Back pain — it’s something that affects eight out of 10 people during their lifetime. And it becomes more common with age. It can keep you up at night and make it difficult for you to participate in daily activities. Now a new study concludes that performing some gentle yoga exercises may be able to help alleviate your chronic lower back pain.
Researchers at Seattle’s Group Health Cooperative Center for Health Studies assessed 101 patients with back pain. They found that those patients who participated in weekly 75-minute yoga sessions made greater progress in healing than those who took part in stretching and strengthening exercises did.
After the end of 12 weeks, the patients in the yoga group were better able to complete daily activities that required them to use their back. And 14 weeks later participants reported experiencing less pain and found that they were using less drugs to relieve the pain. The researchers also found that yoga was more effective than using a self-care book on healing back pain.
This could be important news because, as researcher Dr. Karen Sherman says, “Most people have experienced back pain at some point in their lives. Sometimes the pain goes away in a few days but sometimes it lasts for weeks. And unfortunately, the treatments offered by modern western medicine are only modestly effective.”
Common treatments for back pain include pain relievers and muscle relaxants, as well as exercise. Dr. Sherman had wanted to devise a study that evaluated the effectiveness and safety of a gentle program of yoga for people with chronic low back pain.
The participants in the Seattle study were taught 17 poses from viniyoga — a style that is easy to learn and can be adapted to various body types.
”Although exercise is one of the few proven treatments for chronic low back pain, its effects are often small and we haven’t known whether one form is better than another,” said Dr. Sherman.
However, it’s now thought that yoga is an effective therapy for healing sore and injured back muscles, reducing recovery time, preventing re-injury, and reducing the risk of disability. Performing yoga exercises can strengthen and stretch the muscles in the lower back, reduce inflammation, and increase blood circulation throughout the body.
Also, Dr. Alan Breen, director of the Institute for Musculoskeletal Research and Clinical Implementation, points out that actively being involved your own healing helps to speed the process. “Yoga requires learning about exercise as well as doing it, and active treatments, where patients take the initiative, are already recognized to be better than ones where they are just passive recipients,” he explains.
Don’t be discouraged if you think that you’re too old to participate in yoga, either. Since yoga is a form of exercise that adapts to your needs and abilities, it can be especially beneficial to senior citizens. It can help you become more in touch with your body and self, opening pathways to healing that might not have existed for you before.
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Tags: best health advice, exercise
