Losing Weight Can Help Relieve Back Pain, According to Research

The more obese a person is, the more likely the risk of low back pain, according to new research. But it's possible to reduce the odds by engaging in a moderate amount of exercise.

The researchers found different ways to achieve the improvements:

·         The typical overweight person increasing their amount of moderate activity such as brisk walking, riding a bike, or general gardening by less than 20 minutes a day can reduce back pain risk by 32%.

·         For people with BMIs of 36 or more, the average duration of time spent during a bout of moderate activity was 1.3 minutes. However, by increasing that time by 1 minute, the risk of back pain dropped by 38%.

For years, anecdotal evidence has led spine specialists to tell overweight people to lose weight and exercise; now there is hard data to back up those beliefs.

One question the study could not answer, however, is why obesity increases the risk of low back pain.

Two leading theories are that it causes mechanical changes that affect the spine or that it causes metabolic changes that lead to varying levels of hormones and inflammation. It may very well be a combination of the two.

Either way increasing activity, which can be as simple as gardening, heavy house work, or walking around the neighborhood, can help reduce low back pain.