In the past couple years, I’ve developed pain in a few areas of my body, especially my butt and back. Last winter, I tried physical therapy, but relief lasted only a short while. So, I think I’ll head back to the swimming pool to try some do-it-yourself aquatic therapy.
In the pool
I’ve been prompted to do this by a study recently published in JAMA reporting that for people with chronic back pain, aquatic therapy produced better results than physical therapy that used transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation and infrared thermal therapy.
As part of the study, physical therapists worked with patients in a pool twice a week for 12 weeks. Following a 10-minute warmup, the participants spent 40 minutes doing exercises involving abdominal bracing, a vertical downward press, a lateral downward press, straight leg raising, treading water, and deep water running. The session ended with a 10-minute cool-down.
After three months, the aquatic therapy was reported to have had a greater impact than traditional therapy on pain, function, quality of life, sleep quality, and mental state. Those improvements lasted up to a year.
Helping your back yourself
The exercises in the study are similar to some of those in a video that physical therapist Laura Diamond has produced. Diamond recommends combining the therapy that she provides to her patients in the pool with traditional physical therapy in a clinic.
You can find some do-it-yourself water exercises on some MS websites. The National Multiple Sclerosis Society has a great aquatic exercise guide, and the Multiple Sclerosis Association of America website has an entire section of aquatic exercises.
Of course, if you’re planning to do any exercise, including aquatic therapy, talk it over with your doctor first.
Helping my back myself
I can’t do as much in the pool as I once did. A bum left rotator cuff has left me unable to swim for a while. However, I have been walking in the pool, and I’ve just begun to use water weights. I haven’t been doing enough exercises, particularly those designed to strengthen my core and my back. But prompted by this study, I’m going to try to exercise in the pool at least twice a week and focus on the back exercises performed by study participants. I now even have a pair of foam water-weights to help me pump it up.
Of course, getting out of my chair and away from my laptop more frequently probably would also help.
(A version of this post first appeared as my column on the MS News Today website.)
(Featured image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay.)
