What You Need To Know About Back Pain Due To Weight Gain

There’s a higher chance of you getting severe back pain if you are overweight or obese. Excess weight around the waistline puts more pressure on your spine resulting in pain.

Studies show that people with higher BMI are more likely to have higher chances of lower back pain.

Avoid giving in to your craving for that extra slice of pizza or cream-laden cake, especially if you are prone to excess weight gain.

Did you know that if you are overweight you are putting your spine at risk?

In fact, excess weight around your belly can cause actual loss of height in the spinal discs in the lumbar region. This can cause stiffness and pain in the lower back.

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Causes of back pain

Back pain is a rising concern in the public health because about 80 percent of adults are found to have low back pain at some point in their lifetime. This could be due to many factors such as:

• Weak Muscles due to lack of exercises
• Not enough nutrients in your disc that is majorly caused by smoking
• Older age
• Depression leading to back pain
• Overweight that stresses your back and eventually leads to a backache
• Lifestyle habits like sitting for long hours at work may disrupt your posture and hence stress your back.

The relation between obesity and back pain

Obesity is the condition where you have put on excess fat in your body. Besides being related to several diseases like Diabetes, Hypertension; Obesity is also found to be related to back pain.

Although enough materials aren’t yet put together regarding this, it is often found that doctors ask people with back pain to lose weight, as one of the first solutions. 

And it is not just back pain, excess weight can stress your body to an extent where it may damage the discs in the spine gravely. 

Also, many people have reported having been relieved from back pain with a decrease in their body weight.

Here’s what happens to your spine when you put on weight.

a] When you carry extra new weight, your spine bears that burden.

Because your spine undergoes a pressure, it loses its upright curvature and that brings the back pain. 

With weight, your spine fails to straighten up and hence, you may develop an unnatural curvature.

b] With the abdomen weight, your pelvis will be forced to slant forward

While carrying an overall weight affects the spine, weight gain, especially in your abdomen area can even stress your nerves. 

You pelvis gets curved forward which disrupts the natural form of your lower back. This puts a lot of pressure on your nerves that leads to back pain.

c] Extra weight can stretch up the body muscles and tendons

This in turn, can put an extra strain on that muscle that leads to a backache. 

In a study published in the Journal Arthritis & Rheumatism, it has been mentioned that overweight adults are more likely to have degenerative discs in their lower backs.

Note: BMI is the Body Mass Index that quantifies the muscle, fat and bone mass of an individual. It takes into account the height and weight of a person and a result is a number that determines the weight category.

Exercises that help in back pain

The first thing to do is to reduce your belly fat, which puts pressure on your spine. You need to reduce excess belly through controlled diet and targeted exercise.

Walking can help in putting a positive impact on your back pain.

Start with simple yoga asanas to stretch your spine and reduce the pressure, then look for simple ab-reduction exercises that can tone down your belly.

Asanas like Bridge pose, Tree Pose, Boat Pose, are all helpful in reducing belly fat and improving your spine health. 

Here’s a simple video with Back Pain Relief Exercises

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