Who hasn't come across someone suffering from backaches...one in every three adults complains of back ache, at some time of the day. There have been several pain relief techniques such as over-the-counter drugs, physiotherapy treatments, exercises, acupressure and accupuncture, yoga and such, all promising to offer pain relief and problem eradication.

A recent study conducted by a health research institute in Seattle, Washington state, USA revealed that training the brain through meditation can help cure back ache isssues. They invited more than 300 people between the ages 20 and 70, suffering from some form of back pain issues and offered them three different treatments, randomly to each for more than 3 months. One was a form of phychotherapy, second a mindfullness based therapy such as yoga and meditation, third being the usually followed treatment such as medication through drugs with the Doctors help. The first therapy was concentrating on changing the thought process of the patients, teaching them relaxation therapies...the Second practice taught the group to train the brain to accept the difficult emotions and thoughts of discomfort and relaxing thebrain using yoga and meditation.

After offering these two therapies for 8 weeks, the study conducted a result oriented casestudy and observed that at 6 months milestone, the second form of treatment that involved meditation fetched more good results than the phychotherapy based treatment, and the medication technique was the last...and the number of people who reported a recurrence of back pain was lesser in the meditation group, next the phychotherapy group, last the drug-treated group, after one year after starting the respective treatments.

The study revealed that training the brain helped people to get more immune to back aches and recurrence was reduced than through the traditional physiotherapy and medication techniques, which is a healthier option compared to risks that may come along with medication for some people...and a cost effective, affordable option for those who cannot afford expensive medicines and physiotherapy sitting fees every week or so. There needs to be a further study extended to find out if these positive results of the meditation technique are valid even after an year and beyond or not, until then it is considered a better, healtheir and affordable alternative to any other techinques to fight chronic lower back aches.

--Pratyusha