How Excess Weight Affects Your Body
December 18, 2008 by soreback · Comments Off
WEIGHT AND THE BACK
Your back is probably the one area of the body that works the hardest when you’re overweight, along with your heart, lungs, and joints. Your back is working all the time to keep you upright and balanced and to support your upper body no matter what you’re doing.
When you’re overweight your back needs to work all the harder to keep you in place. You don’t need to be running a marathon for your back to be overworked or stressed. Even when you’re lying down your back is under pressure because that excess body weight is now pushing down on your back which needs to tense up to keep everything safe and secure.
Losing even ten pounds can go a long way toward helping your back to become healthy and strong and to be without everyday stresses and strains.
Click Here to Get Your Free Back Pain Relief Guide
WEIGHT AND OTHER AREAS
Another reason that excess body weight affects the back is that extra weight puts undue pressure on the areas of the hips, knees and ankles and weakens them over time. The muscles, tendons and ligaments in these areas become worn out as they too need to work overtime to move around and support that extra weight. It’s not unusual for those that are very overweight and especially obese to have pain in the knees and ankles and to have tears in ligaments that they’re not even aware of simply through their everyday activities, as their body tries to move itself and its own weight around.
This means that as these other areas weaken then the back needs to work harder as well since it makes up for the work they should be doing. When the knees can’t support the weight of the upper body, the back is called upon to hold up that extra weight as you’re walking up or down stairs. Your ankles get tired earlier as you walk at all, meaning that the back holds up the weight that your legs should be supporting.
When you’re overweight you are putting undue pressure on every area of your body, and this affects the back in many ways that almost always brings on pain.