A new treatment for backache which uses intensive exercises during actual bouts of pain has been developed in Denmark. The new approach flies in the face of orthodox medical advice that rest is the best thing for backache. But practitioners say that it can relieve virtually 100 per cent of acute cases and 80 per cent of chronic cases, even in patients who have suffered for years.
'Doctors have always told their back pain patients to keep quiet and warm and not to move - to avoid the things that cause them pain,' says Professor Preben Plum, one of the method's keenest advocates. 'What we do is the exact opposite.' Their exercises are repeated 60 to 100 times during an hour's session. People with acute back pain can only perform these exercises, however, with the help of an assistant - any intelligent, fairly strong adult will do - whose job it is to carry the weight of the sufferer while the movements are made - until he or she feels able to perform them unaided. Most sufferers will feel sufficiently pain-free to start doing the exercises themselves after about an hour, Professor Plum maintains, because by then their back muscles will have started to function normally.
The exercises are reproduced on a poster available for L2-50 including postage from Back Pain Poster, the Independent, 40 City Road, London EC1Y 2DB, with cheques made payable to 'Newspaper Publishing plc'.