Yoga has long been recommended for back pain.

A few days ago, scientists confirmed that this method of treatment really helps to get rid of the pain to restore work capacity to many patients.

Recall yoga in the current Western understanding includes a set of physical exercises (poses), supplemented by special techniques of meditation and breath control. Yoga trainers do not doubt the benefits of their practice with back pain, but scientific evidence until recently was scattered and insufficient.

In 2013, Dr. Kramer and his colleagues summarized the results of 10 scientific studies involving 967 patients. Their results published in the Clinical Pain Journal (USA) confirmed short-term positive changes in the majority of patients.

Long-term effects of yoga in patients with chronic low back pain (more than 3 months) remained in question. Now, the staff of the Boston Medical Center directly compared the results of yoga and standard physiotherapy in this category of patients.

Their new project covered 320 adult participants who were treated at a university clinic and seven free medical care centers. The latter specialize in the treatment and supervision of Americans without medical insurance, mostly non-working.

Participants were randomly divided into three groups:.

- The first one attended yoga classes weekly for 3 consecutive months.

- The second 15 times in 3 months I attended a physiotherapist.

- Third handed information booklets After the first phase of the study, the first group continued to practice yoga at home for another 9 months. The second group extended their sessions with the physiotherapist for another 2 months, after which they recommended 9 months of doing exercises at home.

Yoga classes helped most patients.

To evaluate the results, scientists were able to use special questionnaires that were distributed to participants after each stage of treatment. In them patients noted subjective perception of pain and restriction of activity associated with chronic disease of the spine.

The researchers were interested in whether the patients resorted to pain medication, whether their physiotherapy efficacy was satisfactory, how they evaluated the change in the quality of life.

The results are encouraging yoga supporters. Improvement in terms of pain and restriction of activity was approximately the same in the first and second group.

In other words, the effectiveness of yoga is comparable to scientifically recognized physiotherapy. Patients significantly reduced the dose of tablets, returned to their usual work and active hobby, the mood improved.

The only complications of yoga were minor muscular and joint pain, which the authors associate with improper technique.

"The results of the study suggest that yoga can be a valuable alternative to physical therapy in patients with chronic low back pain," the scientists said in a statement..

The project was implemented with the financial support of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine USA.

Details are published on the pages of Annals of Internal Medicine.

medbe. en.