SCIENCE / MEDICINE : Exercise Aids the Lower Back

People with lower-back aches have a better chance of permanently relieving their pain with a regimen of exercise than with treatments of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS), Dr. Richard A. Deyo of the University of Washington reported last week in the New England Journal of Medicine.

He and colleagues provided intense, four-week therapy sessions for 145 people. A quarter of the patients were treated with TENS while another quarter were treated with TENS and required to perform 12 stretching exercises. A third group was treated with non-working TENS units and the remainder received sham TENS treatment while also being required to perform stretching exercises.

“There were no clinically important or statistically significant differences . . . between the subjects receiving true TENS and those receiving sham TENS,” they added, while subjects who exercised had “significantly higher activity levels, greater improvement on the scale of pain, and significant reduction in the reported frequency of pain.”