Reflexology and chest pain research
ALTERNATIVES in health™ subscriber, Margaret Berker, a qualified reflexologist and member of the British Reflexology Association conducted an interesting small-scale study at the Cardiac Unit of the Queen Elizabeth hospital , Birmingham, UK, into the effects of reflexology on a group of four patients suffering from chest pain.
The patients were obtained from a consultant; all had all experienced pain for periods ranging between 18 months and 13 years and, cardiac catheterizations revealed that none of the patients had any identifiable disease of the cardiac arteries. Furthermore, none of the patients had had reflexology treatment prior to the study, nor were they encouraged to believe that the treatment would ‘cure’ their condition.
Reflexology treatments were given weekly over a period of eight weeks and the patients were asked to keep a diary to record their chest pain before and after treatments which specified (a) the number of episodes, (b) the intensity of the pain and (c) the duration of the pain.
Analysis of the data revealed that all of the patients recorded positive results; three of the four experienced a complete relief from their original symptoms after nine months and the remaining patient reported a reduction in pain.
See the Internet Health Library article Reflexology and chest pain