Acupuncture helps sciatica in gold-standard clinical trial

From cosmosmagazine.com

A randomised-control trial has found that acupuncture can help reduce leg pain in patients with sciatica.

The study is published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Acupuncture is a traditional Chinese practice involving the insertion of needles into specific points in the body, known as “acupoints”.

While there’s evidence it can help treat chronic pain, the researchers say there is a lack of high-quality evidence to support its use with sciatica.

The Chinese team of researchers enrolled 216 patients in the trial, all of whom had chronic sciatica from a herniated spinal disc.

Patients were randomly assigned to either an acupuncture group or a control group, where they received 10 treatment sessions over 4 weeks.

Patients in the acupuncture group were treated by licensed acupuncturists with at least 3 years of experience, while the control group received a “sham acupuncture” treatment from the acupuncturists.

“For the sham group, acupuncturists used nonacupoints away from the meridians, which are considered to have no effect; this is common practice for sham controls in acupuncture research,” write the researchers in their paper.

Patients weren’t told which group they were in, and a blinding test showed they were still unaware after receiving the treatment. The researchers also didn’t know which group the patients were in, with only the acupuncturists being unblinded.

The researchers followed up with the patients 1, 2, 6 and 12 months after the intervention, asking them to rate their pain and capability with surveys frequently used in health research.

They found that patients who had the acupuncture treatment consistently reported lower pain and higher function, both immediately after and a year after the treatment.

While the acupuncture group was still doing better than the sham acupuncture group at the 1-year mark, the difference had narrowed compared to the 4-week mark.

“Given the large effect sizes that this trial found, acupuncture should be considered to be a potential treatment option for patients with chronic sciatica from herniated disk,” write the researchers in their paper.

They also propose doing more research comparing acupuncture with painkillers and surgery, both of which can have mixed results in sciatica patients.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/health/medicine/acupuncture-helps-sciatica-in-gold-standard-clinical-trial/ 

Breaks from sitting can stop your back pain from getting worse

From thenewdaily.com.au

We know that prolonged periods of sitting increase the risk of death from cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Along the way to that early death, you have a higher chance of being overweight and experiencing depression.

We’ve been reporting on this issue for ten years, beginning with a cheery story:

‘Do you work in an office? Your job could be killing you’.

One more thing to keep in mind: sitting for hours at a time isn’t great for the back. Your pain while sitting might indicate a challenging condition such as a herniated disc or sciatica.

Chances are, though, your posture is to blame – slumping  more than sitting – along with your overall poor fitness.

                                                                                                       Photo: Getty

Prevailing advice

There’s a lot of advice on how to sit properly, how to set up your chair and desk correctly, and how to remember to keep your feet flat on the floor.

For a long time, we were told that sitting up straight was the preferred posture. Then some researchers said this lacked evidence.

Researchers from the University of Turku in Finland make the sensible point that you’re better off varying your posture than trying to stick to a perfect model.

Much of the research into prolonged sitting looks at consequences and potential ways of lowering your risk of early death.

The Finnish researchers, in a new study, take a real world approach, using overweight participants who already suffer back pain.

The question of the study is a simple one:

Can you prevent back pain from getting worse by reducing how much you sit each day?

Intuitively, the researchers say, “it is easy to think that reducing sitting would help with back pain, but previous research data is surprisingly scarce”.

The new study

Sixty-four adults that were overweight or obese or had metabolic syndrome were randomised into either an intervention group or a control group. These were people who spent most of their days sitting down.

“Our participants were quite normal middle-aged adults, who sat a great deal, exercised little, and had gained some extra weight,” said Turku Doctoral Researcher and Physiotherapist Jooa Norha.

“These factors not only increase the risk for cardiovascular disease but also for back pain.”

The intervention group aimed to reduce sedentary behaviour by one hour a day (measured with accelerometers) over six months. The control group continued their regular sitting habits.

Back pain intensity and pain-related disability were assessed.

The results? Sort of encouraging.

The participants were able to reduce their sitting by 40 minutes per day, on average, during the six-month study.

“Pain-related disability increased during the intervention in both groups,” the authors write.

“Back pain intensity increased significantly more in the control group than in the intervention group in which back pain intensity remained unchanged.

It’s somewhat depressing that, overall, the intervention group failed to get off their weakening buttock muscles for a lousy hour a day.

On the other hand, that they managed to prevent their pain from worsening suggests it may not take much more to actually decrease their pain.

Mr Norha summed it up:

“If you have a tendency for back pain or excessive sitting and are concerned for your back health, you can try to figure out ways for reducing sitting at work or during leisure time.

“However, it is important to note that physical activity, such as walking or more brisk exercise, is better than simply standing up.”

https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/life/2024/10/07/stop-back-pain-from-getting-worse