Infant massage is massage given to a young infants involving tactile and kinesthetic stroke and rubbing stimulation as a therapy to enhance their cognitive and physical development. Such contact is also found in other mammals where the mother provides tactile stimulation as part of their care through licking,grooming, and physical contact. Infant massage is widespread in traditional societies. Research finds that massage enhances neural development and body growth in rodents and humans and is particularly important for preterm infants.

Benefits

Full term infants

Full term infants receiving massage therapy show more weight, greater length, less irritability and bettersleep. It also reduces crying and improves an infant's ability to regulate their stress hormones.Mothers with postnatal depression that massage their infants reduce their own depression and improve the quality of their social interactions with their infants.

Preterm infants

Preterm newborns receiving massage in neonatal intensive-care units gain more body weight than those that do not. Other benefits include increased bone mineralization, bone density, bone length, and head circumference. They also show higher psycho-motor development and significantly higher Mental Development Index scores. Such massage therapy seems to be more effective when it involves "moderate" pressure than "light" pressure. Such infants also sleep better. The body temperature of preterm infants increases when given massage compared to controls "even though the incubator portholes remained open during the 15 min massage therapy session but not for the control group over an equivalent time period". This has been suggested to be due to better control by the infant's brain of its body state and its blood circulation. Massage to the leg reduces pain prior to heel stickvenipuncture. Nondepressed mothers also show lower anxiety if they massage their preterm infants. Length of stay in hospital and occurrence of late-onset sepsis is also reduced by mothers massaging their preterm infants.

Mechanisms

Infants show increased levels of insulin and IGF-1 in their blood serum following massage therapy and this links to them gaining extra body weight. Raised levels of IGF-1 also accelerate neural development as measured by electroencephalography activity and visual acuity in the visual cortex both in rodents and humans. In the case of rodents antagonists to IGF-1 blocks these positive effects of massage.

Massage decreases right frontal EEG asymmetry in one-month-old infants of depressed mothers which could act to reduce stress. Enhanced growth might be due to lower energy expenditure in infants receiving massage therapy.

Risks

The use of certain oils in traditional societies such as mustard oil might affect newborn skin integrity and permeability. Though other oils that are linoleate-enriched such as sunflower seed oil are safe and improve skin health. Also, other oils used in traditional societies such as sesame oil are proven to improved the weight, length, and midarm and midleg circumferences of infants.

History

Ayurvedic medicine in ancient India taught the use of infant massage. It was also has been encouraged in China since the Qing dynasty. At present it is part of traditional childcare in South Asia and elsewhere where daily massage by mothers is seen as "instilling fearlessness, hardening bone structure, enhancing movement and limb coordination, and increasing weight". Such massage often used potentially unsafe mustard oil though public education is now encouraging the use of safe alternatives.