Besides offering them pain medicine, doctors usually advise patients with chronic back pain to resort to physical therapy as well. Therefore, a team of researchers decided to see if yoga is an effective alternative. The results were published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
- Researchers tested the efficacy of yoga in relieving back pain.
- Physical therapy helped patients give up pain medicine.
- Yoga is, indeed, effective against pain, but only if patients attend specially designed classes.
For the study, researchers recruited 320 people with an average age of 46 and assigned them to undergo several therapy methods to treat their lower back pain. Around two-thirds of them took medicine for the condition.
At random, half of participants took part in either 15 physical therapy sessions of one hour each, or 12 yoga sessions of 75 minutes each. The trial lasted for 12 weeks, and the patients had to perform home practice as well. The other half received self-help books or constant support newsletters they received on their phone.
After the 12 weeks passed, the first group continued with occasional physical sessions for nine months, while they also had to practice the exercises at home. The second group continued receiving help via phone.
Results showed that the first group showed more improvements regarding their back pain, and also more of them gave up the medicine. There were no significant differences between the people who performed yoga or who underwent physical therapy.
Therefore, physical activity in general is great in relieving pain, sometimes rendering medicine no longer necessary. Sometimes, people might think that only drugs can treat severe pain, but yoga could be a healthier and more reliable solution.
However, the study comes with some limitations. The results were derived from questionnaires that participants had to answer. Also, most of them were women, and attended yoga classes specially designed for people struggling with lower back pain. Therefore, people might not obtain the same results from other types of classes.
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