Lower joint pain by reducing weight

A group of scientists that include Stephen Messier, David J. Gutekunst, Cralen Davis, and Paul DeVita have found that each pound of weight loss can lead to a 4-fold reduction in the load exerted on the knee per step during daily activities. Accumulated over thousands of steps per day, a reduction of this magnitude would appear to be clinically meaningful in improving the life of people with joint pains.

This finding is particulary relevant to obese and overweight senior citizens with knee osteoarthritis (OA) in a post Vioxx/Bextra recall world. As scientists have recently found that even traditional NSAIDs have adverse side effects, this research indicates that a lot of pain relief can be achieved simply by losing weight.

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