Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/68165
SOMATIC RESEARCH for herbals, acupuncture, chiropractic, other alternative therapies." The Boston Globe never mentioned massage, and The Washington Post mentioned massage in the third paragraph, after acknowledging acupuncture and chiropractic care. Let's turn to research publications. Many point to Dr. David Eisenberg's study, "Trends in Alternative Medicine Use in the United States, 1990–1997," published in Journal of the American Medical Association in 1998, as the pivotal shift in interest in CAM research,4 or perhaps it was his initial study, "Unconventional Medicine in the United States: Prevalence, Costs, and Patterns of Use," published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1993.5 Both are worth reading. Here the numbers on the growth of CAM articles. From 1990–1999, PubMed indexed 147,668 articles on complementary medicine. From 2000–2009, this number increased to 292,505: nearly a 100 percent increase between decades. If we alter the search to specify massage research, the growth is similar: from 1990–1999 there were 1,740 articles indexed on PubMed, and between 2000–2009 PubMed indexed 3,375 (as of October 2009). However, massage is the number one out-of- pocket practitioner-related cost (vs. product cost), yet we only represent 1 percent of the research on CAM. One more bit about the numbers: massage research presentations from the podium at IM and CAM conferences mirror the meager 1 percent representation or worse. In fact, at the IOM summit in February 2009, massage was addressed in two of the six pre-conference papers, was on one podium presentation slide, and the word massage was not uttered from a single presenter's mouth.6 Although the NARCCIM did not shy away from speaking the word massage, there were a relatively small number Many opportunities are available for sharing your theories and hypotheses about massage with researchers. of presentations related to research on massage therapy, and few of those presenters were massage practitioners.7 I am not whining. I am calling for action. I am not satisfied being the invisible practitioner in an invisible profession. Our clients are speaking out with their dollars. We must speak out with our presence at research conferences and with our voices by telling our stories. I hope I start hearing from you through your case reports and seeing you at research conferences. created a varied and interesting career out of massage: from specializing in pre- and postsurgical lymph drainage to teaching, writing, consulting, and volunteering. Her consulting includes assisting insurance carriers on integrating massage into insurance plans, and educating researchers on massage therapy theory and practice to ensure research projects and protocols are designed to match how we practice. Contact her at soapsage@comcast.net. An LMP since 1984, Diana Thompson has connect with your colleagues on massageprofessionals.com 121 NOTES 1. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/ 090507164405.htm (accessed November 2009). The research project referenced in Science Daily has not yet been published but was presented as a poster at the American College of Sports Medicine conference in Seattle, May 2009. This was one of nearly 2,000 posters presented at this conference and unfortunately it was one of the few that made headlines. I will provide a critical assessment of it when it is published and accessible. 2. Christopher A. Moyer, PhD, Trish Dryden, RMT, MEd., and Stacey Shipwright, BA, RMT, "Directions and Dilemmas in Massage Therapy Research: A Workshop Report from the 2009 North American Research Conference on Complementary and Integrative Medicine," International Journal of Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork 2, no. 2 (2009): 15–27. Available at http://ijtmb.org/index.php/ ijtmb/issue/view/5 (accessed November 2009). 3. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, press release dated July 30, 2009. Available at http://nccam.nih.gov/news/ camstats/costs (accessed November 2009). 4. David Eisenberg, MD, et al, "Trends in Alternative Medicine Use in the United States, 1990-1997," Journal of the American Medical Association 280, no. 18 (1998): 1569–1575. Available at http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/ abstract/280/18/1569 (accessed November 2009). 5. David Eisenberg, MD, et al, "Unconventional Medicine in the United States: Prevalence, Costs, and Patterns of Use," New England Journal of Medicine 328 (1993): 246–252. Available at http://content.nejm.org/cgi/ content/abstract/328/4/246 (accessed November 2009). 6. Vicki Weisfeld, "IOM Summit and Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public: Issue Background and Overview," Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, Commissioned Paper published February 2009. Available at www.iom.edu/CMS/28312/52555/ 62252/62351/62353.aspx (accessed November 2009). 7. Martha Menard, "Letter to the Editor," International Journal of Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork 2, no. 2 (2009): 28–29. Available at http://ijtmb.org/index. php/ijtmb/issue/view/5 (accessed November 2009).