ION Osteopaths

Knee Pain and Obesity

Losing weight is not the real answer to knee pain – which is great because it’s hard to lose weight when your knee prevents you exercising!

This article focuses on the knee but what we say here also holds very very true for the hip and hip pain.

Over the years we’ve treated many many knees many of them belonging to patients who are overweight or obese. One of the things we learned very early on is that the weight issue is not that closely linked to arthritis. You will be glad to hear if you’re overweight and suffering from knee pain, especially because lots of people tell you …

…’just lose weight’! – Yep, thanks for that, I really hadn’t thought of that !!

One of the reasons why we think knee pain and obesity aren’t strongly linked is that we have had lots and lots of patients who were overweight but only had pain in one knee! Seems simple – and there may be many factors involved. A client being overweight or even obese is not the main issue, and medical doctors were fobbing them with that excuse.

 We decided to just get on and fix the knee, and this proved to be a very popular approach with our patients!

So I was really pleased to see research backing up what we’ve seen in the clinic, and one recent study also showed that obese people actually have more arthritis in their hands than their knees! If that’s the case then surely it is not weight that’s the issue – this ties in with what we’ve found – it’s the alignment of the knee that’s key, hence why obese people can get knee arthritis in one knee and not the other. 

If you prefer to watch than listen then here’s a video we shoot about knee pain, the video is 3 minutes.