Reducing abdominal fat can help reduce chronic musculoskeletal pain, especially if it is in multiple areas of the body, especially in women, a study reveals.
If you suffer from chronic pain in your body, it may be time to actively work on losing that belly fat, research published Wednesday suggests. Reducing belly fat may help reduce chronic musculoskeletal pain, particularly if it is located in multiple parts of the body, especially in women, revealed the study, published in the open-access journal Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine.
Musculoskeletal pain, which affects an estimated 1.71 billion people worldwide, affects the bones, joints, ligaments, tendons or muscles. Previously published research has shown that obesity is associated with musculoskeletal pain, but it is unknown whether excess fatty tissue is linked to chronic musculoskeletal pain in multiple parts of the body, said researchers from Tasmania University and Monash University in Australia.
“Abdominal adipose tissue was associated with chronic musculoskeletal pain, suggesting that excessive and ectopic fat deposits may be involved in the pathogenesis of chronic widespread and multilocalized musculoskeletal pain,” the team stated. They suggested reducing abdominal adiposity for chronic pain management.
The study analyzed data from 32,409 participants: half (51 percent) were women and their average age was 55. All participants underwent MRI scans of their abdomen to measure the amount of fat around the abdominal organs (visceral adipose tissue, or VAT) and the amount of fat just under the skin that can be pinched (subcutaneous adipose tissue, or SAT).
Two years later, some 638 people were assessed again. The team found a significant relationship between the number of chronic pain sites and VAT, SAT, the ratio of the two to weight (BMI). The results showed that women were twice as affected as men. Gender differences in fat distribution and hormones may be the reason why women are more affected, the researchers explained. However, they noted that “this is an observational study and as such cannot establish cause and effect.”
(Inputs: IANS)
