Massage Therapy for Infant Diarrhea

There is a growing body of research literature on the use of acupuncture or massage therapy in pediatric care. One recent, and particularly provocative, study looked at the use of massage for diarrhea in children in institutional care. Authors of the study reported that approximately two million children younger than five die each year as a result of diarrhea and associated dehydration, usually in developing nations. However, diarrhea is also prevalent in U.S. institutions including daycare centers, where it is the second most common illness.

Hoping to reduce deaths in developing nations and to reduce health care costs in the U.S., a team of researchers, funded by a grant from the Massage Therapy Foundation, went to an orphanage in Ecuador to study the effects of therapeutic massage on diarrheal episodes and overall illness in infants. Massage therapy was chosen as an intervention because it has been linked to positive health outcomes in a variety of pediatric populations, including the increase of natural killer cells in HIV-positive adolescents; increased weight gains in premature infants; decreased blood glucose levels in children with diabetes; and increased performance in peak air flow tests in children with asthma. 

In the Ecuador study, 37 children were divided into control and experimental groups. In the experimental group, children received a 15-minute full-body massage daily, delivered by an orphanage volunteer or staff member who had been trained in infant massage using techniques endorsed by Infant Massage USA. The control group received standard care.

Results of this pilot study showed that infants who were massaged daily had significantly fewer days of diarrhea and slightly lower rates of overall illness than infants in the control group. Incidence of diarrhea was approximately 50 percent higher among infants in the control group. Researchers concluded that “if massage can indeed decrease the incidence of diarrhea among orphaned infants, this avenue of intervention should be pursued, particularly given the high risk of mortality associated with this condition in developing countries…..Massage interventions can be inexpensively implemented in resource-poor countries where zinc supplements may not be easily available and improving water quality may be especially difficult to accomplish. In addition, massage therapy can be implemented on a daily basis by mothers and/or institutional staff, and has the advantage of being associated with positive parent-child outcomes such as secure attachments.”¹

Vonda Jump, PhD, principle author of the study, conceded in an e-mail correspondence that the small study had limitations and that more work needs to be done to better understand the influence of massage on infant health outcomes. Dr. Jump, a certified infant massage instructor, has traveled to Haiti, India and Russia as part of her work. She is currently conducting a small study on the effects of massage therapy on babies with Down syndrome. 

Dr. Jump, part of the Early Intervention Research Institute at Utah State University, can be reached at vonda@eiri.usu.edu.


¹ Jump, Vonda, PhD; Fargo, Jamison, PhD; Akers, James PhD. "Impact of Massage Therapy on Health Outcomes Among Orphaned Infants in Ecuador." Family and Community Health, Dec 2006; 29(4): 314-19.

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