A new research from the Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and Boston Medical Center (BMC) has found that attending yoga classes for lower back pain once a week have the same benefit as doing it twice a week.
Researchers conducted a study that revealed a surprising fact that people suffering from lower back pain yield similar benefits from attending a yoga class once a week or twice a week.
Low back pain is the second most common neurological complaint in the United States, which comes after headache, and the most common factor for missed work. It affects almost 80 percent of the people at some point in their lifetime. Chronic low back pain is a major contributor to sleep-related disorders.
The study concluded that the results are beneficiary for people suffering from lower back pain especially in lower income minority patients. For the study, Robert Saper, MD, MPH, associate professor of family medicine at BUSM and director of integrative medicine at BMC, followed 95 adults, mostly with low-income, suffering from moderate to severe low back pain. The participants were divided in two groups and their yoga routine was monitored for 12 weeks.
"Lower income patients often have worse lower back pain due to limited access to both mainstream health care treatments and complementary treatments such as yoga, massage and acupuncture," Saper, lead author of the study, said in a press release.
Both groups were asked to attend yoga classes and encouraged to practice the poses and techniques at home. Participants in one group attended yoga classes once a week, while the other attended two classes.
Researchers found similar relief from pain and need for pain medications, irrespective of the number of classes they attended each week. Saper concluded that since the results were similar in both groups, it is more convenient and less expensive for low-income patients to attend yoga classes only once a week.
The findings of the study are published in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
