The Remedial Massage Guy Rockingham

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

Some rough lyrics written under influence of pain meds.
ANGELS OF MERCY

The Angels of Mercy
Have Kept me alive
I’m so lucky to survive
From Mandeep the Mo
And Sweet Caroline
There’s Faye from Samoa
Jenifer from France
Who promised me a dance
Then There is Vicki
The lone token Aussie
These Angels of Mercy
Have come from all over the place
I called them angels
I called them guardian angels too
I also called them archangels
But Angels of mercy describes these heroes the best
I tried to make them smile
I tried to make them laugh
I thanked them often
The cocktails of meds
Really blurred my mind
Open heart surgery does that
But I have run up a dept
I can never repay
All I can say is Thankyou
To The Angels of mercy
And hope this message gets through
To the Angels of mercy (angels of mercy)
To the Angels of mercy (angels of mercy)
To the Angels of mercy (angels of mercy)
Angels of mercy