Weekly assessment of number of yoga classes and amount of yoga home practice: Agreement with daily diaries.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate a weekly yoga practice assessment instrument designed to assess number of classes attended in the previous week, number of times engaged in formal home yoga practice, total number of minutes engaged in formal home yoga practice in the past week, and number of times engaged in informal home yoga practice. "Informal" practice was defined as "in the middle of other activities, you spent a few moments engaged in asanas/postures, focus on breath, body awareness, or very brief meditation, for less than 5 min at a time." We assessed agreement between this weekly assessment and a daily home practice log. DESIGN AND SETTING: Seventy-two community yoga practitioners completed online daily yoga logs for 28 days as well as the weekly yoga practice assessment four times over the 28 day period. RESULTS: We examined agreement between the two methods on the four indices of amount of weekly yoga practice. We found acceptable agreement between the two methods for number of classes, number of times engaged in formal home practice, and total number of minutes engaged in formal home practice. Agreement was lower for number of times engaged in informal practice. CONCLUSIONS: These data provide support for use of a weekly yoga practice assessment to assess number of classes attended and amount of formal but not informal home practice.

Actualización sobre los efectos de los estiramientos en la lumbalgia: una revisión sistemática / Update on the effects of stretching in low back pain: a systematic review

Objetivo: Analizar la literatura científica actual para conocer los efectos de los estiramientos en pacientes con lumbalgia. Estrategia de búsqueda: La búsqueda se llevó a cabo en enero de 2014 en Medline, CINAHL, Scopus, WOS, LILACS y PubMed. Selección de los estudios: Se obtuvieron un total de 350 artículos publicados entre 2009 y 2014, y aplicando los criterios de inclusión y exclusión, 12 fueron válidos para la revisión. Resultados: En muchos de los artículos seleccionados se realizaron estiramientos de la musculatura de la cadena posterior, en uno de ellos se hizo estiramiento del tejido nervioso, y otro comparó estiramientos musculares con movilización neural. Conclusiones: Los estiramientos, en general, obtienen resultados positivos. La calidad metodológica de los artículos analizados fue baja, por lo que serían necesarios más estudios de mejor calidad y con tamaños de muestra más amplios que verificasen los buenos resultados

Objective: To analyze the current scientific evidence to know the effects of stretching in patients with low back pain. Research strategy. The research was carried out in January 2014 using Medline, CINAHL, Scopus, WOS, LILACS and PubMed. Study selection: A total of 350 papers, published between 2009 and 2014, were review. Of these, 12 were finally selected for review after applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results: Stretching of posterior muscle chain was done in many of the articles. In one article, the nervous tissue was stretched, and in another, muscle stretching was compared with neural mobilization. Conclusions: In general, stretching resulted in positives results. The methodological quality of the papers analyzed was low. Therefore, more studies with better quality and larger samples sizes are needed to verify the good results

Myofascial trigger points in children with tension-type headache: a new diagnostic and therapeutic option.

The goal of this pilot study was to evaluate the effect of a trigger point-specific physiotherapy on headache frequency, intensity, and duration in children with episodic or chronic tension-type headache. Patients were recruited from the special headache outpatient clinic. A total of 9 girls (mean age 13.1 years; range, 5-15 years) with the diagnosis of tension-type headache participated in the pilot study from May to September 2006 and received trigger point-specific physiotherapy twice a week by a trained physiotherapist. After an average number of 6.5 therapeutic sessions, the headache frequency had been reduced by 67.7%, intensity by 74.3%, and duration by 77.3%. No side effects were noted during the treatment. These preliminary findings suggest a role for active trigger points in children with tension-type headache. Trigger point-specific physiotherapy seems to be an effective therapy in these children. Further prospective and controlled studies in a larger cohort are warranted.