The New York Times had an article on research conducted at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. On 53 healthy adults, 29 were given a 45 minute session of Swedish massage, and 24 were given a session of light massage. To their surprise, all subjects had significant positive biological changes after just one session with a few differences. View the whole story in the new York Times.
The Swedish massage group had significant reduction in cortisol (a stress hormone) and in arginine vasopressin (a hormone that leads to increases in cortisol). An increase in lymphocytes (white blood cells that are part of the immune system) was also recorded.
The light massage group had greater increases in oxytocin (associated with contentment) and larger decreases in adrenal corticotropin (which stimulates the adrenal glands to release cortisol) than the Swedish group. An exciting study to the researchers, and very exciting to us in the massage industry. More and more, researchers are studying the effects of massage and getting verifiable and repeatable data of the health benefits of massage, something that people have been experiencing for centuries and now can actually be scientifically measured. A long time coming but now the data is supporting what we have known for a long time.