For chronic lower back pain, yoga may work as well as physical therapy stat : The Washington Post

The questionBesides pain medicine, physical therapy is a common prescription for people with chronic back pain. The results were essentially the same for people who had practiced yoga and those who had gotten physical therapy. Adults with chronic low back pain, which not only can be painful but also can limit movement and restrict activity. This studyThe study involved 320 adults (average age: 46) with moderate to severe chronic lower back pain. By the end of the study, the physical therapy and yoga groups, on average, showed more improvement in pain levels and in ability to function than did the others, and they were more likely to have stopped taking pain medicine.




Twelve weeks of yoga lessened pain and improved function in people with low back pain as much as physical therapy sessions over the same period. "Both yoga and physical therapy are excellent non-drug approaches for low back pain," said lead author Dr. Robert Saper, of Boston Medical Center. Physical therapy is the most common non-drug treatment for low back pain prescribed by doctors, according to Saper and colleagues. For achieving noticeable differences in pain, physical therapy was again no better or worse than yoga. (Reuters Health) - Chronic lower back pain is equally likely to improve with yoga classes as with physical therapy, according to a new study.

Yoga might be as good as physical therapy for lower back pain, says study

Yoga may be about as good as physical therapy for treating lower back pain, according to a new study published in a major medical journal. The groups in physical therapy and yoga both used less pain medication than the control group. Saper and his colleagues found that the weekly yoga classes helped manage pain almost as much as physical therapy, and more than education. They split the patients into three groups, sending one to weekly yoga classes, another to weekly physical therapy sessions, and giving a third control group a book and regularly mailed newsletters on managing pain. The research bolsters the scientific case for yoga as a potential therapy for back pain.


collected by :Lucy William

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