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The pressure was maintained until
referral pain ceased, or for a maximum of two minutes, then slowly eased to produce a vascular flushing. In a typical session, six active trigger points were treated, and
procedure was repeated three-to-five times on each point.
Every night before bed participants completed a headache diary form, recording number of headaches, intensity of most severe headache, and duration of longest headache.
Each subject experienced a reduction in headaches within
first week of massage treatment, and
mean number of headaches per week was significantly reduced from 6.8 to 2 during
four weeks of massage.
"Because our therapeutic massage protocol specifically addressed trigger-point activity, we believe that
reduction in activity of these regions by massage was a major contributor to
observed beneficial effects on tension headache," state
study's authors.
Although duration of headache decreased for all four subjects,
decrease was not statistically significant, and there was no significant change in headache intensity.
"The findings suggest that a larger, more complete study that includes a proper control group is warranted," state
study's authors.
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*Source: Boulder College of Massage Therapy. Authors: Christopher Quinn, Clint Chandler and Albert Moraska, Ph.D. Originally published in American Journal of Public Health, October 2002, Vol. 92, No. 10, pp. 1,657-1,661.