When it comes to arthritis, weight certainly matters. Maintaining a healthy weight is important for your overall health. It reduces your risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, and it also reduces arthritis pain and helps your medications work better.
Here are some ways that achieving and maintaining a healthy weight can help reduce your arthritis:
1. Reduce Pressure on Your Joints
Some studies in overweight and obese adults with knee osteoarthritis (OA) have shown that losing one pound of weight reduces four pounds of pressure on the knees. In other words, losing just 10 pounds can reduce 40 pounds of pressure on your knees.
2. Reduce Pain
Many studies have shown that losing weight helps reduce arthritis pain, but losing more weight (to some extent) reduces pain even more.
Research on overweight and obese older adults with knee pain shows that losing more weight is more effective than losing less weight. Losing 10–20 percent of your initial body weight improves pain, function, and quality of life better than losing just five percent of your body weight.
3. Reduce inflammation
Fat itself is an active tissue that produces and releases inflammatory chemicals, and obesity can trigger and maintain low-grade inflammation throughout the body. By reducing the amount of fat stored in your body, your body’s overall inflammation is reduced. This inflammation can amplify and worsen autoimmune disorders, such as rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, lupus, and related comorbidities (like heart disease).
4. Reduce disease activity
Weight loss can reduce the overall severity of arthritis. Overweight or obese people who lose at least 5 kg (10.2 pounds) are three times more likely to improve their disease activity than those who do not lose weight.
5. Improve Your Chances of Remission
Several studies have shown that obesity reduces your chances of achieving minimal disease activity or remission if you have RA or PsA. Obese patients have lower rates of achieving and maintaining remission than non-obese people, obesity interferes with the effects of anti-TNF agents, and obese patients have lower rates of achieving a good response or remission in biologic anti-TNF drugs.
6. Lower Uric Acid Levels and Risk of Gout Attacks
Weight loss is beneficial for obese or overweight people with gout, those who lose weight have lower serum uric acid levels and fewer gout attacks.
7. Slows down cartilage degeneration in OA
There are several studies that show that people who maintain weight loss over 4 years show significantly lower cartilage degeneration, with the more weight they lose, the lower the rate of disease progression.
In short, losing weight is a difficult endeavor, but if you are overweight, no single action can have such a positive impact on your body. Not only does it reduce your risk of diabetes, heart disease, sleep apnea, and some cancers, but it can also help your arthritis.
