Positive Lifestyle Behaviors And Emotional Factors Can Improve Resilience in Patients With Low Back Pain
If you are suffering with lower back pain on the left, right, or across and down a leg, here’s something that might help with mindset…from our back pain treatment experts in Visalia. Of course, I’m referring to our doctors of physical therapy.
Half Experience This Problem – Here’s Some Background
Low back pain is extremely common. About one-half of all working Americans will experience symptoms at least once per year, and roughly 31 million are affected by it at any given point in time. It is also the leading cause of years lived with disability worldwide. So if you’ve dealt with low back pain at any point, you’re far from alone.
Dealing with low back pain can be troublesome and place a strain on everyday life, as many typical movements—like bending over to pick something off the ground or twisting your torso when looking to the side—can become strenuous or difficult. In addition, up to two-thirds of patients with low back pain report having persistent pain one year later, which can make matters worse.
Searching for Back Pain Treatment in Visalia? We Offer a Long-Term Solution
This highlights the need to identify solutions that will help relieve the years of suffering that can be associated with low back pain. Physical therapy and other nonsurgical interventions are typically recommended as the first line of treatment for low back pain, but since the origins of pain are complex and derived from physical, mental, and social factors, a multifaceted approach that addresses these varied factors may be most effective.
Resilience – It Means More than Just Putting Up with the Pain
Resilience is a dynamic process that relates to a patient’s ability to adapt and adjust to adversity, which results in either recovery or sustainability of the adverse circumstance. This concept is one our back pain treatment experts in Visalia apply. It’s likely to be applicable because it takes the focus away from the negative components of the condition, and places it instead on the positive components to show patients that recovery is possible.
The Research
Therefore, a study was conducted to evaluate the relationship between lifestyle behaviors and emotional health factors on low back pain resilience, which was assessed through recovery and sustainability. Researchers administered a survey to 1,065 twins who had low back pain for at least one day in the previous three months at the start of the study. The survey was used to gather information and create a lifestyle behavior score (based on body mass index, activity engagements, sleep quality, smoking and alcohol use) and emotional health score (based on the absence of depression, perceived stress, active coping). Follow-up surveys were administered every 2–3 years to compare these scores with the primary outcomes of low back pain resilience assessed as recovery and sustainability of maintaining high levels of function despite having low back pain.
Although no relationship was found between the lifestyle behavioral score and the emotional health score to a likelihood of recovery from low back pain, there was a positive association between these scores and greater levels of sustainability of function despite having low back pain. The results suggest that people who adopt positive lifestyle behaviors and positive emotional factors are more likely to be resilient and more likely to maintain high levels of function despite having low back pain episodes.
Our Back Pain Experts Address Both Lifestyle & Emotional Health
Patients with low back pain are therefore encouraged to focus on addressing both lifestyle behaviors and emotional health factors—such as those identified in this study—in addition to physical interventions to improve their ability to sustain their pain and function better.
Contact Our Back Pain Treatment Experts in Visalia…and Hanford Too
If you’re dealing with low back pain and are looking for additional guidance, we can help. Contact Bacci & Glinn Physical Therapy at 559-733-2478 (Visalia) or 559-582-1027 (Hanford) for more information or to schedule an appointment today. Click here to visit our contact page for details.
