Yoga helps lower chronic Back Pain

Yoga helps lower chronic Back Pain

The most commonly practiced form of yoga is Hatha yoga. A physical form, Hatha yoga incorporates a series of poses called Asanas, while relying on a breathing technique, referred to as Pranayama.

By adopting very basic and sometimes very complex body postures and breathing techniques, the goal of yoga is to provide the practitioner a number of physical and mental benefits.

A study which involved mostly women in their 40’s who have had back pains for almost 10 years. They were randomly assigned to take a once-a-week, 75-minute gentle yoga class or to continue with regular care through their physicians.

All participants were given educational material on back pain; the yoga group also received handouts and a CD to help practice yoga stretches and mental relaxation at home.

When the classes ended after three months, as well as when participants were evaluated nine months later, little difference overall was found in back pain levels between those who had practiced yoga and those who had not, although 8 percent of the yoga group,
vs. 1 percent of the others, noted some increased pain.

However, yoga participants on average reported better functioning of their backs, allowing participation in 30 percent more activities than the others and the ability to walk more quickly, stand for a longer time and get dressed without help.

"Yoga improves functional disability, pain intensity, and depression in adults with [chronic lower back pain]," Dr. Kimberly Williams of West Virginia University and colleagues concluded. "There was also a clinically important trend for the yoga group to
reduce their pain medication usage compared to the control group."

“Complementary alternative medicine utilization has increased nearly 10 percent in recent years, with back pain as the most commonly reported reason for its use," the authors noted. "One of the most common complementary alternative medicine activities is
yoga, with participation reported at approximately 14.9 million in the United States."

At 12 weeks, 24 weeks and six months, the researchers assessed participants’ functional disability, pain and depression with self-administered questionnaires.

The yoga participants saw improvement after 12 weeks of classes compared to the control group, but the difference was even greater after two months.

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Posted by Hassan Ali on Nov 15 2011. Filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry