“This dispels a common belief in the general public about the way in which massage is beneficial,” says Kinesiology and Health Studies professor Michael Tschakovsky.
“It also dispels that belief among people in the physical therapy profession. All the physical therapy professionals that I have talked to, when asked what massage does, answer that it improves muscle blood flow and helps get rid of lactic acid. Ours is the first study to challenge this and rigorously test its validity.”
The belief that massage aids in the removal of lactic acid from muscle tissue is so pervasive it is even listed on official websites as being one of the benefits of massage, despite there being absolutely no scientific research to back this up.
The researchers set out to discover if this untested hypothesis was true and their results show that massage actually impairs blood flow to the muscles after exercise and that it therefore also impairs the removal of lactic acid from muscle after exercise.
These findings are due to be presented in a paper at the annual American College of Sports Medicine conference in Seattle, at the end of May and we will bring you further details when available.
Source: Queen’s University
UPDATE 26th May 2009
You can now view an abstract of Prof. Tschakovsky’s paper.