What the research says
Peer-reviewed studies on massage and herbal scalp care.
Regular massage eased anxiety and low mood.
Researchers pooled 37 randomized studies of hands-on massage.
Pooled across 37 trials, a single massage session lowered heart rate and blood pressure. Over a course of sessions, massage eased ongoing anxiety, low mood and pain, with the largest effects on anxiety and low mood.
Nearly 3×
Patchy hair loss improved more often with essential oils.
86 people with patchy hair loss (alopecia areata) massaged oil into their scalp daily for 7 months, with or without essential oils.
−18 mmHg
Regular scalp massage lowered blood pressure.
34 office workers, all women, had a 15- or 25-minute scalp massage twice a week for 10 weeks, or none.
The top blood-pressure number fell from 157.6 to 139.8 mmHg with 15-minute massage and from 150.1 to 135.4 with 25-minute massage, compared with 152.5 to 147.4 with no massage.
71%
Scalp symptoms fell 71% in four weeks.
77 people with a flaky, itchy scalp (seborrheic dermatitis) used a Chinese-herbal scalp treatment, plus oral treatment if their case was moderate or severe.
+8%
In a 9-person pilot, massaged strands got slightly thicker.
9 men used a scalp-massage device for 4 minutes a day on one side of the head. The massaged side never differed significantly from the other side.
On the massaged side, hair strands grew about 8% thicker over 24 weeks, from 0.085 mm to 0.092 mm.
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