Qualitative inquiry is increasingly used in health research because it is particularly suited to the study of complex topics or issues about which little is known and concerning which quantification cannot easily create or effectively convey understanding. By exploring the lived experience of people providing and receiving massage therapy and the meaning that those people ascribe to those exper...

BACKGROUND Massage is a popular treatment choice of athletes, coaches, and sports physical therapists. Despite its purported benefits and frequent use, evidence demonstrating its efficacy is scarce. PURPOSE To identify current literature relating to sports massage and its role in effecting an athlete's psychological readiness, in enhancing sports performance, in recovery from exercise and com...

OBJECTIVE Cancer treatment is reported to be stressful, and patients diagnosed with hematologic cancers often exhibit higher levels of anxiety and emotional distress than individuals with other malignancies. Management of these symptoms in patients with hematologic cancer presents significant challenges, as many of them are in and out of the hospital while undergoing high dose chemotherapy. Onc...

Birds are model organisms in sperm biology. Previous work in zebra finches, suggested that sperm sampled from males' faeces and ejaculates do not differ in size. Here, we tested this assumption in a captive population of house sparrows, Passer domesticus. We compared sperm length in samples from three collection techniques: female dummy, faecal and abdominal massage samples. We found that sperm...

Women diagnosed with breast cancer received massage therapy or practiced progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) for 30-min sessions 3 times a week for 5 weeks or received standard treatment. The massage therapy and relaxation groups reported less depressed mood, anxiety, and pain immediately after their first and last sessions. By the end of the study, however, only the massage therapy group repor...

BACKGROUND Infants with neonatal cerebral insults are susceptible to excessive crying as a result of difficulties with self-regulation. AIMS To compare the effectiveness of swaddling versus massage therapy in the management of excessive crying of infants with cerebral insults. METHODS Randomised three-week parallel comparison of the efficacy of two intervention methods. Infants with symptom...

BACKGROUND Assessing the quality of postsecondary education remains a difficult task, despite many efforts to do so. No consensus or standard definition of educational quality has yet been agreed upon or developed. PURPOSE This study evaluated the quality of massage education in the United States using three closely-related questions to frame the evaluation: 1) Is accreditation improving the ...

introduction: intensive care unit is one of the most stressful wards for patients and it is estimated that 30 to70 percent of patients experience severe physiologic stress during admission. some of the physiologic responses to stress include increase in metabolic rate with consequent increase in body temperature, increase in cardiac output and contraction power and subsequently increase in bloo...

Background: Delay in healing- and increasing use of narcotics and anesthetics are some of the accompanying problems with anxiety before the surgery. Massage Aromatherapy and massage are two of the complementary medicine components to decrease anxiety. Aim: to compare the effects of massage aromatherapy and massage on anxiety level of the patients in the preoperative period. Methods: In this cli...

F orty-two (42) percent of Americans use some form of alternative medicine, spending 21.2 billion dollars annually,1 and one of the most commonly sought alternative and complementary medicine (ACM) therapies is therapeutic massage, which was used by an estimated 11 percent of the U.S. adult population in 1998. In that year, adults made an estimated 114 million office visits to receive massage t...