A lot of peo­ple with low back pain find their way to my chi­ro­prac­tic prac­tice.  And I see a lot of over­weight peo­ple, too – after all, this is Amer­ica, land of the free and home of the quar­ter pounder with fries and a coke.

I know that all the extra poundage doesn’t help with back prob­lems.  But I never wanted to make a big fuss about los­ing weight.

My patients don’t come to see me so I can bug them about their weight — they want to see what man­ual ther­apy can do for their back pain. After all, chi­ro­prac­tic has a lot to offer low back suf­fer­ers.  So what if you’re car­ry­ing an extra 20, 30, or 40 pounds?  You can still get pain relief.

Besides which, focus­ing on someone’s weight is a lit­tle polit­i­cally incor­rect.  We need to accept our­selves more and stop try­ing to con­form to a fake Hol­ly­wood, Pho­to­shopped ideal.

Still, the truth must be faced.

Obe­sity is a major con­trib­u­tor to back pain.  Here are some recent research arti­cles that prove it.

• The more fat you have, the more likely you are to have back pain (and the more intense the pain, too)
• Kids who are obese have degen­er­at­ing discs at a young age and are more likely to have back pain
• A medically-supervised weight-loss pro­gram not only takes off the pounds, it helps alle­vi­ate back pain.

The evi­dence is over­whelm­ing — trim­ming excess body fat is a cor­ner­stone of any mul­ti­di­men­sional pro­gram to con­trol back pain.

Another myth busted

Per­haps you believe what I used to believe – that it’s hard to lose weight, and even if you do lose weight, it’s hard to keep it off.

It’s not true.

In 2001 the Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Clin­i­cal Nutri­tion pub­lished a com­pi­la­tion of all the research that had looked at the long term effects of weight-loss pro­grams.  In the aggre­gate, about half of the peo­ple were able to main­tain a 5% weight loss for five years.  And 30% had lost more than 10% of their orig­i­nal body weight and kept it off for five years.

There can be many road­blocks on the way to recov­er­ing from back pain.  Don’t let excess body weight be the one hold­ing you back.

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Deepen Your Body of Knowledge

Does Obe­sity Cause Pain?

More on Body Mass Index (BMI) and back pain