Can Pain Prevent Weight Loss?

Over the years, I have learned some circumstances such as pain does prevent weight loss.
When a patient suffers from chronic conditions such as low back pain, knee pain and hip pain, any activity exacerbates their condition.
Constant pain does not promote exercise or any kind of physical activity; hence the patient becomes overweight and at times obese.
What is done to fix this dilemma? Well, this is where the situation can become a little tricky.
First of all, I evaluate the patient to see if their condition can be corrected totally by adjustments.
If this is the case, the main objective is to first get rid of the pain before we can start any type of exercise.
As soon as the pain starts to subside, walking is the initial form of fitness I begin to introduce.
Monitoring of the patient is essential to make sure their condition does not worsen with the introduction of exercise.
Providing the patient is able to handle the walking, I then employ different exercises to complement the walking.
Over time, the pain is gone and so are the pounds.
The hardest part in this process is to convince the patient to continue with their health care and to keep the pain under control so weight is no longer an issue in their life.
The older patients who may have either knee replacements or hip replacements are limited in the beginning.
Different exercise regimens have to be used when dealing with artificial joints.
Walking is my first choice, then maybe some water aerobics, and bicycle riding.
The exercise must be low impact and none jarring to the joints.
Many of my patients even golf.
The patient must understand that receiving an artificial joint is not an excuse to sit around and do nothing in the form of physical fitness.
In rare cases, the patient may be in extreme pain.
As long as the exercise in no way worsens the patient condition, then they must be taught to work through the pain.
Some pain can be caused because of the extra 50 or 100 pounds they carry around and some pain is contributed by a medical condition.
Neither the less, the weight must come off to add to their overall health.
I lost track of the patients who would not have to take blood pressure medicine or pills for their diabetes if they would just lose the weight.
Sometimes I do get disheartened since the majority of my patients would rather risk the dangerous side effects of drugs than get off the couch.