Is Being Overweight The Insidious Reason For A Torn Meniscus?

Have you ever thought that your meniscus tear could be related to your weight? Sometimes doctors mentioned that losing weight will help your meniscus to heal. And they’re telling you this because there’s medical research that connects people that have more weight to having more knee problems like meniscus tears, as well as knee osteoarthritis.

But there’s more to it than just being overweight. And the medical research does not account for common situations. Like what about people that are thin and end up with a meniscus tear? In this video, I’ll be answering the question, is being overweight the insidious reason for a meniscus tear?

So let’s directly answer the whole thing people situation, then people still get meniscus tears? And how do you explain that? Because they don’t have the extra weight that somebody who’s obese or overweight might have pushing down on their meniscus.

So what is it that’s causing them the problem? And then there’s the other aspect of it, there’s overweight people that don’t have a meniscus tear. Why is that the case? I think there’s something deeper here that we’re not understanding as a medical community about how meniscus tears happen.

And there’s other situations that pertain to weight going through the knee joint, like what about people that lift a lot of heavy weights, some of these people are adding hundreds of pounds to their body for a short amount of time. And then they’re bending their knees in certain positions that technically can aggravate a meniscus. And yet some end up with meniscus tears. And some don’t.

This is more evidence that there’s something beyond the way the pressure is going through the meniscus, that is causing a meniscus tear. A third scenario is people that run especially those that run a lot. It’s estimated that every time you put pressure through your leg, whenever you’re running, that force, the pressure that develops is three times your own body weight.

And that force has to be absorbed by your leg joints and muscles and bones, which means there’s extra compression extra weight going through your meniscus at that time. Now, what if you’re running two miles or three miles, you’re doing five K’s 10? K’s? What about people that run marathons or ultra marathon distances?

Those people are technically putting 1000s if not hundreds of 1000s, maybe even millions of reps of three times their body weight through their meniscus every single time. And some of these people end up with meniscus tears. And there’s many that don’t have meniscus tears. How do we explain that there’s something else at play here.

There’s a root cause of meniscus tears that we aren’t 100% Clear on as a medical community. I talk a lot about it here on this channel. And I’ll explain more. But first, let me just talk about weights directly like being overweight, how much weight is too much on your body so that it’s going to directly impact your meniscus.

Now, there are many people that are very overweight, and they could stand to lose 70, 80, 100 pounds or more. And then there are people that are mostly overweight, and they could stand to lose 40 5060 pounds. And there are people that are just slightly overweight, and they need to lose 1020 30 pounds.

Generally, the heavier you are, the more weight your meniscus has to carry every time you step up onto your feet. But the meniscus adapts this is something that isn’t talked about very much. And it’s such a cool thing. The meniscus adapts to the the pressures that you put on it. So there’s a meniscus right there.

The more pressure you put onto your meniscus, the stronger it gets, it has better integrity as time goes on. I think this is why there’s weight lifters out there and runners that don’t have meniscus tears, because when you go lift weights, you’re gradually lifting heavier and heavier weights if that’s what you’re into. And that means you’re gradually putting more and more pressure through that meniscus. And it responds very much like the tissues in our body respond.

Think about it when you exercise your muscles. And if you do it on a consistent basis, like with weightlifting, for instance, if you go do bicep curls, today, and then in a few days, you do them again. And you keep doing that distantly you’re doing bicep curls, two, three days a week consistently over weeks, then you’re very likely to get a bigger bicep, that’s your bicep muscle responding to the forces that you’re putting through it by getting thicker and stronger so that the next time you go lift up a weight and do a bicep curl, it’s easier for it to do that.

That’s called hypertrophy in the medical field. Your meniscus does a similar thing where it adapts like the muscle did, by getting thicker and stronger so that he can take the forces that you’re putting through it, the tendons, the ligaments, the muscles, the bones. And so it has to be true that the meniscus the cartilage inside your knee joint also gets stronger as long as you’re adding pressure through it gradually in a way that it can get stronger.

You might not get hurt, because you can also overdo with bicep curls and strain your muscle you can get a sprained muscle, but if you allow enough rest if you stopped when your body is tired, then you should allow the body tissues the muscle, the tendon, the ligament, the cartilage and meniscus to respond the way that it’s supposed to to get stronger and adapt and the same goes for the runner.

Somebody who’s running marathons doesn’t just start running marathons right away, they start with running a little bit, and then gradually over time and consistently doing it, they increase the running length, they can maybe run a little bit faster, they can shorten the time. And they get to running a few miles, 10 miles, eventually doing half marathons and then full marathons.

And their body adapts to it by making their heart stronger, making their joints stronger, and their legs making sure that their muscles are able to take that that amounts of repetitive motion, everything has to adapt in order for it to not break down like the meniscus.

So then it stands to reason that if you didn’t gain weight, all of a sudden, if your weight gain came on gradually over months and years, then maybe your meniscus has the ability to adapt to the weight that you’ve gained.

And technically, it should be stronger if you’re carrying around an extra 40 5100 pounds. As long as you’re decently active, your meniscus should be adapting. Now the problem is if you’re not active, if you’re more sedentary than technically, your meniscus is has not been challenged if you’re not on your feet very much, and it’s not going to adapt.

That leaves us with a question if being overweight is not the main reason for a meniscus tear, then what is it? Let’s talk about the root problem of meniscus tears. Here’s the common factor that affects all these situations I’ve talked about so far, the muscle imbalance around the knee joint, I’m talking specifically about the quad muscles in the front of the thigh that connects to the kneecap. And then that kneecap sends a big tendon or ligament that runs down this way, and connects to the shin bone.

When those quad muscles get very strong, because that’s how you run you run with your quad muscles or you lift weights primarily with your quads, whenever you’re doing leg exercises, or whatever it is that you’re doing.

If you’re not a weightlifter or a runner. If when you go garden or you’re standing around in the kitchen, cooking a meal, you’re doing activities at home, whatever it is you’re doing, if you tend to use your quad muscles, then those muscles are going to be dominant, and it’s going to smash the shin bone up against the thigh bone and potentially put bad forces on the meniscus here,

Making sure you have the proper balance around your knee joint requires you to have good strength up in the hip and in the foot as well and not be so focused on thigh muscle strength, or even calf muscle strength.

Because those thigh muscles and the big calf muscle, they cross the knee joint and can provide a lot of compression to the knee joints. This leads to injuries to the meniscus. But if you’re more focused on hip strength, usually glute muscle strength and foot muscle strength to keep a good art support, then that tends to take pressure off the meniscus to allow for proper balance in your knee joints.

So if the balance is off, then there’s going to be a mechanical shift in the way that your knee moves. And this I believe is the root cause for meniscus tears regardless of your weight. Regardless of your activity, whether you’re a runner or a weightlifter, or you’re doing any sort of activities are not it, it comes back to the balance of forces going through your knee joint from your muscles.

This is why thin people can get meniscus tears. And why very heavy people sometimes don’t get meniscus tears because they’re more balanced in their muscles. And their meniscus has adapted to their weight over time. Now, I’m not saying that losing weight is a bad idea. Making sure you’re at a healthy weight is very important for so many other reasons.

Obviously, your heart, your other organs. There’s so many problems that come on with being overweight. So absolutely put in the time to focus on losing weight. But what I want to bring to your attention is that it may not be the number one thing to focus on, if you’re trying to take care of your meniscus issue right now.

And I’m especially concerned about all the patients I’ve had in the past people we’ve talked to online, maybe you’re this person, and we’ve never interacted with you ever, but people go lose weight at the recommendation of their doctor because of a meniscus tear and still have meniscus painter’s they still have knee trouble after the weights gone and they’re at a good normal weights.

What then it wasn’t the weight, obviously, it had to have been this root muscle imbalance I’m telling you about. And we’ve seen so many patients live here in the clinic that you know, could stand to lose 5060 7080 pounds, and we work on their muscle imbalance and they get better and we’re still telling them, Hey, lose some weight, but they know it everybody knows that who was overweight that they should.

But very often people are coming to us saying I’m trying I have gone to the gym I’ve been on but my knees hurting me I can’t exercise to lose the weight that I need to lose because of my knee problem. And so I think this is a great relief to people that are overweight because you don’t need to focus on the weight necessarily.

Let’s fix the muscle imbalance first, and that puts you in a position to then be able to target your weight loss goals. Hey, I want to let you know about our knee meniscus recovery program. It’s a comprehensive program designed to help you get your meniscus healthy again by targeting the root muscle imbalance like what I’ve been talking about in this video.

This program is designed to find out where you are as far as if you’re very irritable, or if you’re maybe not too far away from being 100%. And it comes with this chart here that helps you decide what phase of healing you’re in. And according to each phase, there’s a certain set of exercises that you should be doing.

Now for guidance on those exercises in those videos as well. This program is very much an educational program. It’s not an exercise routine program, you know, like a workout video that you might buy for fitness. That’s not the goal of this program. The point of the knee meniscus recovery program is to teach you how to keep your meniscus healthy for the long term in case something flares up.

You know what to do because you’ve learned all that you can about how to heal meniscus problems. If you want to learn more about it, check out the link in the description below. Hey, If this video was helpful for you, please give it a thumbs up. If you haven’t already, subscribe and turn on your notification bell so you don’t miss out on any of the helpful videos. We post each and every week. Thanks so much for watching. I’ll see you in the next video. Bye bye