The Power of Touch

By:  Rebekah Frizzelle Owens, LMT, NCTMB, CPMT, CIMI

Touch is not just a sense – it is a part of us that makes us human and makes us whole.  When a friend or family member is sad, instinctively we offer a hug or a hand to hold.  When you get a minor bump, you touch or rub the injured area.  When a small child is crying, we pat the little one on the back.  All these things are using touch to comfort and heal.  Saul Schanberg, an internationally renowned neuroscientist and physician, once said, “Touch is ten times stronger than verbal or emotional contact … we forget that touch is not only basic to our species, but the key to it.”  Touch really is a key, maybe the key, to who we are as humans.

Each of us needs to be touched to grow and thrive, to be our best.  In a 2013 article featured in Infant Behavior and Development, authors Abdallah, Badr, & Hawwari wrote, “The sense of touch is the fastest-developing sense in the infant following birth and is particularly important for the growing and developing preterm infants who are often deprived of gentle human touch.”  In their study, these researchers found that preterm infants who received massages from their mothers had significantly lower pain levels after the massage and at discharge and had higher cognitive scores at 12 months than did infants who did not receive massages.  In this study, massage was systematic touch by human hands that stimulated the infant’s tactile sense – something anyone can learn to do.  Other researchers, like Moskowski and Stack in a 2007 article in Infant and Child Development, found that touch can also establish strong physical and emotional connections between the caregiver and the baby, as well as play a powerful role in communication and affect regulation.

This extends into the adult population, too.  In A Natural History of the Senses, author Diane Ackerman wrote, “In the absence of touching and being touched, people of all ages can sicken and grow touch starved.”  Certified nursing assistants (CNAs) were taught to give “tender touch” massage to their elderly patients in one study by Sansone and Schmitt published in 2000 in Geriatric Nursing.  Over 70% of the CNAs thought giving the massage improved their ability to communicate with their patients and 62% believed it alleviated the patients’ anxiety levels. In addition, pain scores and anxiety scores decreased for majority of the patients.  All the tender touch massage entailed was the “the systematic, structured use of slow, gentle massage, stroking, and touching certain areas of the body that included the forehead neck, shoulders, back, and hands”  for 15 minutes twice weekly.  An easy feat for most caregivers – especially since it provides so many benefits.

Massage therapist Andrea Peri Ronsenfield once wrote, “The immediacy of communicating with another person by touching them in a nurturing and comforting and therapeutic way, with one’s hands, seems to lend itself so beautifully to evoking a sense of well-being.”  In fact, a 2010 study in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine looked at the biological effects of massage and touch and found that touch increased oxytocin (the “bonding” or “love” hormone) and decreased adrenal corticotropin hormone, which is often produced in response to biological stress.  This study showed that touch helps people bond and feel more at ease, and reduces the effects of stress.  That is certainly putting one on the path to wellbeing!

There are an ever-increasing number of studies showing the benefits of touch.  Recent research studies have shown that touch, in particular massage, can help with cancer-related fatigue and pain in cancer patients, low back pain, osteoarthritis of the knee, reducing post-operative pain, lowering blood pressure, reducing headache frequency, easing alcohol withdrawal symptoms, and decreasing the symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome.

At the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine’s Patient Care Clinic, newly named “The Center for Integrative Health and Healing,” we have a new massage therapist, three Reiki practitioners, and a reflexologist.  This team of “touch therapists” and energy workers would be a good place to start to learn more about the benefits of touch and to find out what touch could do to help you.  To schedule an appointment with one of them, please call 410-448-6361 or check out our website at www.compmed.umm.edu/patient_clinic.asp.  The Center for Integrative Health and Healing is also having an Open House on June 20 (1pm – 5pm) and June 21 (9am – 1pm).  Please call 410-448-6361 or visit http://www.compmed.umm.edu/open-house/ for more details.

References:

Abdallah, B., Badr, L.K., & Hawwari, M. (2013 Dec).  The efficacy of massage on short and long term outcomes in preterm infants.  Infant Behavior & Development, 36(4), 662-669.

American College of Physicians. (2008) Massage Therapy May Have Immediate Positive Effect On Pain And Mood For Advanced Cancer Patients. Science Daily 16 September. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080915174534.htm.

Currin, J. Meister, E.A. (2008) A hospital-based intervention using massage to reduce distress among oncology patients. Cancer Nurs 31(3):214-21.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18453878?ordinalpos=3&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

Field, T., Diego, Miguel, Cullen, Christy, Hartshorn, Kristin, Gruskin, Alan, Hernandez-Reif, Maria, Sunshine, William. (2004). Carpal tunnel syndrome symptoms are lessened following massage. Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies. 8:9-14.  http://www.massagetherapyfoundation.org/pdf/Massage%20and%20carpal%20tunnel%20syndrome.pdf

Hernandez-Reif M, Field T, Krasnegor J, Theakston H, Hossain Z, Burman I (2000). High blood pressure and associated symptoms were reduced by massage therapy. Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, 4, 31 – 38.

Moszkowski, R. & Stack, D.  (2007). Infant touching behavior during the mother-infant face-to-face interactions.  Infant and Child Development, 16, 307-319.

Perlman AI, Sabina A, Williams AL, Njike VY, Katz DL. (2006) Massage Therapy for Osteoarthritis of the Knee. Arch Intern Med. 166(22):2533-8.

Piotrowski, M., Paterson, C., Mitchinson, A., Kim, H. M., Kirsh, M., Hinshaw, D. B. (2003) Massage as Adjuvant Therapy in the Management ofAcute Postoperative Pain: A Preliminary Study in Men. Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 197(6), 1037-1046.

Preyde M. (2003) Effectiveness of massage therapy for subacute low back pain: a randomized controlled trial. Journal of Soft Tissue Manipulation, 8, 4 – 10.

Quinn C, Chandler C, Moraska A. Massage Therapy & Frequency of Chronic Tension Headaches. (2002) American Journal of Public Health. 92(10):1657-61.

Rapaport, M.H., Schettler, P., & Bresee, C.  (2010). A preliminary study of the effects of a single session of Swedish massage on hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal and immune function in normal individuals.  J Alternative and Complementary Medicine,16(10).

Reader M, Young R, Connor JP. (2005) Massage therapy improves the management of alcohol withdrawal syndrome. J Altern Complement Med. 11(2):311-3. PMID: 15865498.

Rosenfield, A. P.  Massage for the elderly.  Massage Therapy J 1988 Spring:45-8.

Sansone, P. & Schmitt, L. (2000). Providing Tender Touch massage to elderly nursing home residents:  a demonstration project.  Geriatric Nursing, 21(6):303-8.

Author Bio: 

Rebekah Frizzelle Owens, LMT, NCTMB, CPMT, CIMI has been practicing massage for 10 years.  In addition to being trained in prenatal and therapeutic massage for adults, she is a certified pediatric massage therapist, a certified infant massage instructor, and an advanced Reiki practitioner.  She works full-time as the PR Specialist for the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Center for Integrative Medicine in Baltimore, MD, where she also lectures about massage in the Integrative Medicine elective for fourth year medical students.