Author Interviews, Disability Research, Exercise - Fitness, Pain Research / 21.01.2025
Veterans’ Study Finds Qigong Helpful in Reducing Chronic Low Back Pain and Pain-Related Disability
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
[caption id="attachment_66034" align="alignleft" width="133"]
Dr. Cheryl Krause-Parello[/caption]
Cheryl A. Krause-Parello, PhD, RN, FAAN
Associate Vice President for Research
Associate Executive Director & Faculty Fellow
Institute for Human Health and Disease Intervention (I-HEALTH)
Director, C-P.A.W.W. Canines Providing Assistance to Wounded Warriors® Health Research Initiative for Veterans
Professor (Secondary), Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing
Florida Atlantic University
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Chronic pain, especially chronic low back pain, is a significant issue for U.S. military veterans, affecting 40–70% of this population and often leading to disability. Veterans experience higher rates of chronic pain than civilians, with back pain being the most prevalent type. Younger veterans and those from recent conflicts report more severe pain, while older veterans frequently face persistent chronic pain. Complicating factors include comorbid conditions such as PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and behavioral disorders, as well as an increased reliance on opioids, which pose risks of addiction and overdose. This underscores the need for nonpharmacological interventions like qigong, a traditional Chinese practice combining movement, breathing, and meditation, to address the biopsychosocial challenges of chronic low back pain.
Dr. Cheryl Krause-Parello[/caption]
Cheryl A. Krause-Parello, PhD, RN, FAAN
Associate Vice President for Research
Associate Executive Director & Faculty Fellow
Institute for Human Health and Disease Intervention (I-HEALTH)
Director, C-P.A.W.W. Canines Providing Assistance to Wounded Warriors® Health Research Initiative for Veterans
Professor (Secondary), Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing
Florida Atlantic University
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Chronic pain, especially chronic low back pain, is a significant issue for U.S. military veterans, affecting 40–70% of this population and often leading to disability. Veterans experience higher rates of chronic pain than civilians, with back pain being the most prevalent type. Younger veterans and those from recent conflicts report more severe pain, while older veterans frequently face persistent chronic pain. Complicating factors include comorbid conditions such as PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and behavioral disorders, as well as an increased reliance on opioids, which pose risks of addiction and overdose. This underscores the need for nonpharmacological interventions like qigong, a traditional Chinese practice combining movement, breathing, and meditation, to address the biopsychosocial challenges of chronic low back pain.
Dr. Lashaki[/caption]
Masoud Jahandar Lashaki, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatics Engineering
Florida Atlantic University
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Toilet flushing can generate large quantities of microbe-containing aerosols depending on the design and water pressure or flushing energy of the toilet. Based on previous reports, a variety of different pathogens which are found in stagnant water or in waste products (e.g., urine, feces, and vomit) can get dispersed widely via such aerosolization, including the legionella bacterium responsible for causing Legionnaire’s disease, the Ebola virus, the norovirus which causes severe gastroenteritis (food poisoning), and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV).
Based on previous reports, such airborne dispersion is suspected to have played a key role in the outbreak of viral gastroenteritis aboard a cruise ship, where infection was twice as prevalent among passengers who used shared toilets compared to those who had private bathrooms. Similarly, transmission of norovirus via aerosolized droplets was linked to the occurrence of vomiting or diarrhea within an aircraft restroom, as passengers and crew who got infected subsequently were more likely to have visited restrooms than those that were not infected. The participants in the study reported that all of the restroom surfaces appeared to be clean, which indicates that infection is likely to have occurred via bioaerosols suspended within the restroom.
Although many of these studies blamed flush-generated aerosols for disease outbreak, a limited number of them quantified the presence of such aerosols. Consequently, we decided to conduct this study to demonstrate the spike in aerosol concentrations following flushing. 
