The Remedial Massage Guy Rockingham

After the open heart surgery, I felt like superman as I joined the zipper club.

Different story with liver cancer removal with weight loss, feeling cold and lethargic.

Now with chemotherapy. Can’t see me reopening before end October.

May reopen the clinic later but who knows?

So if I can reopen, I will.

My slogan is the relief of aches and pains and headaches. Sounds so simple and I try to make it so. However the power of touch works on many systems of your body. We’re not just talking tight muscles and soft tissue such as myofascia, tight tendons etc. The shared article delves a bit deeper!

Why does manual therapy work?

It’s a question most of us have been asked — by patients, by students, sometimes by ourselves mid-treatment.

A 2025 living review in PLOS ONE (Keter et al.) pulled together 62 systematic, narrative, and scoping reviews to map the current evidence.

Manual therapy doesn’t act on one system. It produces measurable responses across the following:

- Neurological
- Neurovascular
- Neurotransmitter,
- Neuroimmune
- Neuromuscular
- Neuroendocrine
- Biomechanical

The strongest, most consistent signals are central, not local: increased pressure pain thresholds at sites distant from treatment and enhanced descending pain modulation.

The biomechanical “joint-out-of-place” model? It's not supported by the evidence. The treatments purporting to do this may help, but for the reasons above, not because the joint has been popped back in.

What this means in practice: our hands are interacting with the central nervous system at least as much as the tissue beneath them and the language we use with patients should reflect that.

The full one-page clinical summary is below 👇

📖 Source: Keter et al. (2025), PLOS ONE. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0319586