Overweighted: What About Your Back?

Our spine is designed to support the weight of our body. When someone is overweight, the back is forced to suffer an excessive load, which can cause damage to its structure and injuries. If you are overweight, your back will tend to compensate your body’s balance by bowing. This situation, over time, will lead to an unnatural curvature of the back.

This structure supports the weight of the torso mass. When that weight increases, the torso expands and the load on the spine increases. As a consequence, the torso moves in front of the pelvis, or one side, altering the neutral position of the spine, and the force that supports the lower lumbar spine increases. With all this, the spinal column can suffer damage to its structure, generating chronic acute and progressive chronic back pain.

Magnetic resonance imaging has shown that decreased intervertebral space and radiography of a damaged spinal column caused by overweight bulging of the disc into the spinal canal are the main changes in obese patients.

Treatments

Treatment for low back pain should include exercises that avoid loading on the spine, especially hydrotherapy. For patients with morbid obesity, it is best to undergo aggressive weight loss treatments, including bariatric surgery.

Prevent Overweight

For all of the above, the first objective of any patient with back pain caused by being overweight is to regain the ideal weight. The American Obesity Society warns you: People who are seriously overweight or already obese have a very high risk of chronic back pain. A sedentary lifestyle usually results in less flexibility and greater weakness of the muscles of the back, pelvis, and thighs.

The recommendation affects the entire population in general, but especially women because, in general, they tend to have a weaker musculature and their spine may be more exposed to aggression.

Orthopedic Corner | Leon Mead MD Orthopedic Doctor | 730 Goodlette Road North, Suite 201  Naples Florida 34102 | Phone: (239) 262-1119