Updated July 08, 2014.

Written or reviewed by a board-certified physician. See About.com's Medical Review Board.

You probably do not normally think of massage therapy and asthma together, but some evidence may support this CAM practice. Massage therapy may be a treatment and not just a way to spend a nice relaxing afternoon.

The use of medicinal massage therapy is described in populations from newborns to people with chronic immune disorders in the following conditions:

• Poor growth in poorly growing, preterm infants

• Depression and anxiety
• Poor sleep
• Chronic pain
• Autoimmune disorders

How Does Massage Therapy Work In Asthma Patients?

In massage therapy the body is manipulated with pressure. Using their hands or some sort of device, a massage therapist will manipulate your muscles and soft tissue.

Massage therapy is not thought to directly impact inflammatory components of the pathophysiology of asthma. While the exact benefits of massage therapy are not known, it it is thought that massage therapy will impact the following areas related to your asthma:

• Decreased stress hormones such as cortisol (may be elevated in anxiety, a know asthma trigger)
• Increased serotonin levels– (many modern antidepressants function be increasing levels of this hormone)

Will My Health Insurance Pay For Massage Therapy?

It depends? You may be more likely to get it paid for if you have some component of anxiety as massage therapy is not an accepted treatment for asthma currently (see below).

What Is the Evidence?

The use of massage therapy with asthma has not been extensively studied and more research needs to be done before recommending it as a treatment.

A 2005 review by the Cochrane Collaboration concluded:

“There is insufficient evidence to support the use of manual therapies for patients with asthma. There is a need to conduct adequately-sized RCTs that examine the effects of manual therapies on clinically relevant outcomes. Future trials should maintain observer blinding for outcome assessments, and report on the costs of care and adverse events. Currently, there is insufficient evidence to support or refute the use of manual therapy for patients with asthma.”
However, some individual studies have shown results that demonstrate massage may have some benefit. A 2011 study published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine looked at 60 Egyptian children with asthma. Children in the massage therapy group received 20 minutes of massage therapy from their parents nightly for 5 weeks in addition to their standard asthma therapy. Children in the control group received standard asthma therapy alone. The massage technique involved stroking and kneading motions of the face, head, neck, shoulders, arms, hands, legs, feet and back for about 5 minutes per area. The massage group demonstrated significant improvements in pulmonary function testing including FEV1 and FEV1/FVC ratio.

In an older study published in the Journal of Pediatrics 32 children between the ages of 5 and 16 were assigned to receive either massage for 20 minutes before bed or relaxation therapy that consisted of parents asking their child to alternatively relax and tense the same muscle groups for 20 minutes. Massage led to decreases in anxiety, improved attitudes toward asthma, decreased cortisol levels and improved aspects of pulmonary function testing. Older children in this study saw improvements in only one specific comment of pulmonary function tests that measures air movement in small airways.

Massage therapy has been shown in other pediatric lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis and recurrent respiratory tract infections. These studies showed improvements in both lung and immune function.

If asthma is improved by decreasing anxiety, one might expect patients with the highest cortisol levels to improve the most. Massage therapy may lead to decreased airway irritability and improved asthma control. While there is not sufficient evidence to make a recommendation for massage therapy today, massage therapy offers the following benefits:

• It is free
• It can be preformed at home by parents and requires minimal skills to learn
• Low risk of side effects
• It may lead to decreased anxiety of the asthmatic and caregivers improving quality of life and possibly decreasing need for medication

If this sounds interesting to you, be sure to discuss the use of massage therapy with your asthma doctor before adding this complementary approach to your asthma plan.

Sources

• Hondras MA Linde K, Jones AP. Manual therapy for asthma. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2005.
• Hou WG, Chiang PT, Hsu TY, Chiu SY, Yen YC. Treatment effects of massage therapy in depressed people: a meta-analysis. J Clin Psychiatry2010 Jul;71(7):894–901.
• Fattah MA, Hamady B. Pulmonary functions of children with asthma improve following massage therapy. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 2011; 17(11):1068–1068.
• Hernandez-Reif M, Field T, Krasnegor J, et al. Children with cystic ?brosis bene?t from massage therapy. J Pediatr Psy 1999;24:175–181.
• Zhu S, Wang N, Wang D, et al. clinical investigation on massage for prevention and treatment of recurrent respiratory tract infection in children. J Tradit Chin Med 1998;18:285–291.
• Field T. Massage therapy for infants and children. J Dev Behav pediatr 1995; 16:105–11.