UK Health Radio AOR Interview

my guests today are three experienced reflexologists and i've got to say i'm a bit scared because i'm outnumbered i don't think i've spoken to three people in one interview before so i hope i can keep some kind of order oh yeah but we're all lovely and cuddly but quite scary too i'm sure you are well just just to prove that why don't you guys introduce yourselves okay well my name's tracy smith and uh i've been working with the association for reflexologists for i don't know something like 16 years um and i've been a reflexologist for 22 years um and before that was a scientist all right okay very good um i'm sally ellen and i'm head of training and education at the association of reflexologists and i've been there for about nine years now i've been a reflexologist for 20 years and was a nurse before that fantastic all right we're up to 42 years of experience so far oh we're going to increase so i'm helen terrier i've been a reflexologist since 2007 and again my background was in nursing prior to doing reflexology and i've been a member of the association of reflexology since i was a student and then been with them in various forms since that time from area group leader to board to a staff member since this summer so okay right well you made the math a bit harder for me but i reckon we've got 54 years of experience of reflexology here so this is the right place to be to discuss all things reflexology so right i'm going to get a very basic question to start off with what is reflexology and um fight between yourselves who's going to answer i'm going to take that one so reflexology is a complementary therapy now that was defined back in 2000 in the house of lords support report on science and technology it means it's a therapy that runs can run alongside standard medical health care so it's not an alternative therapy it's very much a complementary therapy and it's based on the theory that points in the hands and feet and face and ears as well to some extent are um correspond with different parts of the body and by working those points you can aid the body to relax and to improve various areas of itself by itself um and it helps very much with the stresses that life brings it works very individually so it works with the uh in a bespoke way if you like with the individual's problems and um and the only way really to know if it works is to try it right and presumably it works better on some people than others like all sorts of medicine um yes indeed um and you know that people often say oh you have to be open to reflexology for it to work that's not actually the case at all i think your body just has to be welcoming to it whether your mind believes it's going to happen or not or work or not is not necessarily the case well that's interesting because certainly that's the case with you know drugs if you if you take a pill for a headache if you think it's going to work it's got a much better chance of working you know really i mean having that placebo effect obviously helps but it's not necessary for the reflexology to actually work but yes you know we like to make the most of the placebo as well all right so is it an ancient thing you know has this been around for thousands of years or what's the history of it um well the modern western reflexology was really only started in sort of 1920s by a chap called william fitzgerald who's really the father of reflexology um but for thousands of years before it's been done in china but of course a lot of the chinese practices were quite almost not secret but they were handed down through families it wasn't necessarily written down and it works sort of similarly to acupuncture in a way and as much as there are energy um pathways through the body so china far east it's been done for a lot longer than it has over in the west william fitzgerald was an american an american ent surgeon to be precise okay so he was a man a man of science if you like he was you know he was a doctor yeah absolutely yeah and is it very popular do many people try it how many reflexologists are there i'm like am i talking to half of them in the uk you absolutely no no as a membership organization we have just over 5 000 members um but there are reflexologists you don't need to be trained to be called you could to call yourself a reflexologist so there are lots of other people out there who call themselves reflexologists who are not necessarily as well trained as our members but there's there's it was estimated um 20 years ago there were 35 000 at the time though however that was just in the uk but that was when it was at its height i think since the recession etc numbers have probably dropped a little bit since then all right so this this 5 000 members of the association that they're in the uk are they yes they are mostly yeah there's a few international yeah but certainly a coverage over the whole of the uk yeah and what do you have to do to become a member of your organization you know what are the qualifications that you need to show and i think this is actually really important we now have a regulated qualification which sits under off coal and the training is about nine months it includes a hundred treatments while you're training and we will only accept people who hold the regulator qualification or equivalent because that's only been available for the last sort of six seven years but as tracy said earlier you know you can call yourself a reflexologist if you've done an online course which is why it's so important to come to a professional body where we have this regulated qualification which you can ensure that all the national occupational standards have been covered and the core curriculum so we do have quite a high bar and we will not accept anybody who doesn't hasn't been what we would consider adequately trained right so if you're looking for a reflexologist go to the list and they'll check if you're reflexologists yeah find a reflexologist search and you literally go onto the aor website put in your postcode and up should pop lots of names and i think the other thing to state is it's not just the training that you receive to qualify as a reflexologist it's the ongoing way that you practice so our members follow a code of professional conduct they are all insured and they all have to do continuous professional development which they have to declare when they renew their insurance to say that yes they have done their minimum 20 hours so you then know that the reflexologist that you're seeing who bears the initials mar or fmar um is not only well trained but also keeps themselves up to date and they also get support the other thing about our membership organization is that we have us i.e three of us plus one other in the office all of the time so all of the office hours anyway and we are there to help them should they have any problems which most other membership organizations are simply not able to do okay all right let's go back to the mechanics of the actual reflexology right so you mentioned it it works from different areas the feet or the hands or the ears or whatever corresponding to other parts of the body how how are they connected is it nerves or blood or what what's the deal it's it's it's not been tested to be honest with you um it's quite it's almost definitely nerve um there are um most definitely almost definitely scientifically the problem is is that there are very few research pro projects on reflexology at all um there was one that was carried out in um japan too in fact they were carried out in japan that showed that if they worked the reflex point in the foot it lit up parts of the brain um in terms of blood flow so there was definitely something happening they used an mri scanner and you can't get much more scientific than that however tiny little studies so it's it's assumed its neural um there are mechanoreceptors in the plantar foot so the the sole of the foot and the and the palm of the hands and these mechanoreceptors are all about discriminative touch and they are sending neural stimulate stimuli straight up to the brain all of the time there's also other receptors in the other types of skin which is called glabrous skin and that's probably that is definitely sending neural stimuli about other things about social contact um and about um other positive things about touch um so reflexology kind of takes in both of those um so the assumption is it's neural but we don't know for sure okay is there actually any research work that's been done you know peer-reviewed research that's published that people can uh can look at oh sure there are lots of small individual studies that are peer review published um if you can go you can go into pubmed and you can put reflexology into pubmed and it comes up unfortunately mixed with a load of other complementary therapies but there are studies out there yeah i mean there's studies to show there was one small study that was carried out that showed reflexology was equally um as good as in fact better than ibuprofen for period pain so you know there are there are specific studies out there and we do try to get our um members to understand that that's out there so that they can talk about them but is there an ongoing sort of body of research that's happening now um currently um there are i mean research is mainly carried out in universities and hospitals and the like we've been recently been doing the data collection of our own members to see um how they how their clients react with when they've got migraines and although it was a very tiny little data collection it was a very positive result which we're in the process of getting published so there is ongoing uh research right okay so well this might be a bit of an unfair question but i'll ask it anyway considering i've got 54 years of experience i'm chatting to you does does you think reflexology work with the symptoms or the root cause of problems you could almost argue that the root cause could be causing the symptoms we certainly say we don't treat conditions so what we are there to do is actually work with the symptoms aid well being you know we do have some studies which show that you get a relaxation of the the blood vessels so you get improved blood flow so it's about well-being it is about the symptoms but you know the body will do what it needs to and hopefully help the root cause but we absolutely do not treat conditions we do not diagnose i suppose what led me to ask that question is is you know if i get a foot rub or or a hand rub actually i feel better whatever you know it's just nice and if if i feel um well if i've got a headache or something a foot rub just because it's nice and i become relaxed i feel a bit happier and improves my mood yeah there's a pretty good chance of my headache getting better never underestimate the power of relaxation as a positive thing on your health when you're stressed you release a lot of cortisol and a lot of stress hormones when you're relaxed you release a lot of hormones that are relaxing and beneficial to your well-being so if having something which helps reduce your stress such as reflexology it can only be a positive thing and interestingly i came to reflexology because i was diagnosed with a medical condition which is exacerbated by stress and my consultant at the time suggested to me that i should look at ways to manage my stress because my symptoms were very bad at that time because i was in a very stressful situation and he suggested that i try massage massage didn't appeal to me so i did a bit of research and found that actually reflexology worked on the feet that felt more acceptable to me as an individual who didn't particularly like being touched i was like well they're down by my feet so that you know felt more acceptable to me and you know it proved that it did actually for me and significantly reduced my symptoms it made my life much much better because my symptoms were lower my relaxation was better and yeah i did you're absolutely right i felt better i suppose one thing's for sure it can't do any harm no no and i think the other thing is a foot rub compared to reflexology with reflexology we're working very specifically and if even you as a client when we do one of our little pressure points it will be fine the next one will feel quite ouchy to you and that is an area that is out of balance so yes a foot rub absolutely makes you feel great but there's something very specific about reflexology um which the client feels as well as us so it's not something that we're making up sure and there have been a few studies where they've looked at a comparator of foot massage and reflexology has had um in some cases in every case a significant effect over and above the effect of foot massage all right but foot massage is 50 of what we not 50 but certain some percentage of what we do for sure because i will want to put some links to some of these these studies on my blog well i think we're going a little bit short of time oh sorry so just just just quickly if people want to try reflexology yeah and find one just tell me how they can do that the best thing to do is to go onto our website which is www.aor and visit our find a reset reflexologist search you can just pop your postcode in and it will bring up a list of local people who are well trained insured and doing continuing professional development they're all our members and then ring around and find one that you like because it's really important that you like your therapist all right that that yes that sounds like very good advice so tracy helen and sally thank you very much for chatting and bringing your 54 years of experience thanks for inviting us