How we research, test and correct these guides

The four rules

1. A source or a measurement, never a vibe. Claims about pain, circulation, injury or safety cite a named source: a peer-reviewed review or trial, NHS guidance, a national health service, or a clinical reference. Where we state a number, we say where it came from and what it does not cover.
2. Tools publish their method. The session planner and the tool matcher both show how their outputs are calculated, so you can disagree with the arithmetic rather than the conclusion.
3. We separate feeling good from treating something. Massage devices are comfortable, and that is worth something. It is not the same as fixing plantar fasciitis, restoring circulation or repairing tissue, and our pages say so in those words.
4. Corrections are dated. When a page changes in substance, the change and its date are noted on the page. Nothing quietly disappears.

What we will not do

How a guide gets written

1. We start from the question people actually ask, taken from search result question boxes and from what customers ask us before buying.
2. We pull the primary sources: systematic reviews and meta-analyses on PubMed, NHS and national health service guidance, and clinical references for anatomy and safety.
3. We read the reviews rather than the summaries, so we can report effect sizes, how many studies there were, and how strong the study methods were.
4. Where a decision depends on time, pressure or area, we build a tool instead of describing the arithmetic in prose.
5. Before publishing, a second pass looks for overclaiming. Any sentence that asserts more than the cited source supports gets cut or softened.

How we handle evidence we do not like

Some of our honest findings cost us a sale. Foam rolling has better published evidence than the percussion guns we stock, so our comparison page says so and tells you to buy a roller elsewhere. Massage gun research shows no benefit for strength, balance or explosive power and a possible reduction in some measures, so we report that rather than quoting only the flexibility findings. Reflexology has a promising but thin evidence base, and our foot massager guide says so instead of claiming the studies prove more than they do.

The safety standard

Anything about where not to press and who should not be massaged is held to a higher bar than the rest of a page, because the cost of being wrong is higher. Our contraindications guide cites NHS guidance on deep vein thrombosis and varicose veins, the Australian Government health service list of conditions where massage may not be appropriate, a clinical reference on the carotid sinus, and a peer-reviewed systematic review for pregnancy. When a question needs individual assessment, the page says to ask a clinician rather than offering a workaround.

Corrections and contact

If a page here is wrong, out of date, or cites something that has since changed, tell us through the contact page and we will fix it and note the date. If a source we cite has been superseded by better research, the page gets rewritten against the newer source rather than patched around it.

Use these next

Sources