Yoga once a week as effective as twice-weekly classes for lower back pain

 One weekly class of yoga benefits people with low back pain as much as two classes a week, says research published in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine.  

A US study aimed to establish how much yoga people need to do to experience relief from lower back pain.

A total of 95 volunteers with moderate-to-severe lower back pain were split into two treatment groups for 12 weeks.

One group attended one yoga class each week and the other went to two weekly sessions.

After 12 weeks, both groups had similar improvements in pain levels, reliance on pain killers and ability to perform daily activities.

“Given the similar improvement seen in once-weekly yoga classes, and that once a week is more convenient and less expensive, we recommend patients suffering from lower back pain who want to pursue yoga attend a weekly therapeutic yoga class,” says Dr Robert Saper who led the study.