Lower Back Pain can be Treated by Exercise, Disease Education: Study

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At any given time, 31 million Americans experience lower back pain, the American Chiropractic Association informed. Lower back pain is one of the most common reasons for missed work and is the second most common reason for a doctor's visit.

A new study, which is published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. showed that, among several treatment methods for lower back pain, one of the most effective is simply exercise in combination with education, such as information about lower back pain, posture, or exercise, TIME reported. Researchers found that all sorts of exercise were beneficial, from back and abs strengthening, stretching and other motion exercises.

NPR reported that, for the study, researchers analyzed 21 studies conducted globally, involving more than 30,000 participants, on how to treat and prevent lower back pain. Results showed that exercise reduced the risk of repeated lower back pain 12 months following an episode by 25% to 40%. Such exercises included core strengthening, aerobic exercise, flexibility and stretching.

"Although our review found evidence for both exercise alone (35% risk reduction for an LBP [low back pain] episode and 78% risk reduction for sick leave) and for exercise and education (45% risk reduction for an LBP episode) for the prevention of LBP up to one year, we also found the effect size reduced (exercise and education) or disappeared (exercise alone) in the longer term (more than one year)," the research team wrote in a statement, as per Medical Daily.

"This finding raises the important issue that, for exercise to remain protective against future LBP, it is likely that ongoing exercise is required," the team wrote.

Internist Dr. Tim Carey of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill wrote an accompanying editorial in the study, criticizing the common advice of health care providers. Based on his research, passive treatments such as ultrasound or traction treatments, back belts and orthotic insoles were commonly prescribed by health care providers.

"Prescribing ineffective treatments for patients may actually distract them and give them a false sense of security away from treatments that are actually beneficial," Dr. Carey said.

"Why are we not prescribing an inexpensive, effective treatment? Some of it is, I think, we don't think of exercise as being a treatment the way a tablet or a procedure or a physical therapy treatment might," he explained. "We're a fairly pill-oriented society. Pills are easy to take, and as a doctor, pills are easy to prescribe."

Health researcher Chris Maher of the University of Sydney in Australia also commented, "We've got this perverse incentive in our health care system where we encourage people to innovate in terms of drugs, but we don't have the same system to get people to innovate in terms of physical activity."

Researchers found that about $80 billion is spent on spine problems including lower back pain, treatments, imaging, surgery, pain medicines and cost of missed work days. They are hoping that more people turn to proper, guided exercise to address the problem of burgeoning costs linked to lower back pain.