Stretching Helps Prevent Back Pain
Backaches are one of the most common sources of chronic pain, but a study of nearly 230 people with chronic back pain shows that stretching can help. Participants who completed a 26-week class in either yoga or stretching reported reduced pain and improved functioning, compared with a group that received only a self-care book for people with chronic lower-back pain. Though the yoga class included mental exercises, researchers say the fact that stretching and yoga had a similar effect suggests it’s the stretching aspect of yoga that heals the back.
Source: Archives of Internal Medicine, published online Oct. 24, 2011
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Comments are subject to review and will not be posted immediately. If you have an urgent medical question, please consult a health care professional. If you have a question for the staff of Diabetes Forecast, please send it to replyall@diabetes.org.Stretching may help, but there may be better alternatives
A quick look at the abstract for this study is enough to inform the interested reader that the improvement in pain and in functioning was really quite small, and only just statistically significant. When added to the documented risks, and their are similar risks for both yoga and stretching, this may not be the best approach, especially for diabetics, who are generally more vulnerable to soft-tissue injury.
So what are the alternatives? A major study published in the British Medical Journal in 2008 found that 24 lessons in the Alexander Technique reduced chronic low back pain by an average of 86% even a year after the lessons were completed, and the benefits in function were even more impressive. There is now a considerable amount of scientific evidence for the benefits of the Alexander Technique for back pain. Perhaps even more importantly, especially for diabetics, there was not a single adverse event in all 571 patients who participated in the study.
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