Most people would be forgiven for thinking massage and medicines are two words that would never go together. Medicine is considered a very serious practice with equally stringent measures to cure and also to prevent diseases while massage, by and large, is considered a leisurely activity in which one partakes after a long day of hard work to relax. Even in the scientific community it has not been widely accepted that massage therapy spa can be a standard of treatment owing to the fact that it's one of those things that can be put under a microscope to be "scientifically proven".

The truth is that massage has always been a part of medicine and it is actually one of the earliest known methods of healing and it was not until in the last century that human faith largely shifted to chemical means of treating anything and everything. Ignoring the traditional forms of treatment and wholly accepting the new ones came at a great price as many people have and still do experience a great many side-effects as a result of treatment for even the simplest of ailments such as a backache. This is why there is a now another branch of treatment that is arising and is being greatly appreciated by millions of patients who have testified to its effectiveness. This is what is known as Medical massage therapy.

Medical massage therapy is a type of massage that is in many more ways than one similar to the traditional forms but has a few fundamental differences that make it well attributed for its intended purpose. Medical massage therapy is a much more result oriented form of massage that is specifically directed to resolve conditions that have been diagnosed and prescribed by a Physician. For a patient to receive this kind of treatment they need a prescription from a doctor and the reason for this is that for massage therapists to claim to be treating someone, first and foremost they must be able to legally state what it is that they are treating. The prescription must come from a doctor as it is beyond a massage therapists practice to do this by himself.

In the history of massage, almost all types of massages are applicable in the field as most forms of massage can be therapeutic if applied by a well trained professional message therapist. This is because the ailments are not always limited to a specific part of the body and there can also be more than one form of massage that can be used to treat a particular ailment, for example, most massage techniques may be applied as back pain therapy and even a simple relaxation massage is quite useful in treating certain ailments that don't have a physical nature such as stress.

The benefits of Medical massage have been testified to by many patients with some even claiming to have been cured from pains that have lasted for years prior to the treatment. Some of the more specific benefits are:

1. The release of tight and sore muscles

2. The release of nerves that have been put under pressure by other body tissues

3. Used to reduce pain as well as inflammation

4. Helps to reduce normal mental stress.

These are just a few of the benefits that can be most easily attested to but the actual list of benefits is much longer. The best thing about medical massage therapy is that finally patients have a treatment that they can resort to without fear of complications and side-effects because only rarely will a massage, even when ineffective, aggravate patients conditions or present them with other problems.