About 800 million people worldwide have lower back pain which is a leading cause of disability and reduced quality of life. About 70 per cent of those who recover will experience a recurrence within a year.
According to Australian researchers, walking could be a simple, yet effective remedy for lower back pain. For the study published in The Lancet, researchers randomly assigned 701 adults, average age 54 years, who had recently recovered from an episode of lower back pain to either an individualised walking programme and six physiotherapist-guided education sessions over six months, or to a control group.
During one to three years of follow up, those in the walking group had fewer occurrences of activity limiting pain compared with the control group and could go nearly twice as long without recurrence―208 days compared with 112 days. Participants in the walking group also had better quality of life and reduced need for health care support. They could also reduce the time they had to take off work by nearly half.
“Walking is a low-cost, widely accessible and simple exercise that almost anyone can engage in, regardless of geographic location, age or socioeconomic status,” the study said.