By: Laurie Edwards for Back1For the millions of people who suffer from severe back pain, relief may now come by way of France. According to a new study, a type of physical therapy developed by a French physician appears to significantly minimize pain and improve quality of life for chronic back patients.
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Back Pain’s Effects
Ninety percent of people will experience back pain at some point in their lives. Some have pain so severe it prevents them from working or even moving around.
Not only does the lower back help support our weight and enable us to move from the waist, but it also protects spinal tissues and other bodily organs.
GPR utilizes stretching and strengthening to alleviate pressure on spinal nerves and does not involve any medication.
Many conditions cause lower back pain. The most important thing in selecting treatment options like GPR is to discuss it with your physician – what works for one person may not be ideal for someone else.
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The Argentine study shed new light on the potential benefits of the Souchard Global Posture Re-education method (GPR), a program of stretching and strengthening back muscles that French doctor Philippe Souchard designed more than 25 years ago.What differentiates the GPR method from other types of therapy is that it focuses on entire muscle groups, rather than targeting individual muscles. These muscle groups are slowly stretched and elongated over the course of several sessions, relieving pressure from pinched spinal nerves.
The lower back is responsible for movement, structural support and the protection of body tissues and pelvic and abdominal organs. When we stand, it is the lower back that holds most of our body weight, and when we bend or rotate at the waist, it’s the lower back that enables that movement.
Chronic lower back pain can be caused by a variety of diseases, including spinal disc protrusions and spinal stenosis — the narrowing of either the vertebrae channel or the spinal canal that surrounds the spinal cord.
“I am extremely enthusiastic,” said Dr. Conrado Estol, study author and director of the Neurological Center for Treatment and Rehabilitation in Buenos Aires. “It’s a very safe method, and I think we’re proving it works.”
The study involved 102 Argentinian men and women between 2000 and 2004, all of whom experienced severe back pain from a number of different conditions for at least seven months prior to the study. Of these, more than 25 percent reported major disruptions in their lives due to their pain, from not being able to work to not being able to walk more than five blocks without stopping.
Prior to participating in the study, patients had already tried at least one traditional therapy for a minimum of six months – regular physical therapy, anti-inflammatory drugs, acupuncture or epidurals. They then spent five months doing once-weekly GPR therapy and breathing instruction.
Within the first three weeks of using GPR, 85 percent of Estol’s patients described noticeable improvement, and by the study’s conclusion, a staggering 90 percent of patients were able to resume normal daily activities.
“This program would probably be good for almost anyone,” he said. “It corrects posture, and can help with all kinds of back pain.”
At the same time, he recognized that the study only followed patients with the most debilitating and enduring back problems.
Other experts urge patients to discuss all their options with their physicians; back pain is often hard to diagnose, and GPR may not be the most suitable form of therapy for each individual.
“Back pain is such a mixed soup of various problems, and this study lumps all sorts of diagnoses into one group. A patient with sciatic pain, and another with degenerative disc disease, and another with a cyst in his spine – if you group all of these patients together and suggest this one form of physical therapy is going to treat them all, it’s not so compelling,” said Dr. Arya Nick Shamie, medical director of UCLA’s Spine Center and chief spine surgeon at Veteran’s Administration Wadsworth.
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