A traditional Chinese medicine technique, acupressure is found to improve chronic lower back pain. The technique has been previously found to be useful for people with cancer-related or osteoarthritis pain, but a recent study has revealed that stimulating acupressure has positive effect on curing chronic lower back pain symptoms.

In the study published in Pain Medicine, the research team randomly assigned 67 participants with chronic lower back pain into three groups : relaxing acupressure, stimulating acupressure, and usual care.

The participants were trained to administer acupressure on certain points of the body, and spent about 30 minutes daily, over the next six weeks, performing the technique. It was observed that compared to the usual care group, those who performed stimulating acupressure experience improvement in pain and fatigue. Those that performed relaxing acupressure felt their pain had improved after six weeks.

The study highlights the benefits of non-pharmacological treatment option that patients could perform easily on their own and see positive results.