Does post-exercise massage treatment reduce delayed onset muscle soreness? A systematic review
Tags: treatment, self-treatment, massage, exercise, chronic pain, manual therapy, pain problems
One page on PainSci cites Ernst 1998: A Deep Dive into Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness
PainSci notes on Ernst 1998:
From the article: “An effective treatment has been sought for many years … to date, none of these approaches has been fully convincing.”
related content
- “Massage therapy attenuates inflammatory signaling after exercise-induced muscle damage,” Crane et al, Science Translational Medicine, 2012.
- Massage Does Not Reduce Inflammation — The making of a new massage myth from a high-tech study of muscle samples after intense exercise
- “Effectiveness of sports massage for recovery of skeletal muscle from strenuous exercise,” Best et al, Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine, 2008.
- “Ice massage. Effects on exercise-induced muscle damage,” Howatson et al, J Sports Med Phys Fitness, 2003.
- “Treatment and prevention of delayed onset muscle soreness,” Connolly et al, Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 2003.
This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:
- Common interventional procedures for chronic non-cancer spine pain: a systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomised trials. Wang 2025 BMJ.
- Gabapentinoids and Risk of Hip Fracture. Leung 2024 JAMA Netw Open.
- Classical Conditioning Fails to Elicit Allodynia in an Experimental Study with Healthy Humans. Madden 2017 Pain Med.
- Topical glyceryl trinitrate (GTN) and eccentric exercises in the treatment of mid-portion achilles tendinopathy (the NEAT trial): a randomised double-blind placebo-controlled trial. Kirwan 2024 Br J Sports Med.
- Placebo analgesia in physical and psychological interventions: Systematic review and meta-analysis of three-armed trials. Hohenschurz-Schmidt 2024 Eur J Pain.