CNN – Low back pain affects at least 619 million people worldwide, and that number is expected to increase to 843 million people by 2050, according to research estimates.
Unfortunately, nearly 70% of people who recover from an episode of low back pain have a recurrence within a year, experts say.
In addition to acute physical discomfort and lost time at work, treatment often requires education, physical therapy and exercises such as Pilates that may require fees or specialized equipment.
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Your level of physical activity could be a vital sign
Yet there is an easy, free way to prevent low back pain, at least for a while, according to a new randomized clinical trial.
People in the study who walked regularly after having at least one episode of low back pain were pain free nearly twice as long as those who did not.
“The intervention group had fewer occurrences of activity-limiting pain compared to the control group, and a longer average period before they had a recurrence, with a median of 208 days compared to 112 days,” said senior author Mark Hancock, a professor of physiotherapy at Macquarie University in Sydney.
“Walking is a low-cost, widely accessible and simple exercise that almost anyone can engage in, regardless of geographic location, age or socio-economic status,” Hancock said in a statement.
Walking for at least 30 minutes
The study, published Wednesday in The Lancet journal, followed 701 Australian adults, mostly women in their 50s, who had recently recovered from an episode of low back pain that derailed their ability to perform daily activities. Each person was randomly assigned to a control group with no intervention or an individualized walking and educational program …
