A new study adds to a large body of evidence on the effectiveness of movement for treating and preventing pain. Doctors and physical therapists have long incorporated aerobic exercise into treatment programmes for lower-back pain. Movement can simultaneously ease lower-back pain and also strengthen the muscles that support your back.
Still, many people with back pain can be hesitant to exercise. A new study, published recently in the Lancet , offers more evidence on the power of movement. The study found a regular walking routine can be very effective for preventing the recurrence of back pain.
The study focused on adults with a history of low-back pain ; those who walked regularly went nearly twice as long without their back pain coming back compared with the control group. The findings are in line with a large body of existing research that has established an association between physical activity and better outcomes for back pain. A 2019 systematic review found physical activity lowered the prevalence of back pain, and a 2017 study found that yoga worked as well as physical therapy for relieving back pain.
The new study builds on this research by following patients outside a tightly controlled clinical setting. Mark Hancock, a professor of physiotherapy at Macquarie University in Australia and a senior author of the study, sought to evaluate the effectiveness of a less-expensive intervention that could be easier for many people to access than in-clinic treatment..