Back pain brings discomfort to almost everything you do – and, once you’ve had it, never seems to stay away for long. But researchers now say that a simple method could keep the discomfort at bay, and even double your time between painful episodes.
Over 600 million people around the world live with lower back pain and, according to the study, 7 in 10 people who recover from an episode of pain have it again within a year. Besides being horrible to live with, it is also the leading cause of disability worldwide.
Researchers from the Spinal Pain Research Group at Macquarie University, Australia, say that walking regularly could help these people treat their back ache. They claim that some currently recommended exercises are not suitable or accessible due to being high-cost or requiring supervision.
The new study, published in journal The Lancet, involved 701 adults who had recently recovered from a lower back pain incident which lasted at least 24 hours. They enrolled these participants in one of three approaches: a personalised walking programme, six guided sessions with a physiotherapist, or a no treatment control group.
The study, the researchers claim, is a ‘world-first’ as it paired the walking programme with physiotherapist-led education about the science of back aches.
Next, the researchers followed the participants for one to three years, depending on when they joined. Compared to the control group, the walkers had fewer incidences of activity-limiting back pain. The researchers say that this led to a reduced need for them to seek healthcare support, and that their time off work because of illness was cut down by half.
Most significantly, the study shows that the time until their next incident almost doubled, from an average of 112 days to 208 days.
“Walking is a low-cost, widely accessible and simple exercise that almost anyone can engage in, regardless of geographic location, age or socio-economic status,” said senior author Dr Mark Hancock.
Hancock and his team think that the “gentle oscillatory movements” paired with strengthening the spinal muscles could be behind the benefits of walking. Also, he said, walking brings “relaxation and stress relief and release of ‘feel-good’ endorphins.”
But some experts who were not involved in the research say the findings do not tell us anything new. Chronic pain expert Dr Franziska Denk from King’s College London told BBC Science Focus: “I think most experts would agree that we would expect moderate, low-intensity movements like walking to be very helpful in improving pain outcomes in lower back pain.
“However, this study doesn’t necessarily show the effect of walking very clearly. This is because people in the control group did nothing.”
She added: “I would expect walking to help, and I would expect doing something to help more than doing absolutely nothing, sitting with your pain at home.”
Nonetheless, Denk said that low-intensity movement is certainly recommended for pain sufferers. She added: “It just isn’t a great, immediate cure, and you still have to walk in pain at first until things slowly improve.”
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