agree fully with the importance of posture and body mechanics in daily activities. The core should stay strong if posture and body mechanics are optimal, and one is reasonably active. It takes time to educate patients on this topic, but benefits pay off when they get the concepts. Plus, they will learn concepts for preventing future episodes of back pain. (Yes I teach exercises based on evalution results.) It doesn't take much thought to know that exercise is not appropriate for acute low-back pain. I agree with a Jason and Katie that effective treatment for chronic low-back pain has to be qualitative and patient centered, because there are so many different -"causes" for low-back pain. Are we chasing the pain? Or trying to figure what is aggravating the pain? Exercise is one component, but re-education the patient on movement and being aware of how they move outside of the clinic are important as well. Movement re-education and patient involvement are critical in seeing improvement and pain reduction. We can not just prescribe the same set of exercises for every patient. Instead consider -- who, what, when and why. Did these studies look at posture or flexibility? Effective treatment I find in a clinical setting includes stretches, exercises, movement education and posture education. Chronic low-back pain usually involves trigger points as well. Have these been examined? Thanks to all for your thoughts on this. I don't want to say too much as we haven't seen the other perspectives yet (keep watching!).