OBESITY LINKED TO HIGHER AMOUNTS OF PAIN

Obese individuals experience significantly higher amounts of pain compared to their normal-weight counterparts, according to a new study published in the journal Obesity.

Researchers at Stony Book University conducted a large-scale study of more than 1 million Americans to investigate the association between obesity and pain. Researchers calculated respondents’ body mass index (BMI) based on questions regarding height and weight. Respondents answered questions about pain, including if they “experienced pain yesterday."

Sixty three percent

Of the 1,010,762 people who responded to the survey, 63% were classified as overweight (38%) or obese (25%). Obese respondents were further classified into one of three obesity levels as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO). In comparison to individuals with low to normal weight, the overweight group reported 20% higher rates of pain. The percent increase of reported pain in comparison to the normal weight group grew rapidly in the obese groups: 68% higher for Obese 1 group, 136% higher for Obese 2 group, and 254% higher for Obese 3 group.

“We wanted to explore this relationship further by checking to see if it was due to painful diseases that cause reduced activity, which in turn causes increased weight," said Joan E. Broderick, Ph.D., associate professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral science and School of Public Health at Stony Brook University, and lead investigator of a National Institutes of Health-funded study on how arthritis patients manage their own pain. “We found that ‘pain yesterday’ was definitely more common among people with diseases that cause bodily pain. Even so, when we controlled for these specific diseases, the weight-pain relationship held up. This finding suggests that obesity alone may cause pain, aside from the presence of painful diseases."

The researchers offered several explanations for the close obesity/pain relationship, including the possibility that having excess fat in the body triggers complex physiological processes that result in inflammation and pain; depression, often experienced by obese individuals, is also linked to pain; and medical conditions that cause pain, such as arthritis, might result in reduced levels of exercise thereby resulting in weight gain.

The study also revealed as people age, excess weight is associated with even more pain, which suggests a developmental process.