If you have back pain, excess weight is not your friend. It places extra stress and strain on your back, hastening joint deterioration and increasing pain. Plus, certain types of fat, especially visceral fat (the kind that accumulates around your belly), release inflammatory molecules that also contribute to pain and swelling.

In some cases, chronic back pain can be the result of overweight and obesity. But in others, the back pain may come first, before the weight gain. In this latter case, it’s conventionally thought that people who struggle with back pain stop exercising and moving around, thus gaining weight.

A new study showed a new theory entirely, which suggests that people with back pain may actually experience food differently, in a way that makes them gain excess weight.

If You Have Back Pain You May Not Get as Much Pleasure When You Eat

A small study from Yale University School of Medicine asked 18 people with chronic low back pain and 19 healthy volunteers to taste and rate various foods. When eating puddings with varying amounts of fat, back-pain patients did not enjoy the puddings as much as the healthy volunteers, despite giving similar ratings for flavor.

On a second study visit, those with back pain again appeared to derive less pleasure from eating the pudding as did the healthy volunteers. For instance, the healthy volunteers ate more pudding if they gave it high ratings and also felt less hungry after eating it. This wasn’t the case with the back-pain patients.

The researchers believe that chronic low back pain may be associated with changes in the brain associated with food and pleasure. Those with pain may not get as much pleasure from eating and they have a harder time recognizing when to stop eating. The combination may predispose them toward overeating and weight gain.[i]

According to the study, published in Pain:[ii]

” … whereas in healthy controls the hedonic ratings of pudding closely matched caloric intake and decreased hunger after ad libitum pudding intake, such effect was totally abolished in CLBP [chronic low back pain] patients. Our data thus reveal a decoupling between hedonic perception and fat calorie intake in CLBP patents, suggesting altered hedonic perception of fat as a potential mechanism linking CLBP to overeating and obesity.”

Back Pain and Weight Gain: An Undeniable Connection

Research clearly shows that having a high body mass index (BMI) is a strong risk factor for developing chronic low back pain.[iii] People who are obese are also far more likely to report daily, chronic pain, including back pain, than those of a healthy weight.[iv]

The reasons for this, as mentioned, are likely both mechanical and metabolic in nature. For instance, extra weight can cause pain simply by placing extra strain on your joints. But one study found that the weight-pain link persisted even after musculoskeletal issues were accounted for.[v] This suggests other factors are probably at play, including:

• Excess fat may trigger chronic inflammation, a leading cause of pain
• Obesity is associated with depression, which is in turn associated with increased pain and back pain
• Pain may lead to sedentary behaviors that encourage more weight gain
• As the most recent study found, brain changes may be involved in those with back pain that influence pleasure derived from food and encourage overeating and weight gain
• Stress is also linked to both pain and weight gain

A 2-Step Solution to Lose Weight … AND Lose Your Pain

Multiple factors — including stress, lack of sleep, medications, environmental toxins and more – play a role in weight gain, but it is very difficult to reach and maintain your ideal weight if you’re overeating virtually anything or indulging in too much sugar and other refined carbs (soda, bagels, cereal, pizza, ice cream, candy, mashed potatoes, fast food, even fruit juice … all of these goodies can quickly pack on the pounds).

To get back in control — not only of your diet but also of your weight and pain —ThinMist is the answer you’ve been looking for, for two key reasons:

1. It STOPS Cravings: Because of its special blend of natural ingredients like L-Tyrosine, DHEA and chromium, ThinMist helps STOP your cravings immediately so you’re no longer tempted to overeat or indulge in junk food.

2. It Helps Boost Your Natural Production of Human Growth Hormone (HGH): If you’re over 40, this is an ESSENTIAL part of weight loss because HGH begins to steadily decline by the time you reach your early 30s! Around this same time, you probably find you “can’t eat the way you used to,” and losing weight becomes much harder — this is because your body is no longer producing the HGH that it used to.

ThinMistâ„¢ is a 100% natural way to safely boost your pituitary gland’s NATURAL release of HGH ‘youth hormones’… using a complex series of 7 known ‘HGH precursors.’
You simply take ThinMistâ„¢ three times each day by spraying it under your tongue, and as the ingredients slowly build up in your system, your body NATURALLY begins releasing more youthful levels of HGH, one of your body’s most powerful fat burners.

Losing weight will help to lower your pain levels naturally, but the second component of this solution is to address your back pain directly. It’s possible (and common) to have back pain even if you’re thin, so your weight is probably not the sole reason you’re in pain.

You may lose weight and find that you’re still in pain because you haven’t addressed the underlying reasons why your back is giving you trouble. So what is the underlying reason?

This is explained in detail in The 7-Day Back Pain Cure, my free book based on over 2,000 hours of research and supported by The Healthy Back Institute Medical Advisory Board. In this book I’ve uncovered back pain treatments and cures that go beyond prescriptions and devices to heal your pain at the foundational level, naturally.

Again this book is FREE (for a limited time!). So please get yourself a copy to learn about the hidden causes of your back pain that you won’t hear about from your doctor and, more importantly, what to do about them.