SBU Study: Obesity and Pain are Linked

A pair of researchers from Stony Brook University analyzed more than a million telephone survey responses and found a substantial link between obesity and pain beyond previously established correlations, the university announced Thursday.

Dr. Arthur Stone, a distinguished professor and vice chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, and Dr. Joan Broderick, assistant professor in the Departent of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, found that the highest levels of pain occurred in the heaviest individuals when they analyzed 1,010,762 survey responses collected between 2008 and 2010 by the Gallup Organization.

Based on the respondents' answers to questions about their weight and height, Stone and Broderick calculated body mass index data and found 63 percent of the respondents to be either overweight or obese. Thirty-eight percent were categorized as overweight and 25 percent as obese; the obese group was further divided into three levels of obesity based on World Health Organization classifications. The findings included:

• Those classified as overweight reported 20 percent more pain than those in the low to normal weight range.
• In the obese classification, level 1 experienced 68 percent more pain than those in the low to normal weight range; level 2 experienced 136 percent more pain; and level 3 experienced 254 percent more pain.

"Our findings confirm and extend earlier studies about the link between obesity and pain," Stone said in a statement. "These findings hold true after we accounted for several common pain conditions and across gender and age."

One of the questions asked on the survey inquired whether the respondents "experienced pain yesterday."

"We found that ‘pain yesterday’ was definitely more common among people with diseases that cause bodily pain," Broderick said in a statement. "Even so, when we controlled for these specific diseases, the weight-pain relationship held up. This finding suggests that obesity alone may cause pain, aside from the presence of painful diseases."

The study, titled "Obesity and Pain Are Associated in the United States," was published Jan. 19 in the journal Obesity.