According to the latest research, back pain can be cured by meditation and mindfulness.
(Mirror Daily, United States) – According to the new research, you can ease back pain with mindfulness. Of course, the treatment is recommended to those who have lower back pains that were not explained by their physicians.
Alternative medicine has been a subject of debate for a long time. And for a couple of years now, more and more people are starting to turn to this branch of medicine looking for answers that the traditional approach couldn’t provide.
A team of researchers from the Group Health Seattle Research Institute discovered that almost half of their patients could ease back pain with mindfulness. Daniel Cherkin, the lead author of the study, believes that meditation can help patients where traditional medicine failed them.
Stress reduction based on mindfulness (MSBR) and therapy based on cognitive behavior (CBT) were the two methods used by the team of scientists in order to determine whether or not psychological well-being is linked to a decreased level of back pain in the lower regions.
MSBR is a technique that focuses on the sensations, emotions and thoughts of the patients through meditation and yoga. CBT is a more pragmatic approach to dealing with pain in the sense that it uses a combination of medical and behavioral information. Basically, it teaches the patients what pain is, how it’s related to day to day activities and how it can be managed using individual tools.
The team decided to focus on back pain, notably pain in the lower regions in the back because this type of affliction is often left unexplained by doctors. This causes the patients to feel stressed, tired, afraid and even irritable. They feel like their symptoms are not validated like their doctors left them alone to deal with it.
In order to test the potential of MSBR and CBT treatments, the Seattle researchers gathered a sample of 342 patients and randomly assigned them to three groups. The first was used as a control group, and the participants received the usual pain coping tools, the second was assigned MSBR treatment and the third was introduced to CBT.
After six months in which the patients received regular therapy, the scientists discovered that the MSBR group was faring the best, with 61 percent of volunteers showing meaningful improvement. The BCT group was not very far behind with 58 percent of pain-free participants, and the control group registered a 44 percent success rate.
It seems that you can actually ease back pain with mindfulness, so next time pills don’t work, try striking a yoga pose and clearing your mind.
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