A 2011 study found that massage helped people with low back pain to feel and function better, compared to people who didn’t get a rubdown. That’s good news for the eight in 10 Americans who will experience debilitating back pain at least once in their lives, Time.com reported. “We found the benefits of massage are about as strong as those reported for other effective treatments: medications, acupuncture, exercise and yoga,” Dan Cherkin, Ph.D., lead author of the study, said in a press release. Massage also seems to lessen pain among people with osteoarthritis.
