Research conducted at Yamagata University reports a 40% lower risk of developing lower back pain when medium-intensity exercise was continued for 2 consecutive years

The prevalence of low back pain can increase with age, especially after 50. It often causes conditions that require long-term care and can greatly shorten healthy life expectancy. Exercise habits are effective in preventing the development of low back pain; however, until now, only high-intensity exercise habits, such as jogging and cycling, have been found to be effective in preventing the development of low back pain. It is not known whether moderate-intensity exercise habits, such as walking at a moderate pace and gardening, would prevent it's onset.

Using longitudinal study of ageing data from the United Kingdom with 4 years of follow-up, a lecturer at the Yamagata University Graduate School of Medicine, Takaaki Ikeda, and his colleagues reported that compared with no exercise habits at all, moderate-intensity exercise alone was associated with a 41% lower risk of developing low back pain when continued for 2 years. From the data, it was shown that it was important to continue the exercise habit even at a moderate level. These findings were published in The Journal of Pain.

Using UK data with a 4-year follow-up, the study included 4882 individuals (mean age 65.6 years) who reported not having low back pain at the baseline survey. In survey data collected at 2 and 4 years, the respondents were considered to have developed low back pain if they indicated that the degree of pain was 5 or more (out of 10, with 10 indicating the strongest degree of pain). Exercise habits were acquired from survey data at baseline and 2 years later, and weekly frequency data for medium- and high-intensity exercise habits were used.

From their answers, the respondents were divided into three groups based on their physical activity (PA): "No PA at all", "Up to moderate PA", and "Up to vigorous PA". The researchers investigated changes in exercise habits over 2 years. In the analysis, the data was adjusted for age, income, marital status, presence of chronic disease, presence of arthrosis, and depression status at baseline and for age, income, marital status, presence of chronic disease, presence of arthrosis, depression status, and presence of low back pain at the 2-year survey time point.

The analysis showed a 41% lower risk of developing low back pain when continuing moderate-intensity exercise habits for 2 years compared to that associated with no exercise habits at all. Similarly, the risk of developing low back pain was 54% lower when high-intensity exercise habits were continued for 2 years than when no exercise habits were present. Furthermore, the risk of developing low back pain was 55% lower in individuals who had previously engaged in high-intensity exercise habits but only performed moderate-intensity exercise vs. no exercise over the 2-year period. On the other hand, in cases of "no PA but started exercising" and "PA was previously present, but no exercise was performed over the 2-year period", the effect of preventing the onset of low back pain was not observed.

Of the 2095 individuals in the baseline survey who had moderate-intensity exercise habits, 1880 (89.7%) maintained or increased their activity at the 2-year postsurvey time point. Conversely, of the 2319 individuals in the baseline survey who had high-intensity exercise habits, 1665 (71.8%) remained active at 2 years, whereas 654 (28.2%) had decreased exercise intensity or no exercise habits at all at 2 years.