Dr. Stefano Sinicropi, M.D.

Carrying excess weight can be hard on your health in a number of ways, but research shows that being overweight or obese can be particularly hard on your spine. Your spine absorbs and helps disperse a significant amount of our body weight as we move around, and if you’re carrying extra pounds, your spine is going to be under more stress. This may not lead to back problems at the moment, but all this extra stress adds up over time, oftentimes leading to conditions like degenerative disc disease, herniated discs and spinal stenosis.

In fact, a study presented at the annual meeting of the North American Spine Society sought to uncover exactly how excess weight contributes to an increased risk of back pain. According to that research, overweight or obese individuals can be as much as four times as likely to develop some form of back pain compared to healthy weight individuals. While it’s not always easy to manage our waistline, it is clear that maintaining a healthy weight can significantly reduce your risk of back pain now and in the future.

Spinal Pressure And Obesity

If you’re overweight or obese, know that it is not too late to start taking some pressure off your spine by losing weight. That same research found that just 20 minutes of daily exercise for obese individuals could potentially decrease their risk of back pain by as much as 32 percent. In reality, that number may actually be a low estimate when you consider just how much extra pressure is placed on our spine when we are overweight. Studies have found that for every four pounds of additional weight that your body carries, there are 16 extra pounds of pressure placed on the intervertebral discs on your spine. That means if you are 20 pounds overweight, your spinal discs are handling an additional 80 pounds of stress!

However, that also means that the reverse is true, losing just a few pounds can take an immense amount of pressure off your spine. Even if you just push to lose 1-2 pounds a month, which is very attainable if you stick to a diet and exercise plan, you can take nearly 100 pounds of pressure off your spine over the course of a year! Your spine will feel much healthier when it’s not constantly working to handle the extra weight of your body, and you’ll be limiting microstress on your discs, reducing your risk of common issues like degenerative disc disease and spinal stenosis.

When patients come in complaining of back pain and they fit the profile of someone whose discomfort may be tied to their size, we try to have an open and honest conversation with them. We don’t want you to feel like we’re blaming all your back problems on your weight, but it is amazing just how often back problems are caused or worsened by excess weight. By pairing exercise and diet improvements with other helpful techniques like ice/heat, physical therapy and posture improvements, we’re confident that we can help you put an end to your spinal discomfort.

It won’t be easy, but if you really commit to a diet and exercise plan, there’s a good chance that both your spine and your whole body will start to feel healthier in the near future. If you need any help developing the right exercise or diet plan, or you want to better understand what’s causing your spinal discomfort, reach out to Dr. Sinicropi and the specialists and The Midwest Spine & Brain Institute today at (651) 430-3800.

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