August. May 5, 2022 – Are you one of the hundreds of millions of people with low back pain worldwide? If so, you’re probably familiar with standard treatments such as surgery, injections, medications, and spinal manipulation. But new research suggests that addressing the world’s leading cause of disability may lie in repairing the way the brain and body communicate.
Scientists set out to challenge traditional remedies for chronic back pain Australia, Europe and the US came together to test the effectiveness of changing the way neural networks recognise pain for use this week in Journal of the American Medical Association .
A randomized clinical trial recruited two groups of 138 patients Participants with chronic hypotension, who had back pain, were tested using a new approach called Graded Sensorimotor Retraining Intervention (RESOLVE) on one group and another using methods such as simulated laser therapy and non-invasive brain stimulation.
Researchers found that the RESOLVE 12-week training session resulted in a significant improvement in pain intensity at 18 weeks.
“What we observed in the trial had a clinically meaningful effect on pain intensity, a Clinically meaningful effects. People were happier, they reported feeling better in their backs, and their quality of life was better,” Dr. James Macaulay, lead author of the study, said in a statement. “This is the first new treatment for back pain.”
Brainy Talk
When you have chronic low back pain, the communication between your brain and back changes over time, causing the brain to interpret Back the signal and change the way you move away. According to the Australian Neuroscience Research Institute (NeuRA) , a non-profit research organisation based in Sydney, these nerve changes are thought to make the recovery from pain slower and slower. Complex, Australia.
“As the back becomes less healthy over time, the way the back communicates with the brain is disrupted, which seems to reinforce the notion that the back is vulnerable and needs protection,” Macaulay, a professor at UNSW and a senior research scientist at NeuRA, said. “We designed treatments to break this self-sustaining cycle.”
RESOLVE TREATMENT FOCUS is to improve this by slowly retraining the body and brain without the use of opioids or surgery to alter how the brain communicates with the back. According to Macaulay, people in the study reported an improvement in their quality of life a year later.
The researchers said the improvement in pain was “modest” and that this approach needs to be tested in other patients and conditions. According to NeuRA, they hope to introduce the new therapy to physicians and physical therapists within the next six to nine months, and have already recruited partner organizations to start the process.
