The cure for a bad back doctors don’t tell you about YOGA

By CARLA McKAY, who took it up at 50 and says it healed hers

TURNING 50 was like a slap in the face. Or more accurately, a pain in the back. The day of my birthday, I sat on the edge of the bed and struggled to get my tights on. My lower back was hurting and, now I thought of it, there had been a nagging ache for months.

Later, my teenage children shrieked with disapproval when I groaned as I stood up after my birthday dinner. They teased me about being an old lady. At the time, back pain seemed an inevitable part of growing older.

It affects nearly one in ten people, and causes more disability than any other condition.

No wonder it is estimated to cause more than ten million sick days annually and costs the NHS around £481 million a year.

The most common problem is low back strain, a catch-all phrase that includes minor muscle, ligament and joint problems in the lumbar spine and surrounding tissues. (More severe is sciatica, a condition most commonly caused when the shock-absorbing disc that separates two spinal vertebrae bulges out and compresses a nerve.)

A trip to my GP was small comfort. There was little he could do, he said, except advise me to lose weight and prescribe painkillers. My back had been hauling me around for 50 years, so what did I expect?

Yet 15 years on, I rarely suffer from back problems. I am more supple than I ever was in my 40s. And I owe it all to yoga.

Like many, I took my body for granted in my 40s. I smoked, drank wine pretty much every night and was about one and a half stone overweight. Walking the dog was the extent of any exercise I did.

Add a divorce and other personal problems into the equation and there was plenty of stress, too.

I’ve since discovered that stress, anger and anxiety are significant contributors to back pain because they cause you to tense muscles and exacerbate any existing niggles.

As a new study shows, my GP’s attitude was typical of those in the medical profession, who are most likely to send you on your way with pain medication.

Initially, when a friend suggested I try yoga, I was set against it. Yoga was surely for young, athletic, whip-thin women like Meghan Markle, Prince Harry’s girlfriend, not old crocks like me.

WHENI was eventually persuaded to try a local yoga class, it was sheer hell! I was furious with myself. I had been a good gymnast in my youth and yet I could no longer touch my toes or even sit cross-legged on the floor. The wholesale neglect of my body became mortifyingly evident.

It wasn’t until my cousin asked me to accompany her to a yoga sanctuary in India a couple of years later that I decided to give it a real chance.

Gradually, the stretching became enjoyable rather than a chore. My muscles got stronger surprisingly quickly. And, best of all, my chronic backache was considerably eased.

I recall the first time I tried a simple spinal twist — lying down and moving my knees to the floor on each side of me. The sense of tension release was astonishing.

Why is yoga so healing for back pain and other joint pain? One reason is that it nourishes intervertebral discs. The cartilage that makes up the spinal discs lacks an independent blood supply and needs movement, such as that in yoga, to deliver nutrients from nearby blood vessels.

Traditionally, doctors thought bed rest was the solution to back pain.

In fact, movement is the key. even a complicated move such as a headstand is very beneficial — though it must be done correctly, under supervision and in the proper posture — and can support the neck and spine, build muscle to alleviate tension on joints, and aid trapped nerves. Yet while the National Institute for Health and Care excellence (NICE) guidelines now instruct doctors to consider recommending certain types of aerobic exercise, there is no mention of yoga.

There is so much anecdotal evidence and many studies on yoga’s benefits, you would think it would be standard health advice.

Dr Timothy McCall, a conventional doctor who is now an advocate for the healing power of yoga, says: ‘Despite the ubiquity of low back pain, it is one of the conditions that modern medicine does the worst job in treating. Partly due to the imprecision of diagnosis and the relative ineffectiveness of most conventional treatments, many people end up on the conveyor belt that sooner or later leads to surgery.’

He says operations are not terribly effective and fail to address underlying factors, which aren’t going to disappear in the operating theatre, such as posture, flexibility and stress. Yet yoga can help with all of this.

HUGH POULTON is an experienced yoga teacher who knows first-hand the restorative benefits.

In 2006, he gave his daughter a fireman’s lift and inadvertently stepped back off a pavement. He couldn’t drop his child so his back took all the impact.

He went to A&e and was sent home after six hours, with painkillers and an instruction to rest in bed. Rather than just giving in to bed and pills, Hugh inched his way back to health with yoga.

He says: ‘We tense up to stop us moving into pain, but it is the tension itself which often causes us to feel pain earlier in the movement. In this way, we become more self-limiting.’

Obviously, working through any pain should be done under experienced supervision.

I sympathise with those who are reluctant to try something new which will possibly cause more pain in the short term.

But there’s a great yoga saying: you are only as young as your spine is flexible.

If people heeded this, and took more responsibility for their bodies, then both we and our overstretched NHS would benefit.

CARLA Mckay is the author of The Reluctant yogi (Gibson Square £7.99).