Complementary Back Treatments

Some health insurance companies already offer complementary treatments but it was only on Wednesday that the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) explicitly endorsed complementary treatments for the management of back pain.

NICE are recommending a range of treatments for those who have been suffering from 'low persistent non-specific back-ache' from between six weeks to a year. The kind of pain that they refer to is 'tension, soreness and/or stiffness in the lower back region for which it isn’t possible to identify a specific cause of the pain.'

The treatments on offer are:

Structured exercise programme: 8 sessions of individual or group exercise which may include aerobic activity, movement instruction, muscle strengthening, postural control and stretching


Manual therapy: nine sessions which include spinal manipulation (chiropractic treatment) and massage.


Acupuncture: 10 sessions of needling therapy

Professor Peter Littlejohns, NICE Clinical and Public Health Director said:

'There is variation in current clinical practice, so this new NICE guideline means that for the first time we now have the means for a consistent national approach to managing low back pain.

'Importantly, patients whose pain is not improving should have access to a choice of different therapies including acupuncture, structured exercise and manual therapy.

Most medical insurance policies that offer alternative or complimentary therapies offer it as an additional option for which there is an extra fee and some companies do not offer it at all. The new NICE endorsements may encourage private health insurance companies to follow suit and review their offering of these treatments.

One in three adults in the UK each year complains of back pain, with an estimated 2.5 million people seeking help from their GP. There is increasing awareness of the many work-hours that are lost in this country due to back ache. Norwich Union offer something called Back-Up as part of their corporate health insurance policy. Back-Up is a scheme designed to offer advice and support for employees suffering from back-ache with the intention of getting them back to work in good health as quickly as possible.

Thousands of people visit alternative therapists to receive effective treatment for their back-ache and many of these people will now be expecting to see an NHS practitioner. It remains to be seen how the NHS will fulfil the demand and whether more private medical insurance will recognise the need for these life-enhancing treatments.