Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/1299745
64 m a s s a g e & b o d y w o r k n o v e m b e r / d e c e m b e r 2 0 2 0 D uring our discussion, my mind took me to an imaginary deserted island where there were just two cans of data "food." Everyone on the island would have to live on the contents of the can we decided to open. I wondered which can would "feed" more practitioners: the can that would reveal what massage does (the effect) or the can that would reveal how it does what it does (mechanism)? There are people doing really important and valuable research who would disagree with me, but I'd open the can about what massage does every single time. Don't get me wrong—I'm dying to know how it works, but I don't think we get to have both in my lifetime, and I'm totally OK with the how of massage remaining a mystery. I actually wonder if we'll lose some of the what when we think we know how. The truth is that massage is so deeply complicated and multifactorial that we're in no real danger of truly demystifying the array of mechanisms behind massage therapy in the near future. THE STUDY In 2017, Healwell partnered with MedStar Washington Hospital Center (a 912-bed hospital serving two of Washington, D.C.'s poorest wards), using a Palmer Foundation grant to conduct a palliative care massage therapy dosing study. At Healwell, a nonprofit that partners with hospitals and facilities to deliver integrated massage therapy to patients, we hoped the study would shed light on a few important questions, such as: Is a single massage received while lying in your hospital bed as "effective" as a massage every day for three consecutive days? Is 10 minutes of massage received while lying in your hospital bed as effective as 20 minutes of massage? What is the effect of any of these interventions on the nuanced experience of pain and anxiety? How will all of this stack up against the control group, which was "standard of care?" On some basic level, we wanted to see if we could reasonably tell hospital administrators that an hour of a massage therapist's time could be translated into three to five discreet patient contacts.