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Blackpill or whitepill me on massage. I don’t particularly like heavy (sports, I guess) massages, but a lot of people I know including my partner swear by them. Osteopaths Love Him (etc etc).
Is there any health-based reason to visit a masseuse or osteopath that amounts to more than it being a pleasurable experience for people who enjoy it?
I'd say probably the biggest benefit is cheaper access to a moderately trained medical professional. In the US, all but 5 states require about a year of training to become a licensed massage therapist culminating in a standardized test with a ~70% pass rate. For something like $70 an hour, you get pretty good combination of competency and attention per dollar compared to a doctor.
For whatever NIH's medical credibility is worth, their review(1) of (the reviews of) the literature finds massage is effective for short term treatment (2-3 days) of low back, neck and shoulder pain, osteoarthritis, and fibromyalgia generally halving or thirding severity of symptoms. Generally there hasn't been enough study of long term outcomes to reach statistical significance, and the short term data is middling quality. An RCT of dosage response(2) found no benefit from 30 minute sessions but a 3x reduction in pain from 60 minute sessions and quote:
From my understanding, a good 15 minutes at the start of a massage session is just preparing the flesh so it is workable. An hour session is going to have a lot more time to do actual work.
There is a plausible story that reduced pain allows for faster long term improvement by making it easier to follow through with physical therapy exercises (or literal exercises(3)). This requires some level of conscientiousness on the patient's part (and some lack of it on the provider's part, massage therapists in the US are not allowed to prescribe physical therapy), but seems plausible.
Regarding your (lack of) enjoyment of sports massage, it might be useful to think about what is happening as assisted stretching. Many of the deep pressure techniques are attempting to fool your nervous system into thinking the muscle is tighter than it really is, and thus relax it. Like normal stretching the feeling is an acquired taste, and those without it often "guard" by tightening all the nearby muscle groups making a frame to avoid injury and reject the outside force.
Footnotes
-I haven't interacted with any osteopaths, but from the looks of it they are an unlicensed profession and thus going to have a lot more variability.
-I'm pretty close with a licensed massage therapist so included is probably some second hand propaganda
(1)https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/providers/digest/massage-therapy-for-health-science
(2)https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3948757/
(3)https://today.uic.edu/massage-therapy-beneficial-after-injury-exercise/
If you're going to someone like that explicitly for medical advice, I can only implore you to consider seeking a teleconsultation with a doctor from the cheaper parts of the world, likely for far less money. After all, correct me if I'm wrong, but these professionals can't prescribe anything but OTC medicine, nor scans.
You'll get a far higher quality assessment for one.
I already give out free medical advice here, at least while the GMC isn't looking, I'm nice like that. For $70/h, I'd do that, and suck your dick too /s
OK, honestly consider this an open advertisement for my services, first three purchases buy an effort post for a topic of your choice.
No legal prescribing power, totally agree that it is absurdly expensive compared to foreign care, but some cost comparisons of how messed up US healthcare costs without insurance:
$15.00/min Primary care
$7.00/min US based telehealth
$1.15/min Massage therapist
$0.90/min India based telehealth
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