Back pain: how effective are yoga, tai chi and qigong?

Chronic back pain affects a significant proportion of adults. In Switzerland, one in four people are said to be affected. The annual healthcare costs run into billions. However, treatment options are limited and often inadequate.

A study in the USA has now investigated the question of whether yoga, tai chi and qigong could possibly alleviate the pain and the associated costs. The study concludes that these practices may benefit some people with lower back pain. However, due to the low quality of the research, it is currently impossible to draw any reliable conclusions.

Body and mind

The authors of the study focused on "movement-based body-mind interventions" such as yoga, tai chi and qigong. All three had both a physical and a meditative aspect. Chronic lower back pain often led to emotional distress, including depression, anxiety, sleep disorders and social isolation. And there was no effective treatment. After a thorough search of existing research, the authors found only 32 relevant studies. These included 3,484 participants. 25 of the studies focussed on yoga, four examined tai chi and three looked at qigong.

"We reviewed data to determine the effects of mind-body movement-based interventions on chronic back pain, psychological factors, coping strategies and quality of life in people with back pain," explains co-author Juyoung Park. Overall, the authors conclude:
"The majority of the 32 studies reviewed showed that movement-based mind-body interventions are effective in the treatment of low back pain. In addition, there are reports of positive outcomes such as pain reduction or psychological distress such as depression and anxiety, reduction in pain-related disability and improved functional capacity."

No clear conclusions

Although the authors' findings are positive, there are significant limitations to the review and it is still difficult to draw solid conclusions from the data currently available,
he said. One limitation, he said, is that the review is a narrative review. This type of review collects information on a specific topic and provides an overview. Narrative reviews generally do not involve data analysis. In fact, the authors explained that they did not conduct a meta-analysis "because some of the selected studies were of low methodological quality and had no impact on the overall study size."

In addition, the topic has received little attention so far, so there are no large studies on it. The largest study in the review included 320 participants, the smallest only 25. Some studies were also relatively short. The shortest lasted six weeks, which means that the researchers were unable to determine the long-term effects of these interventions. More scientific data is therefore needed to draw solid conclusions.

The study has been published in the scientific journal Holistic Nursing Practice.