FRIDAY, Nov. 1, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Yoga can help ease chronic low back pain, even if the classes are conducted online, a new study shows.

Guidelines recommend using physical therapy or yoga to treat lower back pain before moving on to painkillers, but it can be tough for some people to make it to a yoga studio.

“Attending yoga classes in person can be challenging,” said senior researcher Dr. Robert Saper, chair of the wellness and preventive medicine at Cleveland Clinic.

But the study found that people taking virtual yoga classes had a sixfold greater reduction in pain compared with those not assigned to the online sessions, researchers reported Nov. 1 in the journal JAMA Network Open.

The online yoga students also had a nearly threefold improvement in their back-related function.

“This research shows that a virtual yoga class program can be a safe and effective therapeutic option for the treatment of chronic low back pain,” Saper said in a Cleveland Clinic news release.

For the study, 140 people with chronic low back pain were randomly assigned to either participate in a virtual live-streamed yoga class for 12 weeks or continue with their usual medical care.

All the participants were members of Cleveland Clinic’s Employee Health Plan from either northeast Ohio or Florida.

In the classes, yoga instructors delivered a program designed especially for virtual delivery to treat people with low back pain.

Along with the improvements in pain and function, 34% fewer patients in the yoga group reported using pain medication. They also reported 10 times greater improvement in sleep quality.

At 24 weeks, the improvement in pain and back-related function had remained for the yoga students.

“Yoga offers a comprehensive approach to managing low back pain, a condition for which traditional treatments often fall short,” said lead researcher Hallie Tankha, a member of research faculty in wellness and preventive medicine at Cleveland Clinic. “Now we must work to increase access to this safe and effective treatment.”

More information

Harvard Medical School has more on yoga for back pain.

SOURCE: Cleveland Clinic, news release, Nov. 1, 2024

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