- Researchers report that weekly yoga practice improved back pain in a small group of study participants.
- Muscular electrical activity in the lower back, which is associated with back pain, also improved.
- The findings indicate that yoga could be an effective therapy for chronic low back pain, but more research is needed.
Yoga could be an effective treatment for chronic lower back pain, according to new research.
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Each week participants completed a series of yoga “asanas” — poses designed to move and stretch the body. Researchers also utilized electromyography, which measures electrical activity in muscles, to provide further evidence for their findings.
“The main takeaway from this research is that there is a statistically significant difference in the improvement in pain for the females in the study with non-specific low back pain,” Dr. Hanan Saleh, a spine medicine specialist with the Cleveland Clinic who wasn’t affiliated with the study, told Medical News Today.
Experts say the research lends further evidence to the effectiveness of yoga as a treatment for low back pain.
“Relieving back pain still remains a challenge. Asanas can become an addition to the range of possibilities in managing this disorder,” Dr. Alessandro de Sire, an author of the study and a professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Università degli Studi “Magna Graecia” di Catanzaro in Italy, told Medical News Today.
De Sire and his team recruited 21 women, all of them between the ages of 18 and 40, to take part in the research.
Eleven of the women were “healthy” individuals while the other 10 reported having a condition known as
All participants took part in a four-week yoga program consisting of two sessions…
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