Yoga Can Ease That Aching Back

Can yoga work as effectively as physical therapy at relieving chronic lower back pain? Research led by Robert Saper, a School of Medicine associate professor and director of integrative medicine at Boston Medical Center, has found that it can. The BU study followed 320 patients who were getting 12 weeks of either yoga, physical therapy, or educational information, followed by 40 weeks of maintenance visits or home practice. The yoga and therapy patients were almost equally less likely to need pain medication than those receiving only education.

Learn more about four useful yoga poses that Saper and coresearcher Victoria Garcia Drago, a certified yoga instructor, suggest may help lessen your lower back pain.

Saper’s research, funded by the National Institutes of Health National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, was published July 18, 2017, in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

This BU Today story was written by Rich Barlow