between the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario), involved a comparative analysis of muscle biopsies performed on several male athletes, with samples taken prior to exercise and following exercise. Using one leg as a control, the other leg was massaged; both legs were then biopsied after 10 minutes of massage treatment and again following a 2.5-hour rest period.

Utilizing genetic analysis, the researchers found an increase in the biogenesis of mitochondria (energy-producing parts of a cell) as well as a decrease in inflammatory cytokines. As the study contributor who performed the genetic analysis, Buck Institute Dr. Simon Melov, noted, massage therapy’s pain reducing benefits may hinge on the same mechanisms as traditional anti-inflammatory medication.

Since the advent of therapeutic massage, people have known that the treatment can create pain relief as well as relaxation, but it hasn’t been well understood precisely why. This new research from the Buck Institute is helping to shed light on just why seeing a massage therapist feels so good.

Particularly with situations of muscle exhaustion and athletic stress, the body is generating a great deal of inflammatory cytokines, which can lead to the muscle soreness you experience a day or two later (delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS). By using sports massage treatment to suppress those inflammatory responses, you can help to reduce that muscle discomfort.

So the next time someone tells you that massage is relaxing but not physically beneficial, or someone tries to claim that the pain-relieving aspect of sports massage is all in your head, refer them to the Buck Institute study. With clear evidence that massage therapy works to reduce inflammatory cytokines and boost the creation of mitochondria in muscle cells, we now know for sure that massage treatment is scientifically beneficial to your body following intense exercise. Additional research will be needed to expand our understanding of how and why massage provides healthful benefits beyond sports treatment, but for now, there is finally empirical data to support massage therapy’s pain relieving results.