Medscape Psychiatry Minute.
by Dr. Peter Yellowlees.
Clinicians frequently advise patients with chronic back pain to take up yoga as part of a multimodal approach to therapy. Although we know that yoga can improve physical function, does it also reduce pain? Now a team of investigators[1] from the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany has systematically reviewed and meta-analyzed the literature on the effectiveness of yoga for low back pain. Ten randomized controlled trials with a total of 967 chronic low back pain patients were included in the study. The investigators found strong evidence for short-term effectiveness, and moderate evidence for long-term effectiveness, of yoga for chronic low back pain. Of importance, yoga was not associated with any serious adverse events. It is safe to conclude that yoga can be recommended as an additional therapy to chronic low back pain patients. Perhaps we should also be using it more ourselves because of its positive global effect on health. This article is selected from Medscape Best Evidence.I'm Dr. Peter Yellowlees.
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