I felt it was appropriate, and interesting, to write about the positive effects of exercise and low back pain as a follow up to the report on the causal link of sitting for long periods and low back pain. If you needed another reason to exercise, a 2016 study showed that exercise alone has a 35% reduction in the risk for low back pain.
The study looked at a total of 23 studies on 21 different randomised trials involving 30,850 people. These studies focused on six different prevention strategies: exercise alone, education alone, exercise combined with education, back belts, shoe insoles, and other strategies.
In addition, exercise was also found to reduce sick leave time due to low back pain by 78% and that combining exercise with education gives even better results: a 45% risk reduction in the risk to developing low back pain.
That all sounds great however consistency is key and you need to exercise on an ongoing, life-long basis. Researchers found that the benefits of exercise in low back pain “disappeared” after 1 year if the individuals discontinued the exercise programs.
The American Physical Therapy Association guidelines recommend “moderate- to high-intensity exercises for people with low back pain without progressive pain. Low-intensity exercises, for example pilates and yoga are recommended for people with low back pain with generalised pain.” In other words if your back pain is manageable then moderate- to high-intensity exercise and for more severe back pain, low-intensity exercise is recommended. The main thing to remember is to perform some exercise everyday, even if it is just in the form of walking.
