Home » Pain »

For Back Pain, Exercise Beats No Exercise

June 17, 2009 10:12 pm 0 comments

Share This:

Subscribe:

Author:

Tags:

SportsGeezer understands that every one of his items will not delight and surprise. Sometimes, he knows, his revelations seem more like common sense than the findings of weeks of medical research, largely because they should be common sensBackpain_1362067ce. Take, for example, a recent study of back pain treatments whose results were presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine in Seattle.  L.A Times health writer Jeannine Stein reports on the research, which randomly assigned 120 people with chronic back pain to one of four groups for 12 weeks. Stein tells us that one group did a strength-training program two days a week, one did it three
days a week, and one did it four days a week. A control group did no
exercise but participated in a two-week exercise familiarization
program. Exercises in the program included bench presses, lat pull
downs and leg presses. According the Stein, those in the four-day-a-week program had
the greatest reduction in pain — 28 percent — compared with 14 percent for those who
exercised two days a week. The four-day group also reported having a
better quality of life and less disability than those who exercised
less. In addition, it showed the greatest strength gains. The control
group showed insignificant change in all areas.
Read more from Jeannine Stein. Read in abstract from the study here.

Read more from Jeannine Stein here.


Leave a Reply


Recent Posts

  • Pain

    Bad News About Good Cholesterol

    Remember good cholesterol? You know, HDL cholesterol, the kind that was associated with reduced risk of stroke? Forget it. Now comes a study from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute suggesting that people with genes that boost HDL levels  do not, in fact, have a lower risk of heart attacks. Strange. The Boston Globe reports that the scientists in looked at a gene variation that raises HDL levels, and should consequently give people a 13 percent decreased [...]

    Read more →
  • Gear

    Sports That Don’t Break Your Bones Make Them Stronger

    What doesn’t break your bones makes them stronger. Especially if what doesn’t break your bones is a load-bearing sport like basketball or volleyball. How to we know? Because when researchers at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden measured the bone mass of more than 800 young men and studied their exercise habits, they found that after five years, the men who did a lot of load-bearing activities at the start of the study and those who increased their amounts of [...]

    Read more →
  • Pain Camel Jumping Strengthens Core

    Camel Jumping Strengthens Core

    Sports physiologists have yet to analyze the muscle groups that benefit most from the popular Yemenite entertainment plainly named “camel jumping,” but we’re guessing it’s good for the core, and not so good for the ankles. The New York Times’ Lens gives us an enlightening photo essay, shot, admittedly, by a photographer in Yemen who got bored waiting around for actual news. Anyone up for an over-50 team?

    Read more →
  • Attitude Pain

    Email Dependence Is Bad For Your Health

    Don’t have time to read SportsGeezer because you just got an email? That’s a bad sign, according to researchers at the University of California at Irvine. Researchers at the school attached heart rate sensors to workers in a suburban office, and divided the users into two groups; one with email, one deprived. A university news release reports that people who read email were found to work in a steady “high alert” state, with more constant heart rates. Those removed from [...]

    Read more →
  • Gear Pain

    “Workout Boosters” Boost Blood Pressure Too

    The names of the products—Jacked3D, Oxy Elite Pro, Code Red, and Nitric Blast, should offer some clues to the kind of science behind their sales; the science of marketing. Now comes the science of medicine, brought to bear on these “workout boosters” by the Food and Drug Administration, which determined that the active ingredient in the supplements, dimethylamylamine or DMAA, said in marketing materials to increase energy, concentration and metabolism, actually increases blood pressure. The FDA has sent letters to [...]

    Read more →
  • Attitude Pain

    Latest Treatment For Chronic Pain: Don’t Think About It

    Researchers in the psychiatry and behavioral science department of Johns Hopkins Medical School have some radical advice for sufferers of chronic pain: don’t think about it. Isn’t that what my mother used to say? Futurity reports that researchers at the school surveyed 214 people with myofascial temporomandibular disorder, or TMD, serious facial and jaw pain, about their sleep quality, depression, pain levels, and emotional responses to pain, including whether they ruminate on it or exaggerate it. Guess what? The scientists [...]

    Read more →
  • Uncategorized

    For Heart Health, Coffee Not Soda

    Why is is unsurprising that soda has been associated with a higher risk of stroke? Perhaps because it has long been associated with weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and coronary artery disease. Hmmm. Now, finally, comes a study from the Cleveland Clinic’s Wellness Institute and Harvard University, showing not only that sugar-sweetened and low-calorie sodas is associated with a higher risk of stroke, but that coffee, either caffeinated or decaffeinated, is associated with a lower risk. A [...]

    Read more →
  • Pain

    Would You Give Up Your Arms And Legs To Live?

    Would you give up your arms and legs to live? Will Lautzenheiser, a 36-year-old instructor at the Montana State University, made that choice after his body was invaded by a flesh eating bacteria. Now Lautzenheiser is in the sites of the limb transplant team and Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who would like to replace some of his sacrificed limbs. Read the whole story here.

    Read more →