WASHINGTON, May 25 (UPI) -- Chronic-back-pain sufferers who practice yoga regularly see an improvement in emotional well-being and sleep, which helps them cope with their discomfort, according to new research.
In a recent study, a group of pain-stricken Americans who practiced Iyengar yoga scored higher on two disability tests, the Roland-Morris Questionnaire and the Oswestry Disability Index. Iyengar yoga uses props to achieve various postures and emphasizes breathing patterns to ease the mind and support the body.
"This may help people accept their pain at a level of where it is -- to enjoy life, be happy, and sleep peacefully, even in a setting of chronic pain," said lead author Dr. Bradly Jacobs, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
Jacobs presented his research Friday at the North American Research Conference on Complementary & Integrative Medicine in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Jacobs and colleagues recruited 52 patients with chronic lower-back pain and randomly assigned them to either a twice-weekly Iyengar yoga class or a control group. The adults in the yoga class also did yoga at home five times a week in 30-minute sessions.
The yoga-practicing subjects did not experience a statistically significant drop in pain. However, their ability to sleep improved and their cortisol levels dropped. Cortisol is a marker of stress, which means the subjects -- particularly the women -- became more relaxed from their yoga sessions.
Most of the 80 percent of Americans who deal with back pain have non-specific back pain, for which there is no effective treatment. Current options include painkillers, patient education on proper posture and physical therapy.
Overall, $25 billion is spent annually on back-pain treatment. It's also the second most common reason Americans visit the doctor, Jacobs said.
"Back pain's a big deal, and we don't do a good job treating it," he said.
Yoga, originally an Eastern spiritual discipline geared toward developing a peace of mind, has caught on recently in the Western world as a clinical treatment for a host of serious diseases, including heart disease, asthma and diabetes. Around 16.5 million Americans now practice yoga, up 43 percent from 2002, according to the Yoga Journal.
"Mind and body techniques in general represent the best first-line treatment for virtually any disorder," said Sat Bir Khalsa, a Harvard Medical School professor of medicine who also works at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
"You're treating the whole person by improving their capacity to tolerate stress."
Like Jacobs, Khalsa has found yoga can relieve insomnia. Khalsa's preliminary study in 2004 showed a statistically significant improvement in easier sleep for people who practiced yoga; a larger randomized trial on the effects of yoga on sleep will be completed this year.
Both Jacobs and Khalsa emphasized yoga should not overshadow medication but that people who follow the discipline may need less outside help.
"You should use all treatment options out there, such as the option of self-care. You want to be able to take care of yourself, and this is the path to doing that," Jacobs said.
