Obesity and Joint Pain




The more weight that’s on a joint, the more stressed the joint becomes, and the more likely it will wear down and be damaged.

“Weight plays an important role in joint stress, so when people are very overweight, it puts stress on their joints, especially their weight-bearing joints, like the knees and the hips,” says Eric Matteson, MD, chair of the rheumatology division at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Every pound of excess weight exerts about 4 pounds of extra pressure on the knees. So a person who is 10 pounds overweight has 40 pounds of extra pressure on his knees; if a person is 100 pounds overweight, that is 400 pounds of extra pressure on his knees. “So if you think about all the steps you take in a day, you can see why it would lead to premature damage in weight-bearing joints,” says Dr. Matteson.

That’s why people who are overweight are at greater risk of developing arthritis in the first place. And once a person has arthritis, “the additional weight causes even more problems on already damaged joints,” says Dr. Matteson.

But it’s not just the extra weight on joints that’s causing damage. The fat itself is active tissue that creates and releases chemicals, many of which promote inflammation.

“These chemicals can influence the development of OA,” explains Jeffrey N. Katz, MD, a professor of medicine and orthopaedic surgery at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

This effect can be seen in the numerous studies that have linked extra weight to hand OA. “Obviously, you don’t walk on your hands, so there may be something that is produced by fat cells in the body that causes the joint to break down more rapidly than it might otherwise,” says David Felson, MD, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Boston University School of Medicine.
For both reasons – excess joint stress and inflammatory chemicals – fat should be kept in check among all people, especially those who already have OA.

Reproduced from the Arthrtis Foundation.
 For more information www.arthritis.org

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