Paul Jarle Mork from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and colleagues from Norway and Denmark conducted a population-based cohort study and found that walking more than 100 minutes a day is associated with a reduction in chronic low back pain by almost a quarter. The work included data from almost 12,000 adult participants in the Norwegian prospective longitudinal study HUNT (mean age 55.3 years; 58.6 percent women) who did not suffer from low back pain at baseline. The duration and intensity of walking during the day were determined by an accelerometer. Chronic low back pain was defined as pain for three or more months during the previous year. The relationship between them was assessed using restricted cubic splines and Poisson regression. The results were published in the journal JAMA Network Open.
Over a mean follow-up of 4.2 years, 1,659 (14.8 percent) of participants developed chronic low back pain. Compared with those who walked less than 78 minutes per day, those who walked 78 to 100 minutes per day had a 13 percent lower risk, those who walked 101 to 124 minutes per day had a 23 percent lower risk, and those who walked 125 minutes or more had a 24 percent lower risk. High walking intensity was also associated with a reduced risk of pain, but to a lesser extent than walking duration.