Fitness
Too much weight can bring you down to your knees
Dr Rajeev Sharma

Lack of physical activity is responsible for weaker bones and early joint-related problems

Excessive weight is associated with many health problems, be it blood pressure, diabetes, and cardiovascular ailments. But one of less talked about implication of being overweight is the damage this can cause to your knees — the crucial body joints that carry our weight all our lives, making movement possible and easy.

Being overweight puts you at an increased risk of developing osteoarthritis, the degenerative joint disease that hampers movement and causes immense pain. As we age, body's joints including the knees, show signs of wear and tear. This wear and tear can increase manifold if you have excess weight.

With lifestyle disorders leading to more and more people gaining weight, relatively younger people are also developing joint disorders and knee pain.

A mobile joint, the knee joint joins the thigh to the leg and makes it possible for us to walk, to run, to bend and squat. The bone forming the core of the knee joint is supported by cartilage and ligament and keeps the bone safe and prevents friction injuries that can be caused when adjoining bones rub with each other.

Preventing wear and tear in the cartilage and ligament is an important aspect of maintaining knee health. However, this wear and tear and loss of cartilage increases when the knees have to carry excess weight. For every additional pound of weight the body puts on, the pressure on the knees increases multiple times. Correspondingly, a study concluded that for every one pound of weight loss, there was a resulting four pound reduction in knee joint load or knee pressure.

Several factors cause knee pain — osteoporosis, characterised by extremely thin and weak bones, injuries, age-related wear and tear and osteo-arthritis.

For every additional pound of weight gain, the pressure on knees increases multiple times

Osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease, involves degradation of the condition of joints mostly caused due to loss of cartilage and may cause stiffness, locking or pain. When the cartilage around the bone wears out, it leaves the bone of the joint extremely vulnerable to damage and may need a knee replacement procedure. Excess weight makes a person more susceptible to osteo-arthritis. While the exact cause is not clear, but more weight means more knee joint pressure and increased rate of wear and tear. While joint pain is more of an age-related disorder, today an increasing number young people suffering from osteoarthritis indicates that our young generation has discarded certain crucial components of life — like exercising, playing and taking the right diet.

The young workers of today lead sedentary lifestyles. They spend long hours sitting in the same positions, mostly in a wrong posture, at office and do not realise the importance of motion for the joints of the body. Walking or cycling is no longer considered viable; and once they return home they spend the remaining hours of the day watching television.

Consequently, urban India is witnessing an obesity epidemic. Apart from spurt in a number of related lifestyle diseases like cardiovascular ailments and diabetes, this is automatically causing a rise in the number of people who witness joint-related injuries or early onset of osteo-arthritis.

Early onset of knee pain is one manifestation that you have not treated your knees properly. If the knees degenerate beyond a certain point, a joint replacement is the only option left. However, we do not realise the importance of a healthy lifestyle and the need to keep our weight in check.

Lack of physical activity is most glaringly responsible for weaker bones and early joint-related problems. Obesity or excess weight problems are becoming more prominent today, especially in urban areas. Lack of physical activity and too much indulgence in junk food is ruining our body structures and health. As changing lifestyles, complete with high-calorie food, junking of all physical activity and exercise, push more and more people towards weight issues, the number of cases of joint related problems and even slipped disc are also rising.

— The writer is an orthopaedic specialist, Indraprastha Apollo hospital, New Delhi

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