Workouts may help ease chronic back pain

For workers with disabling back pain, a supervised exercise program combining resistance training to strengthen the muscles of the lower back with exercises designed to improve flexibility and coordination may help them return to work, a study shows.

A look back at 314 consecutive individuals with chronic back pain attributed largely to work-related causes who participated in the 8- to 15-week exercise program showed that many of them saw improvement in their ability to move and had less pain.

The active exercise program worked better than popular passive back pain remedies such as ultrasound, electrical stimulation and hot packs.

“Restorative exercise was effective in improving self-reported functional ability and reducing pain intensity in a sample of patients with spinal complaints,” Dr. Vert Mooney of the Spine and Sport Foundation in San Diego, told the annual meeting of the North American Spine Society in Philadelphia.

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