Weight status association with regular massage therapy use: an analysis of US national survey data

Abstract

Massage Therapy (MT) is used by up to 5% of the US population (Barnes et al 2004), and is second only to chiropractic among the various complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) modalities. Regular MT may have beneficial effects on physiological and emotional health (Moyer et al 2004). Our recent work (Walter et al 2006) showed that in a small clinical sample of otherwise healthy persons, greater MT use was associated with having a lower body mass index (BMI). We analyzed the National Health Information Survey 2002 to determine whether a similar association existed among US national data. Exclusions were pregnant women, individuals with severe illnesses (e.g., cardiovascular disease or cancer), extreme BMIs (<16 or >70 kg/m2) and those with incomplete data, for a final sample size of n=25,825. 4.97% (n=1309) of the population used MT in the past year (“MT users”). After controlling for income, education, race, age, sex, smoking, physical activity, chronic disease, and other CAM usage, MT users had a significantly lower BMI (26.8±0.5 kg/m2) than non‐users (27.2±0.5 kg/m2) (p=0.024). In addition, the prevalence of overweight and obesity based on adjusted BMI was higher among MT non‐users compared to MT users (88.2 vs. 75.1%; p<0.001). More research is needed to determine if there is any causality between regular MT use and improved health status.