Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/72312
ANCIENT MEDICINAL ROOTS Now, as the technique sometimes referred to as "the lazy man's yoga" draws more devotees, an interesting cross- pollination is beginning to occur—but this time it's from West to East. Western approaches to both medicine and marketing are beginning to influence how Thai massage and medicine are practiced, researched, taught, and promoted, resulting in unique blendings of applications and adaptations. Take, for example, Bangkok physician Krisna Piravej, an associate professor in the department of rehabilitation medicine at Chulalongkorn University. Faced with an increasing incidence of autism in Thailand and frustratingly few successful treatments, she resorted to a treatment so common in Thailand that most Western-trained doctors, even Thais, overlooked it —Thai massage. But, though many generations of Thai patients could offer anecdotal stories of its effectiveness, she knew that in order to convince her colleagues and her patients to try it, she needed to prove it worked. So she conducted a study that would meet the rigorous demands now required throughout the world of medical practices. In her soon-to-be-published 2006 study, Piravej evaluated the difference in benefits between two groups of children with autism, one group treated only with standard behavioral therapy (sensory motor stimulation and occupational therapy), the other adding Thailand's traditional massage techniques. Though the sampling was small—a dozen children ages three to ten, treated one hour twice a week for eight weeks—the results were strong enough to conduct further studies. The most encouraging finding, she said, was that all the parents of the massaged children were so satisfied with their kids' behavioral improvements that they asked if the massage could continue after the study ended. This healing tradition is older than science. If anything, it's science that should be questioned. But science was what the medical community needed. "As teachers in the university hospital, we have the obligation to prove empirically these methods work, not just through word of mouth," Piravej says. Hers is one of fourteen similar studies funded by the five-year-old Department for Development of Thai Traditional and Alternative Medicine (DTAM), under the government's Ministry of Public Health. Other DTAM-funded projects researching the efficacy of Thai massage target migraine headaches, myofascial pain, range-of-motion problems, and osteoarthritis. Still others examine the effectiveness of Thai herbal treatments on functional dyspepsia, acne vulgaris, influenza, and fever. The impetus for setting up the department followed a 1980 Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) Health Ministers' resolution advocating "health for all by the year 2000." But in the intervening years, "We found that Western medicine alone cannot achieve this end," said Dr. Vichai Chokevivat, director general of the DTAM. "Each country—Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand—knew it had in its medicine chest this age-old treatment, which we call traditional medicine. But now, in modern times, belief is not enough. We have to offer evidence it works." 76 massage & bodywork january/february 2008 Modern times—and Western influence—presented Thailand in particular with another obstacle to overcome with regard to validating its traditional medicines. To many American military men who served in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 1970s, the phrase Thai massage has seedy associations. "Thai massage meant sex to soldiers coming to Bangkok on R&R from Vietnam forty years ago," Chokevivat says. Now, he says, he hopes his department's studies will give legitimacy to its traditional healing approaches, as well as help turn travelers from sex tourism to spa and health tourism, both lucrative overlapping trends for which Thailand has become known as a top international destination. Though the DTAM's annual budget of 120 million baht (an estimated $3.81 million US) is the smallest piece—less than 1 percent—of the Ministry of Public Health's annual budget, it may be the government's best investment. Backed by the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) promotional campaigns that cleverly connect DTAM findings to the burgeoning spa and health travel boom, those segments have grown significantly. Before the establishment of the DTAM, for example, the spa sector grew 64 percent from 2000 to 2002 in Thailand, according to a study undertaken by Intelligent Spas, an independent analyst. The number of spas jumped from 230 in 2002 to an estimated 450 today. In 2004, spas generated 5.3 billion baht (an estimated $168.3 million US) in revenue, exceeding the original target by nearly 10 percent, according to TAT. In 2004, Thailand embarked on a five-year strategic plan, spearheaded by the Ministry of Public Health, to establish Thailand as the "center of excellent health" of Asia.