Anyone who has ever suffered from back pain can attest to the discomfort and disruption it causes. Although back pain is a common ailment, many common methods of combatting it are actually ineffective, if not detrimental, according to a recent review published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Exercise, it turns out, is the best defense against back pain.
Lifestyle, genes, ergonomics and sports injuries are common causes for back pain, but for most people, the primary cause is unknown, according to The New York Times. On top of this, 75 percent of people who have had one severe episode of back pain will have another within a year.
After analyzing 23 previous studies on back pain — for a total of 30,000 participants — researchers evaluated various prevention techniques, including lifestyle changes, shoe orthotics, back belts, exercise programs and education about back pain prevention.
Here are five things to know about back pain and the best ways to prevent and treat it, according to the report.
1. The study defined a successful prevention program as one that helped someone prevent a recurrence of back pain for a year or longer. The results, however, were limiting, even showing previously popular methods for preventing back pain were ineffective. Educational efforts alone demonstrated no ability to prevent back pain from recurring, while back belts and orthotics were also relatively ineffective.
2. Many people have a tendency to decrease movement and increase rest as a means of remedying back pain, but researchers say this is a bad idea. Spending too much time laying down can catalyze a "spiral of decline," in which inactivity weakens the muscles and joints, thus making the person more susceptible to more back pain when he or she returns to normal daily activities, according to NYT.
3. Exercise programs, either alone or supplemented with education programs, proved to be the best methods of prevention, according to the report. "The size of the protective effect" from exercise "was quite large," Chris Maher, PhD, a professor at the George Institute in Sydney, Australia, who oversaw the new review, told NYT. "Exercise combined with education reduced the risk of an episode of low back pain in the next year by 45 percent. In other words, it almost halved the risk."
4. The type of exercise activity didn't matter, according to the report. Some participants participated in activities that focused on strengthening the core and back muscles, while others engaged in general exercise, combining aerobic condition with strength and balance work. Most participants completed two or three supervised sessions each week for about two months, with some also completing educational programs. In the end, exercising consistently played a significant role in preventing back pain from recurring.
5. It is not yet known if exercising can prevent back pain in the long term, as many participants fell off their regimes once the studies ended, or if one type of exercise is more effective than another. For now, Dr. Maher said, "of all the options currently available to prevent back pain, exercise is really the only one with any evidence that it works," according to NYT.