I’ve blogged before that studies show that gaining weight can help increase knee pain. In addition being heavy with high blood pressure and pre-diabetes (metabolic syndrome) in and of itself chews up cartilage. Can loosing weight impact your pain from knee arthritis? While we hear all the time that weight loss may help, there isn’t a lot of good research that backs that up. A new study however may change that situation as it does suggest that shedding a few pounds could help knee arthritis pain. In the study, two groups of mostly elderly women were either placed on a strict low calorie diet or just given basic dietary advice. The low calorie diet group lost more than 20 pounds while the advice group lost on average about 7 pounds. The low calorie group reported less pain, but about the same function. About twice as many women in the low calorie group reported that loosing weight helped their knee pain. The upshot? Loosing weight may help your knee arthritis pain but it may not help you do more (function). However, given the other benefits of loosing weight, it would seem like an inexpensive and good way to manage arthritis pain.
Tags: knee pain weight
