Scientific Laws and Their Implications for Massage

From the text Mosbys Fundamentals of Therapeutic Massage pgs125-127

All or None/Bowditches Law

The weakest stimulus capable of producing a response produces the maximum response contraction in cardiac and skeletal muscle and nerves.

Implications for massage:Techniques do not have to be extremely intense to produce a response. All that needs to be done is enough sensory stimulation to begin the process

Law of Facilitation

When an impulse has passed through a certain set of neurons to the exclusion of others one time, it will tend to take the same course on a future occasion, and each time it traverses this path the resistance will be smaller.

Implications for massage:The body likes sameness, which produces habitual patterns. When a pattern is established, it does not take as much stimulation to activate the response.

My comments: Once a nerve learns a pain pattern it has a tendency to repeat it even in the absence of the injury.

Hookes Law

The stress used to stretch or compress a body is proportional to the strain experienced, as long as the elastic limits of the body have not been exceeded.

Implications for Massage: Methods that lengthen the tissue need to be intense enough to match the existing shortening but not exceed it.

My comments: Understretching is not productive, overstretching can cause more damage. You have to get it just right.

Law of Specificity of Nervous Energy

Excitation of a receptor always gives rise to the same sensation regardless of the nature of the stimulus.

Implications for massage:Whatever method used, if a sensory receptor is activated, it will respond in a specific way.

My comments: So simply activating the nerve is not enough to override its programmed response. You must apply the principles of Webers Law (see below) to create change.

Webers Law

The increase in stimulus necessary to produce the smallest perceptible increase in sensation bears a constant ration to the strength of the stimulus already acting.

Implications for massage:For a massage method to change a sensory perception, the intensity of the method must match and then just exceed the existing sensation

Hiltons Law

A nerve trunk that supplies a joint also supplies the muscles of the joint and the skin over the insertions of such muscles

Implications for massage:It is difficult to figure out if a pain is in the joint itself, the muscles around a joint, or the skin over a joint. Stimulation of all areas in turn affects each part.

Pflugers Law of Unilaterality

If a mild irritation is applied to one or more sensory nerves, the moverment will take place usually on one side only and on the side that has been irritated.

Implications for massage:Effects of light stimulation remain fairly localized in response to massage.

Pflugers Law of Symmetry

If the stimulation is sufficiently increased, motor reaction is manifested not only by the irritated side, but also in similar muscles on the opposite side of the body.

Implications for massage:By using increasing levels of massage intensity, a bilateral effect can be created even if massaging only one side of the body. This is especially useful for massage applications to painful areas. By massaging the unaffected side the painful areas can be addressed without direct massage work.

Pflugers Law of Intensity

Reflex movements are usually more intense on the side of the irritation; at times the movements of the opposite side equal the reflex movements in intensity, but they are less pronounced.

Pflugers Law of Radiation

If the excitation continues to increase, it is propagated upward and reactions take place through the centrifugal nerves coming from the higher cord segments.

Pflugers Law of Generalization

When the irritation becomes very intense, it is propagated in the medulla oblongata, which becomes a focus from which stimuli radiates to all parts of the cord, causing a general contraction of all muscles to the body.

Implications for massage:This response needs to be avoided. It is important to keep invasive massage measures such as fractioning, below the intensity levels that cause a negative general body response.

My comments: Component of the famed massage flu?

Arndt-Schultz Law

Weak stimuli activate physiologic processes; very strong stimuli inhibit them

Implications for massage:To encourage a specific response use gentler methods. To shut off a response use deeper methods.

My comments: To encourage flow of lymphatic system- very light massage. To overwhelm a dysfunctional nerve signal- deep compression.

Cannons Law of Denervation

When autonomic effectors are partially or completely separated from their normal nerve connections, they become more sensitive to the action of chemical substances.

This denervation supersensitivity involves injured nerves responding to all sensory stimulation regardless if the stimulation is specific to that nerve or not.Denervation supersensitivity is a universal phenomenon affecting muscles, nerves, salivary glands, sudorific glands, autonomic ganglioin cells, spinal neurons,and even neurons in the cortex. There are also changes in muscle structure and biochemistry and progressive destruction of fibers contractile elements. Furthermore, unlike normal muscle fibers that resist innervation from foreign nerves, degenerated muscle fibers accept contacts from other motor nerves, preganglionic autonomic fibers, and even sensory nerves.

Implications for massage: If a client has an injured muscle tissue with damaged nerve connections, that area will hyperreact to all sensory stimulation.

My comments:Hence the whiplash victim experiences whiplash again with a cold or high stress levels. Pain is a product of the nervous system not necessarily ongoing dysfunction of the musculoskeletal system.


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