Prolotherapy Indicates Increased Disc Height and Reduced Lower Back Pain From Weight Loss

On the prolotherapy website there was an article that was written back in April of this year (2014) “Obesity, Disc Height Changes and Low Back Pain“. They referenced a study “Intervertebral disc height changes after weight reduction in morbidly obese patients and its effect on quality of life and radicular and low back pain.” (Lidar Z, Behrbalk E, Regev G, Salame K, Keynan O, et al., Spine. 2012;37(23):1947-1952) The study was published in 2012.

It would seem like mostly common sense from many people who are overweight or even obese complain of lower back pain. It is also somewhat around assumed that extra weight would compress the intervertebral discs to a thinner space, making the obese and overweight people slightly shorter than they had to be.

In the study, the test subjects decided to go with a weight reduction surgery known as bariatric surgery. I am not a specialist on the intestinal system but it seems that bariatric surgery means that a large portion of the intestinal system is cut out to restrict the amount of food that the obese person can take in before feeling full.

After the surgery was done, there was on average about a 25-27 kg loss in weight. When the L4-L5 IVD space was measured, the increase in disc height was about 2 mm on average. Maybe the more important thing was that lower back pain was reduced greatly.

This is a very good sign for the people who are readers of the website and are on the heavy side to first try to loss the extra weight on their body before trying to increase in height. That is something which I sort of realized myself, where it is important to first work on weight loss before trying for height gain.