Massage Therapy for Pain Relief

Admittedly, massage therapy has a monetary cost, but that should be weighed against the benefits of the treatment.

• The results from a study on low back pain, published in the 2003 Annals of Internal Medicine, showed that massage therapy reduced the patient's need for pain medications by 36 percent, compared to other theraies, including acupuncture. This is great news for the more than 100 million Americans who experience low back pain.

Approximately 45 million Americans experience chronic headaches, and of those, more than 60 percent suffer from migraines. A 2006 study in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine showed that those who received massage therapy had fewer migraines for more than three weeks folllowing treatment.