Yoga for Lower Back Pain: Does It Work? A Data Driven Answer
Most likely, you’ve experienced it. We all have.
Lower back pain.
It’s one of the most common form of musculoskeletal injuries across the world.
It’s also the single leading cause of disability worldwide. 80% of people experience lower back pain at some point or another in their lives.
The effect of lower back pain is not only crippling on people individually, but has a significant impact on workplace productivity and the economy.
Research shows americans spend $50,000,000,000 per year on medicines for lower back pain, in the UK lower back pain is liable for the loss of one in six working days and in Sweden the number of workdays lost due to lower back pain has increased from 7 million (in 1980) to 28 million (in 1987).
Following this, people have long saught alternative options to help alleviate their symptoms of lower back pain, often finding that conventional advice given by doctors to take painkillers and rest simply do not work.
At our clinic, we see lower back pain on a daily basis, often associated with a difficulty mobilising comfortably, difficulties bending down, sleeping, playing sports and more.
As the lower back can almost be viewed as the ‘lever’ or ‘centrepoint’ of the body, it’s used in most day to day activities, and therefore when pain in the area arises it has a subsequent global impact on function.
Similarly to this, the general interest in yoga has increased over time. This isn’t a surprise, as there has been a vivid increase in people interested in health and wellbeing as a whole, with more restaurants offering healthier options of their staple meals, more awareness of health topics due to increasing scientific research, documentaries and information as well as easier access to these via social media.
Physiotherapy BSc MCSP HPC PAS
Founder of Crawley Physiotherapy Clinic
HCPC Registration Number PH97986
CSP Registration Number 089576
