Massage, it seems, helps asthmatics breathe easier, boosts immune function in HIV-positive patients, improves autistic children’s ability to concentrate, lowers anxiety in depressed adolescents and reduces apprehension in burn victims about to undergo debridement, the painful procedure in which contaminated skin is removed. “I started out thinking it was a bunch of hooey, but I’ve become a believer,” says C. Gill Ward, medical director of Jackson Memorial’s Burn Center. “I guess there are just some things you can’t explain yet.”

Actually, we’re beginning to explain them. When we say that somebody touches us emotionally, it means he or she has gone to the core of our being. Physical touch, too is more than skin-deep. There are as many as five million touch receptors in our skin—3,000 in a single fingertip—that send messages along the spinal cord to the brain. A simple touch—a hand on a shoulder, an arm around a waist—can reduce the heart rate and lower blood pressure. (Even people in deep comas may show improved heart rates when their hands are held.) Touch also stimulates the brain to produce endorphins, the body’s natural pain suppressors, which is why a mother’s hug of a child who has skinned his knee can literally “make it better.”

It isn’t only the mother who makes it better—it’s also the pressure. Duke professor Sam Schanberg found that rat pups separated from their mothers for 45 minutes underwent major internal changes, including a dramatic drop in growth hormones. Their systems began to shut down, just like the Romanian orphans’. Injections of growth hormones didn’t help. But when a graduate student stroked the rat pups with a moist paintbrush—mimicking their mother’s tongues—the hormone levels went back up.

Stronger, sustained touch can have even greater effect. Massage may increase the lymph flow rate. It enhances immune function and lowers levels of the stress hormones cortisol and norepinephrine. Massage also stimulates the vagus, one of 12 cranial nerves that influence various bodily functions. One branch of the vagus travels to the gastrointestinal tract, where it facilitates the release of food-absorption hormones like insulin and glucose. That’s one reason the massaged preemies in TRI studies gain weight faster. “They aren’t eating any more formula than nonmassaged babies,” says Field, “but their food absorption is more efficient.”

In field’s studies, massaged preemies were discharged from the hospital six days sooner—at a savings of $10,000 each. With 430,000 premature births in America each year, and a potential $4 billion in annual savings, one might think hospital nurseries would be falling all over themselves to establish massage programs. Yet only a handful of hospitals have them. Even Jackson Memorial, where Field’s first preemie studies were done more than a dozen years ago, has no regular program of massage for preemies. Nurses have too much to do already, says hospital spokesperson, and funding isn’t available to bring in more therapists. The number of insurance companies covering massage for certain conditions is increasing but remains small.

AFTER MASSAGE, OFFICE WORKERS COMPLETED A MATH TEST MORE QUICKLY AND WITH FEWER ERRORS.