تاثير ماساژ برميزان رشد و الگوي خواب شيرخواران

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 infants 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 (P0.0001) Mean of chest circumference increased in massage group was 2.63 ± 0.82 and in without massage group it was 1.75 ± 0.92 centimeter that was considered to be significant (P<0.05). Length, and head circumference, increased in massage group were more than without massage group, but it was not considered to be statistically significant. Mean increase of night sleep length in massage group was 94.8 ± 28.9 minutes and in control group was 26.4 ± 12.7 minutes. Mean increase in 24h sleep in massage group was 61.2 ± 22.5 minutes and in control group it was 10.24 ± 8.3 minutes .Both of them were considered to be statistically significant. Conclusion: Results from this study have shown that massage therapy could improve the sleep behaviors, weight gain and also length in infants. These positive effects on growth of infants may result from augmented of growth hormone release due to an increment in duration of the infantsʹ night sleep