According to new Australian research, those who began a walking regimen had fewer recurrent back pain episodes than those who did not.
“We don’t know exactly why walking is so good for preventing back pain, but it is likely to include the combination of the gentle oscillatory movements, loading and strengthening the spinal structures and muscles, relaxation and stress relief, and release of ‘feel-good’ endorphins,” Mark Hancock, the senior author of the study, stated. He is a professor of physiotherapy at Macquarie University in Sydney.
According to background information from the study authors, about 800 million people worldwide suffer from low back discomfort. The pain will subside in seven out of ten cases, only to return later.
Special exercise programs and patient education regarding back pain are often included in conventional care to prevent recurrences.
Hancock’s team questioned if regular old walking would help.
“Walking is a low-cost, widely accessible, and simple exercise that anyone can experience, regardless of geographic location, age, or socioeconomic status,” he stated in a Macquarie press release.
In the current study, 701 adults who had recently healed from an episode of lower back pain were randomly assigned to either a tailored walking program and six physiotherapist-guided education sessions over six months or a control group that received neither.
The outcome was this: “The intervention group had fewer occurrences of activity-limiting pain than the control group, and a longer average period before they had a recurrence, with a median of 208 days compared to 112 days” before a second episode, Hancock said.
The findings were posted on June 19 in The Lancet journal. Dr. Natasha Pocovi, the study’s principal author, stated that the benefits of walking extended beyond pain relief.
“It not only improved people’s quality of life, but it cut their need for healthcare support and time away from work in half,” said Pocovi, a postdoctoral researcher at Macquarie.
The walking program was very simple and inexpensive.
“The exercise-based interventions to prevent back pain that have been explored previously are typically group-based and need close clinical supervision and expensive equipment, so they are much less accessible to most patients,” Pocovi says.
“And of course, we also know that walking comes with many other health benefits, including cardiovascular health, bone density, healthy weight, and improved mental health,” says Hancock.
