CHILDREN AND MASSAGE THERAPY
A question that frequently gets asked is, “Why would a child need a massage?”. A simple answer is that they are smaller versions of you and I who would also benefit from massages for the same reasons adults would! Benefits could include injury recovery, pain management, increased relaxation and the list goes on.
To answer the question in more detail, children benefit from massages in additional ways which may include:
Increased weight gain in infants
Increased immune function
Reduced fussing in infants
Improved psychomotor development
Improved digestive conditions
Improved attentiveness
Improved muscle tone
Improved chronic pain conditions
Most of the benefits from massages in children is due to an increase in vagus nerve activity, which is a branch of the parasympathetic nervous system. In simple terms the ‘rest and digest’ system of the body.
Massages can help increase weight gain and reduce hospital stay times in preterm infants. They have also found in longitudinal studies that those infants that received massages noted an increase in immune function. There are less studies on full term infants but on the studies that have been conducted they have found that massages can help decrease irritability and sleep disturbances. Other studies have also found that massages helped with colic/crying infants.
Children and adolescents with ADHD have shown increased attentiveness in school with massage as an intervention. Similar studies were conducted for children on the autism spectrum which yielded similar results. Not only did the massages improve attentiveness in school but it also helped with sleeping problems for those on the autism spectrum.
Gastrointestinal problems have also been shown to improve in children who get regular massages. With regular massages, both constipation and diarrhea were reduced.
Children with motor tone disorders will have different benefits from regular massages. Massages can both increase muscle tone and decrease muscle tone depending on the type of technique that is used. For children with cerebral palsy, massage can help decrease muscle tone. In contrast, children with down syndrome that have low muscle tone, massages can help increase muscle tone.
Many studies have been conducted in children with chronic illnesses and the effects of massage therapy. These conditions included asthma, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, dermatitis, and cancer. In these studies they found that in children with asthma, regular massages improved forced vital capacity, forced expiratory volume as well as increasing peak expiratory flow. They also found a reduction in bronchoconstriction. Similar to asthma, children with cystic fibrosis also showed increased peak airflow.
In children with diabetes, they have found children that received massages showed greater compliance for insulin and food regulation. Their glucose level decreased from a high range to somewhere within the normal range.
Children with atopic dermatitis (eczema) showed improved skin condition. The massages helped reduce redness, thickening of skin (from scratching), scaling, abraded skin and itching on the skin.
To learn more about these benefits and research, we invite you to visit the reference below.If you have any questions about whether your child would benefit from massage therapy, don’t hesitate to reach out!
References
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6617372/
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