Join Yoga Classes to Feel Better When You Have Back Pain

A chronic pain in your back can not only spoil your plans to join a gym, it can also make things difficult for you when you try to do your normal daily activities. And yet simply popping pain killers to get relief from your back pain can actually be more disastrous for your body in the long run. So, what should you do to alleviate your back pain? You may want to include a new type of workout in your daily routine to feel better as observed in a recent study published by the Annals of Internal Medicine. In fact, practicing yoga could be as effective as undergoing a physical therapy for treating your chronic back pain, as was observed by a team of researchers.

Study on usefulness of yoga

The new research included three hundred and twenty participants who were suffering from chronic back pain. They were then split into three different groups. The first set of participants was asked to practice twelve weeks of yoga classes while the second group had to undergo fifteen visits for a physical therapy session. Last, but not the least, the third group of participants was just instructed to go through leaflets and educational books on back pain. These yoga classes constituted of gentle postures like the sphinx pose, child's pose, cow/cat and knees to chest.

Once these sessions were successfully completed by all the participants, they were asked to go through a maintenance phase. Then the researchers observed them for twelve months. This informative study was conducted by Boston Medical Center's team of researchers in the United States. The findings of this research were reported in Annals of Internal Medicine as mentioned earlier. The outcomes highlighted that regular practicing of yoga is as effective and safe as undergoing physical therapy sessions to relieve pain and improve the functions of a human body. Additionally, it was observed in the twelfth week of this research that those who practiced physical therapy or yoga had a less likelihood of taking painkillers as compared up those participants who were simply asked to read educational resources on back pain.

The team of researchers who conducted this recent study recommends that yoga could be regarded as a great alternative to undergoing physical therapy while depending on factors like cost, availability and patient preferences asked.

A second study conducted on relationship between back pain and yoga

There was another study conducted in the month of February that also came up with a similar finding. The study observed that regular practice of yoga can help in easing the lower back pain on a short-term at least. The findings were published in an online journal called Cochrane Library where a review was done on twelve different studies as part of this study that was all what effects yoga has on back pain. More than one thousand people took part in these studies and comparisons were made on the different styles and postures of yoga. At 90 days and 180 days, those people who had practiced yoga regularly experienced small to moderate improvements as far as the function was concerned while small improvements in back pain. However, the research team also added that they need to conduct more research on this subject.

If you find that your pain still persists even after practicing yoga, our Providers and Physicians at Phoenix Family Medical Clinic treat and provide care for people suffering from back pain.

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