Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/77400
SOMATIC RESEARCH Muscles make lactic acid to fuel cells not only in the muscle that produced the lactate, but also as an energy source that can be shuttled off to adjacent muscle cells for fuel. encourage questions meaningful to practitioners. We can submit questions that we confront regularly in practice, identify the theories we dispute, and hopefully provoke someone to explore potential answers. THE ARTICLE PROMPTING THIS CONVERSATION In 2009, at the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) conference in Seattle, hundreds of research presentations were given from podiums and thousands of posters were shown. Typically, oral presentations are awarded to the more rigorous studies, or studies of greater signifi cance, and posters are awarded to those that show merit but do not meet the more rigorous standards of a speaker's slot. Yet, the research summary on massage therapy that was picked up by Sciencedaily.com that week was titled, "Massage After Exercise Myth Busted."1 The opening line read, "A Queen's University research team has blown open the myth that massage after exercise improves circulation to the muscle and assists in the removal of lactic acid and other waste." Recently, the article was published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise (many conference research presentations and posters present data that may take months, or even years, before it is published).2 Last year, prompted by the Sciencedaily.com article, several massage therapists and scientists were engaged in a fl urry of emails critiquing the study.3 Several problems with the study were identifi ed. The most obvious fl aw is the sample size. There were only 12 subjects and three arms of the study. It is unclear if all 12 received all three protocols or if the 12 were divided up, placing four subjects into each arm of the study. Both scenarios present weak numbers, refl ecting a low level of evidence. The next discernable error was in the protocol. It is not practical to make massage therapy available to athletes immediately following the completion of strenuous exercise; massage within 10 seconds of exertion is not consistent with massage as it is practiced in the fi eld. Most athletes will do a cooldown of sorts, rehydrate, and in the case of long-distance races, refuel before trotting into a medical tent to receive massage. The science states that blood lactate returns to normal within 20–60 minutes, depending on the fi tness of the athlete. If massage were applied as practiced, the lactic acid would have been eliminated by normal means regardless. In addition, for this article to claim that, "Ours is the fi rst study to challenge this and rigorously test its validity" is not exactly accurate. There is a decent body of evidence that already suggests that massage has little effect on the removal of lactic acid after exercise. While this study may be the fi rst to look at the rate at which the lactic acid is removed, a serious literature search would have produced enough evidence that the effects of massage on blood lactate is of little importance. The study has fl aws, but the real issue is that we, as a profession, continue to inaccurately promote massage as an effective tool to remove lactic acid from muscles. The researchers were prompted to study the effects of massage on lactic acid because the Canadian Sports Massage Therapists website (www.csmta.ca) lists the removal of lactic acid from muscles as a benefi t of massage. Therein lies the problem. Unless we discontinue promoting false claims about massage, researchers will continue to fi nd fault with our theories, and the media will infl ame the results, concluding that massage is bad for athletes. In this case, the story was perpetrated 118 massage & bodywork march/april 2011