Abstract
BACKGROUND: Although horse simulator riding is very beneficial for patients with several diseases, there are few studies relating to treating patients with chronic low back pain (CLBP) specifically in terms of physiological and psychological outcome measures. It also has not been medically verified yet on the aspects of psychological responses and physiological changes. As well as there are not known how it can decrease the pain, how it can increase the physical conditioning, and how much good time rides a horse simulator.
OBJECTIVE: To investigate the time-effects of an 8 week horse simulator exercise on body composition, visual analogue scale(VAS), and isokinetic torques of the trunk and hip joints in patients with CLBP.
METHODS: Forty one young men presenting with CLBP were divided into 4 groups: LBP control group (LCG), LBP horse simulator 10 min riding group(LHS10G), LBP horse simulator 20 min riding group (LHS20G), and LBP horse simulator 30 min riding group (LHS30G), respectively. Three horse simulator exercise groups completed a rehabilitation exercise protocol for 5 days per week during 8 weeks. VAS was used to measure the severity of CLBP and functional disability for checking psychological responses. Body composition measured by bioelectrical analyzer and isokinetic torques were used to consider the physiological pre-post changes.
RESULTS: Compared with the baseline, the body composition indices did not change significantly. However, muscle mass and fat mass showed increasing and decreasing tendencies in the LHS30G. The VAS indices showed significant decrease in back pain including other 12 items. A significant decrease was observed for all items except for drug relief. Especially, most of items in the LHS20G were lower than those of the other groups in the post hoc comparison. The horse simulator exercise enhanced the isokinetic strength of trunk and hip muscles. Due to the increased strength, trunk flexor/extensor ratio, hip flexor/extensor ratio, and hip abductor/adductor were close to reference values. The deficit in the ratio scores: hip flexor and extensor and hip abductor and adductor evened out after an experiment. Especially, these improvements were associated particularly with LHS20G.
CONCLUSIONS: The horse simulator exercise positively affected psychophysiological responses in patients with CLBP. However, with respect to pain, the 20 min horseback riding group was associated with the best results.