New Study Shows Yoga Can Reduce Health Care and Sick Day Costs

New Study Shows Yoga Can Reduce Health Care and Sick Day Costs

A new study shows Yoga is helpful in helping people manage and reduce lower back pain while decreasing the number of sick days people experience. This would save by lowering healthcare costs. Should you be on a Yoga Mat?

Yoga Could Decrease Costs, Sick Days For People With Chronic Back Pain

People with chronic low back pain may want to try talking to the yoga mat to relieve their symptoms, a small new study suggests.

Researchers from the University of York in the United Kingdom found that back pain sufferers who participated in a group yoga program for 12 weeks had fewer medical costs and fewer missed days from work, compared with people who didn’t participate in the yoga program.

“We welcome the fact that not only has yoga been found to help people manage their back pain, but that it is also cost-effective, and results in fewer sick days,” Alan Silman, medical director of Arthritis Research UK, which funded the study, said in a statement. “It is another option for people who are struggling to manage their condition, and one that encourages the move to self-management.”

The Spine journal study included more than 300 people who experienced recurring back pain; half of them were assigned to the 12-week yoga program and also received standard medical care, while the other half only received standard medical care for their pain. (Standard medical care could mean anything from seeing a physiotherapist to receiving prescription painkillers.)

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