The effects of obesity on arthritis

Posted by Mark Chapman on July 27th, 2010 at 3:09 am

Car­olyn Schoner

By Car­olyn Schoner

Doc­tor of Ori­en­tal Medicine

The effects of obe­sity on arthri­tis can be devastating.

Lets talk about this. Have you ever car­ried a gal­lon of milk? Remem­ber how heavy it felt as you car­ried the milk from the gro­cery store to your car and then from the car into the house. Your arm felt like it was going to fall off and maybe you were out of breadth. It gets heavy. A gal­lon of milk weights eight pounds.

Five pounds of body weight is 35 pounds of pres­sure on your knees. Just think if you are 50 pounds over­weight — that is 350 pounds of extra pres­sure on your knees. A per­son that is a 100 pounds over­weight has an extra 700 pounds of pres­sure on their knees. Your knees start to col­lapse under the weight. The spaces between your ver­te­bras begin to shrink and you lose your height. If you were 6 feet tall, now your are five feet-eight inches. You begin to ache and the ache turns into pain. Walk­ing becomes painful, so you stop walk­ing and then you lose mobil­ity. The next thing you need is a walker or a wheel­chair to get around. Then depres­sion comes along.

This sounds very neg­a­tive, but I see over­weight peo­ple all the time in my prac­tice. Here are some things you should know. Obe­sity increases the body’s resis­tance to insulin. If your waist­line mea­sures more then 39 inches, it is not a ques­tion of if you will get dia­betes but when you will get dia­betes. If you are more then 20 per­cent of your nor­mal weight for your height, age, sex, and build you are con­sid­ered obese by today’s stan­dards, accord­ing to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Obe­sity cre­ates a higher risk for coro­nary artery dis­ease, dia­betes, gall­blad­der dis­ease, high blood pres­sure, kid­ney dis­ease, stroke and other health problems.

One pound of weight equals 3,500 calo­ries. When you think about los­ing weight you need to think about one pound at a time and not the total pic­ture. Los­ing a pound is sim­ply elim­i­nat­ing 3,500 calo­ries out of your diet every two days. When asked what exer­cise a per­son should do, my answer is “push-a-ways” — sim­ply eat smaller por­tions. A per­son who has more than 100 pounds in excess weight usu­ally eats about 4,000 to 5,000 calo­ries a day to main­tain that weight and basic metab­o­lism. Even though most peo­ple say they do not eat that much, do not believe them because the basic metab­o­lism needs that many calo­ries to keep that weight. If you are con­sum­ing 4,000 to 5,000 calo­ries a day it easy to decrease your intake of food by 3500 calo­ries every two to three days. If you do this you will lose two to three pounds a week safely.

Look at the palm of your hand. The size of your palm should be the size of the por­tions of food you intake. Another thing you can do to decease your hunger and feel­ing of empti­ness is to drink more water, espe­cially a glass before each meal. Foods that have neg­a­tive calo­ries are cel­ery, green apples, cucum­ber and let­tuce. Eat fresh raw fruits and veg­eta­bles. Pay more atten­tion to fat intake. Snack on foods that have neg­a­tive calo­ries. Do not eat just before bed­time. Write down every­thing you eat. Move, walk, swim, ride a bike. Change your eat­ing habits. Do not skip a meal. Eat break­fast. Avoid crash diet­ing. Do not gro­cery shop on an empty stomach.

When peo­ple lose weight, they feel bet­ter about them­selves and they become more active. They stand tall.

The next arti­cle will be about bone spurs and inflam­ma­tion in the joints.

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You may e-mail me with your com­ments and ques­tions at food_as_medicine@yahoo.com

Car­olyn Schoner is a doc­tor of Ori­en­tal Med­i­cine. Her prac­tice encom­passes the use of  Her­bol­ogy, Home­opa­thy, Cran­ioSacral Ther­apy, Vis­ceral Manip­u­la­tion Tui Na Mas­sage, Mox­a­bus­tion, heat ther­apy, Qua Sha, Gi Gong, vit­a­mins and min­er­als, essen­tial oils,  Bach Flower Reme­dies, diet coun­sel­ing, energy work, non-surgical face lifts and tummy tuck and acupunc­ture. She has been in prac­tice for 10 years. She con­ducted under­grad­u­ate stud­ies at Ohio State Uni­ver­sity, grad­u­ate stud­ies at Uni­ver­sity or Ari­zona, Ori­en­tal Med­i­cine at East West Col­lege, Cran­ioSacral and Vis­ceral Manip­u­la­tion at Upledger Insti­tute, blood chem­istry and med­ical imag­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of Miami and Home­opa­thy and Homotoxicology/Women’s Health at the Inter­na­tional Soci­ety for Homotoxicology.

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