Massage therapy has a wide variety of tangible health benefits

This recent article in the WSJ  cites research which over the past couple of years has found that massage therapy boosts immune function, helps with back pain, as well as a variety of other tangible health benefits:

• A 10-minute massage upped mitochondria production, and reduced proteins associated with inflammation in muscles that had been exercised to exhaustion, a small study last month found.
• A full-body massage boosted immune function and lowered heart rate and blood pressure in women with breast cancer undergoing radiation treatment, a 2009 study of 30 participants found.
• Children given 20-minute massages by their parents every night for five weeks plus standard asthma treatment had significantly improved lung function compared with those in standard care, a 2011 study of 60 children found.

The title of the article: “Don’t Call It Pampering: Massage Wants to Be Medicine.”