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| Alternative Approaches to Low Back Pain |  Has your back been bothering you for months or even years and still you and your doctor haven't been able to comprehend why? You're not alone. Back pain is the most common cause of job-related disability in America, according to the National Institutes of Health, and costs about $50 billion a year in treatments. Around 80% of Americans will experience back pain at list one time in their lives. But most cases of back pain can't be traced to a specific, definable cause.
"It's a huge problem that we have for both conventional and alternative techniques for treating back pain," says Daniel C. Cherkin, PhD, a senior investigator at the Group Health Cooperative's Center for Health Studies (CHS) in Seattle. "With this huge category of people who have what's referred to as non-specific back pain, you can't trace it to a particular cause."
This problem leads many back pain sufferers to seek out "alternative" treatments - everything from massage and acupuncture to mind-body therapies and exercise programs like yoga and tai chi. For example, studies show that back pain accounts for 20% of visits to massage therapists and 14% of visits to acupuncturists, Cherkin notes. But do any of these options work?
For the most part the scientific jury is still out. A current review of dozens of studies looking at massage, acupuncture and spinal manipulation as treatments for low back pain, led by Cherkin, showed some evidence pointing toward the effectiveness of massage and spinal manipulation, but less is known about acupuncture.
"The studies we reviewed found massage to be effective for relieving symptoms and increasing function among people with persistent back pain," Cherkin explains. "Spinal manipulation shows small clinical benefits for back pain - about the same as conventional medical treatments such as over-the-counter pain relievers and various types of physical therapy."
Founded on existing studies, the effectiveness of acupuncture remains unclear, but a new, large study recently launched at the Group Health Cooperative aims to answer some of those questions. To be carried out over four years, the study is recruiting nearly 700 back pain sufferers and will compare acupuncture to conventional care.
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