Health & Wellness The Newsletter About Your Health And Caring For Your Body
Why Weight Matters When It Comes To Joint Pain
Here are some helpful weight and joint tips fromHarvardMedical School.
Let’s look at weight and your knees. When you walk across level ground, the force on your knees is the equivalent of 1½ times your body weight. That means a 200-pound man will put 300 pounds of pressure on his knees with each step. Add an incline, and the pressure is even greater: the force on each knee is two to three times your body weight when you go up and down stairs, and four to five times your body weight when you squat to tie a shoelace or pick up an item you dropped. Losing a few pounds can go a long way toward reducing the pressure on your knees — and protecting them. For example, research has proven that a sustained 10- to 15-pound weight loss in obese young people can translate to a much lower risk of osteoarthritis later in life.” (continued inside)
“If you’re having the occasional twinge of joint pain when you go for a walk or climb stairs, or you’re worried about arthritis because a parent had it, one step toward prevention is to check your weight. There are two ways that being overweight raises your risk for developing osteoarthritis (the most common joint disorder, which is due to wear and tear on a joint). First, excess weight puts additional stress onweight-bearing joints (the knee, for example). Second, inflammatory factors associatedwith weight gainmight contribute to trouble in other joints (for example, the hands).
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