Weight as a Factor of Back Pain - Health Channel

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Weight as a Factor of Back Pain |

Fat alone is inflammatory and having a lot of an additional fat can cause a little low-grade inflammation, degeneration of musculoskeletal system and increase blood sugar.

All of these factors can cause a high risk to have advanced glycation end products (AGEs) that causes degeneration of the discs, explains Dr. Amir Mahajer, Interventional Spine Specialist with Baptist Health Neuroscience Center.

The specialist also says if a physician tells the patient, who is 50 or 60, that he has arthritis in the spine, it’s a normal product.

Transcript

Let’s talk also about weight I mean that has to affect your lower back a lot? right so what we think about weight loss too for like cosmetic reasons a lot a lot of time here in Miami but just the fat alone is inflammatory so just having a lot of additional fat and your body can cause a little low-grade inflammation that can cause advanced degeneration of the musculoskeletal system also when you have increased weight you can have pre-diabetic or have diabetes so when that happens you have a higher risk of AGE’s which are advanced glycosylated end products and we know that causes degeneration of the disc so you have advanced degeneration of your spine when you have pre-diabetes diabetes when you have increased weight not talking about just the gravity pool putting extra strain on and we’re talking about a chemical problem that’s going on in the spine as we get older we get natural degeneration of our discs because we don’t have stem cells within this that help repair like some mammals do so some stiffness some osteoarthritis is normal and that’s if your doctor tells you have arthritis of the spine and you’re 50 60 years old that’s just a normal product and as we get older you talked about stiffness in the morning and that’s what we expect a little bit of morning stiffness a little pain and if you want to write that from a 0 to 10 scale and that 11 point scale like a 1 2 or 3 and it kind of goes away throughout the day I really wouldn’t seek injections or surgery or something like that for that but if the pain is not getting better it’s getting worse and you’re having some of that radiating pain go to your primary care doctor and they can start working on you and like some conservative measures.

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