Being overweight plays a role in chronic pain. Brian Betancourt, Exercise Physiologist at Baptist Hospital South Florida, says carrying all the extra weight and putting a little bit more stress on the bones is just going to affect some other things.

“When you are overweight and you have obesity, that comes in conjunction with metabolic disease, so that can exasperate your pain because at that point you are changing some of the hormonal responses,” he explains. Some of the patients get dependent on physical therapy because they lose a little bit of weight with the exercises.