Are you under the impression that massage does not have positive benefits?
“Healing Touch” isn’t a massage…Hell, it’s not even touching! “Healing Touch” is when someone just places their hands near you and waves them around. Seriously. And they claim it actualy does something.
Is “Healing Touch” the same as “Therapeutic Touch”?
The positive benefit that I’m aware of is that it feels good. Is there anything else?
Oh. I thought that was just another name for massage.
Pain management, scar tissue reduction, muscle range of motion issues.
There is actually a lot going on in the body during/due to massage. Before this thread I had no idea, but after a bunch of googling into medical and research sites/articles I found the following effects:
increase in mast cells, histamine release, increased blood flow, release/production? of beta endorphins, increased delta waves in the brain (which, according to wiki, doesn’t actually sound good), and a whole bunch of other stuff. (Note: I am not a doctor, didn’t stay at a holiday inn last night, but have been googling a bunch because it’s interesting).
My understanding is that the only ways the human body eliminates “toxins” are through the liver and kidney–going out in the urine. (Maybe through breath, I don’t know.) After all, how else could they get out?
I’ve wondered about this myself, so I did a little research. I’m not really into doing any more myself, but if you want to continue, I recommend pubmed.com, a free, very comprehensive source of academic health articles hosted by the NIH.
Anyway, searching “massage lactic acide” yielded the abstract of a paper (I doubt I’d be able to make much sense out of the whole paper anyway) that seems to conclude that massage actually impedes the release of lactic acid from the muscles, at least following exercise. (I’m not sure if it would be different in other situations.)
P.S. I love massages. I don’t care about toxins or whatever. They’re awesome.
Nah. Once you let goat pee go free range, it’s impossible to get it back in the bottle.
So-called “therapeutic touch” is a form of “energy healing”, and while some nurses have gotten into performing it in hospitals, it is placebo nonsense at best, quackery at worst.
Normal muscle metabolism and effects of massage are not synonymous. There is no indication from that source (or demonstrated in the scientific literature to my knowledge) that massage does anything unusual as far as affecting muscle metabolism or releasing “toxins”.
I don’t see where he says that water consumption has to be increased following massage.
#&%(__
Sorry, I had a momentary brain scramble on reading the words “scientific alternative consensus”. 
Yes, alties/new age/frou-frou folk are all wound up about toxins of various horrific sorts pervading our bodies, and have quasi-religious beliefs about the sources and means of elimination of said toxins (which are not all that different from the beliefs of our forebears who went in heavily for enemas/colonic irrigation - practices that are often followed these days too). Again, it’s necessary to identify a substance(s) as 1) actually being a toxin, 2) being toxic in the amounts encountered in everyday life, 3) showing that the substance is removed from the body by massage, supplements, or whatever woo the alties are promoting, and 4) that you gain some demonstrable health benefit as a result.
Alties virtually never are capable of fulfilling these requirements.
The laying on of hands is often therapeutic (at least temporarily) or just feels good. And you do tend to feel better when you’re adequately hydrated as opposed to being dehydrated.