Health & Fitness Friday - Low Back Pain and Exercise: What Does the Evidence Say?

Last week we began our conversation about pain and the importance of continuing to find ways to stay active and keep mobile even in the presence of pain. Today, we are going to zoom in a little bit and discuss Low Back Pain and the state of the literature as it relates to what does and does not work when it comes to exercises designed to rehabilitate chronic low back pain.

In particular, we’re talking about the findings of a literature review published in December, 2018 that looked at various common exercise paradigms used to address low back pain and how they affected pain, disability, quality of life, strength, mobility and flexibility. 

Before we dive into some details - here is the Great News: This review found that every single approach - be in Pilates, Global Postural Rehabilitation, McKenzie Exercises, etc. - every approach was effective for reducing pain, disability and improving quality of life AND the effects help up over time. These exercise-based interventions were also MORE effective than a pharmacological intervention at reducing disability and improving physiological outcomes like strength and flexibility. No single approach was clearly superior to the others given the current state of the literature.

Long story short - if you have chronic low back pain, and you seek treatment - find a practitioner who will utilize active, guided exercise as a first-line strategy for improving your pain.

To read to original research article - click here

Reminder!

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Catch ya'll next week!

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