The effects of massage therapy on weight gain and sleep behaviors in infants

Introduction: Massage therapy for newborns and infants is used as an important care in varied customs, specially in Indian. But clinical and experimental studies have done only in recent years. Because of few study about that over the world and no research in Iran, this study, with the objects of assess the effects of massage therapy to weight gain and sleep behavior in infants have done. Materials & Methods: This is a clinical trial study that involved 2 months aged infants who referring to Arak city (Iran) clinics. At first, the infants topometrics sizes (weight, length, head, chest, abdomen, arm and femoral circumference) and sleep behaviors (length of sleep in 24h, and length of night sleep) assessed and then infants divided randomly in 2 groups, with and without massage. In massage group, mothers trained for doing 10 minutes rotational and continually monotonous massage used in all of the infants̓ body, twice each day (morning and night before sleep) for 4 weeks. After 4 weeks, the topometrics size and sleep behaviors were assessed again. Results: At first of the study, sex frequency and mean of weight, length and other topometric sizes in two groups did not have statistically significant differences. After 4 weeks in massage group mean of weight gain was 965.24 ± 310.12 gram and in group without massage it was 686.14 ± 220.92 gram. This was considered to be statistically significant (P