Strength training, aerobic exercise and stretching can prevent muscles from withering, reduce disability and even reduce pain intensity by 10% to 50%, Rainville says.

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"Chronic pain is in many ways a central sensitization of pain producing pathways in the brain, " says James Rainville, a Harvard prof and chief of physical rehabilitation at New England Baptist Hospital.

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In a recent 84-patient study published in the Spine Journal, Rainville found half of the patients in the study on narcotics were able to stop taking them after six weeks of exercise therapy.

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