284- The Link Between Childhood Spinal Pain and Becoming Overweight

Welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor where each week we deliver the latest chiropractic research and marketing strategies all in the time it takes to get to your office. Now here's your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid.

Hello and welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I am your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid. And on today's episode we're talking research and we are talking about the increased risk of becoming overweight if you have spinal pain. We're specifically gonna look at kids, sort of adolescents. This is a new study that recently came out and I think it sheds a lot of light on an important topic that all of us need to be aware of. If you have spine pain early on in life, does that increase the risk of becoming overweight? You can see where this gets cyclical. Then you start moving less. Now you start to have chronic pain. All of this feeds together on a continuum. We're going to break down this research and more on today's episode. Before we get started, I want to say a few words about the smart Chiropractor. I recently broke out these stats in our Facebook group and it's absolutely incredible. We recently started doing Google My Business auto posting. Looking at the screen right now in our stats I share a image of this in our Facebook group. Over the last 30 days, our docs who utilize Google My business auto posting with the Smart Chiropractor received 2,785 phone calls into their practice and over 8,800 total leads. That's phone calls, website clicks and requests for directions. Those phone calls are high intent people looking to schedule an appointment. So if you would like to increase your presence on Google My business our auto posting feature, which I think is the the only one available is awesome. It's part of the smart chiropractor. You'll still get email, you'll get social, you'll get video streaming. Check out the smart chiropractor.com right now. Or if you are a current member of the Smart chiropractor, activate Google My Business Auto Posting in the members area. Do it. The numbers are undeniable. Check it out, get into it and ensure that you are maximizing and optimizing what you are doing on gmb which is probably one of the most important channels you, you can and should be utilizing this year and beyond. But today on this podcast we're talking all about the research. This study came out just this year, 2021 in a journal called Scientific Reports. I'm gonna link the study down below in the show notes. But the title is spinal pain increases the risk of becoming overweight in Danish school children. So the primary objective of this study was to see if self reported lifetime spine pain in 2010 was associated with becoming overweight or obese in 2012. So two year window there, and they looked at over 1,000 normal weighted Danish children age 11 to 13 years at baseline. So two year study, they took a look at kids between 11 and 13 years old and they had a bunch of self reported questions asking about spinal pain previously. So that's the outline of the study and what they were trying to accomplish was to see, hey, does spinal pain increase the amount, the frequency, the severity, does that increase the likelihood of becoming obese later on in life? So where are they coming at when they think about this? Well, being overweight, being obese in childhood and adolescence, it has increased absolutely substantially over the last four decades with more than 20% of children in high income countries and around 13% in low and middle income countries becoming overweight or obese by the year 2013. So in what I'll call first world countries, 20%, that's substantial. More than 20% of children and adolescents in high income countries have become overweight. The researchers point out something very interesting, that if the trend continues, it's estimated that more children will be obese than underweight by 2022, which is right around the corner. Being obese and overweight during adolescence has been correlated with an unbelievably incredible amount of health issues. Adult coronary heart disease, diabetes, a range of cancers, premature death, spinal pain, disability, you name it. Being overweight or obese during adolescence has a direct and real impact on future healthcare utilization. And, and the bottom line is it's just people, you know, it's about health as well. It's not only about avoiding some of these chronic and, you know, systemic disease processes, it's also about being as healthy as possible. And somebody who is not overweight or obese is probably going to be more active. We'll talk about this in a moment. They're probably gonna be more active, they're probably going to be, you know, more engaged with physical activity type things. This is how it all ties together. It's not just the weight, it's the habits that live in and around that extra weight that create a lot of the challenges. So we know, and you've probably heard this before, low back pain is a leading cause of disability worldwide. Now here's what you might not know is that between 10 and 14 year old kids, it's ranked as number nine. So it's in the top 10 causes of disability of kids as young as 10 to 14 years of age. And we see that the prevalence of low back pain goes up dramatically during adolescence to reach the adult level at around age 18. And that's important because when adolescence becomes this hockey stick growth, right, it becomes this rapid period of not only growth and development from a spinal perspective, this is an important take on this as well. It's not just that we see the hockey stick growth of pain set in during adolescence, which leads to potential future complications, but it also is that this is a time of growth and development. This is the time when you're in the process of reaching skeletal maturity and if you're carrying a significant amount of excess weight during that time. This study doesn't go this direction, but you know that I'm going to say there's no question. I don't think this is controversial. Plays a role in how you develop, right? If you are getting down towards the that final period of growth and development and skeletal maturity and you are obese, you are going to develop differently, not only due to habits but due to sheer load than you would otherwise. And these are all this is why this plays together, why it becomes cyclical and also why it's so important to identify some of these correlatives early on in life so that if you can help make an impact as a doc in your community and that you can realistically set people up for decades in a lifetime of success and health as opposed to the other direction by taking care of some of these things early on. And that's where we're going with the findings from this study. So we know spine pain is associated with it's reduced physical activity, it's reduced sports participation in kids. And as an example, 25% of Danish children reporting low back pain were less physically active than their peers without pain in a clinical sample. And 77% reported much or some limitations of activities. So almost a quarter of individuals that have spine pain were not getting out there and they weren't as physically active in sporting activities and hobbies. And this again starts to all feed in to challenges later on in life, whether it's habits, whether it's then the inability due to the pain to get up and moving. The bottom line is you end up with a very challenged situation. So they looked at over 1,000 kids. They looked at these individuals, these kids over the course of two years, what they found was over 40 children became overweight, two of which became obese, and only two of them had never experienced spinal pain at baseline. So the 2 year incidence rate of being overweight was a little bit over 5% with children with spine pain and 1% with for those without spine pain. So they saw a statistically significant trend with stepwise increases in the two year incidence of overweight for both increasing frequency of spinal pain and increasing number of pain sites. So their regression analysis showed that the lifetime prevalence of spinal pain was strongly associated with becoming overweight. Now this is important. If we break down the conclusion, then I want to talk some around how you can utilize this information in and around your practice. Their conclusion was in this cohort of Danish school children, a pattern emerged where more spinal pain more frequent or in more sites increased the risk of becoming overweight two years later. So is there a correlation? Absolutely. The title maybe gave it away. Spinal pain increases the risk of becoming overweight in Danish school children. But the take home message is something I think you really want to focus in on in and around your practice. And that is the fact that when you're taking care of these adolescents, these kids that have spine pain, I think there sometimes can be a tendency, especially if you're not a pediatric chiropractor, you're not focused on kids. Sometimes I think there's a tendency to believe it's not as big of a deal. And we should be very cautious as healthcare providers from thinking anything in and around that or they could grow out of it, or this is temporary, or that their pain is not as real in some cases as somebody who comes in that's an adult or a senior. And what we're seeing in this literature is that what's actually happening during adolescence is just as, if not more important than what'll happen later on. Quite often what happens later on I'm taking out acute injuries can be a byproduct of what happened later on in life. So you're either being set up for success early on in life or you're being set up to fail. And us as chiropractors, being able to address spinal pain, being able to properly diagnose, being able to properly evaluate, being able to really set the stage for fantastic habits and proactive movement is critically important. Taking a child out of pain, you're reducing by a factor of, I'm gonna say what, 1% to 5%, you know, a factor of 4 to 5. You're gonna reduce their factor of becoming overweight 4 to 5x by taking care and addressing their spinal pain. That's impactful. If you think about the fact that somebody Comes in, child comes in, they have back pain, okay? You know, you adjust a few times, they feel better most of the time. Your kids also respond, typically very well to what we do as chiropractors, which is an added benefit. The efficacy is there. I think a lot of us that have taken care of kids in the past, we see that, man, I get great results, kid. It's a lot harder with these adults that have all these bad habits built in, that have all these biomechanical challenges, all of these, you know, diagnoses, all of these problems. And with a child, it's a lot easier to get dynamic results. So take that to heart as you have conversations with parents. Take that to heart as you have conversations with pediatricians in your community. Take that to heart as you go through the care you deliver day in and day out with the kids that come into your practice. Because reducing their spinal pain today can have ridiculously far reaching implications later on in their life. As we saw. If you're able to reduce or eliminate their spinal pain, mitigate their spinal pain today, you are decreasing their likelihood of becoming overweight by a factor of 4 to 5x. That's incredible. The second piece of this is what you do is non pharmacological. So when you look towards the pediatricians, you know, in many cases, you know, NSAIDs are not only not a first line treatment, it's not ideal, especially for growth and development. And many pediatricians, I'm gonna say, are a little more in tune with this than many of the primary care physicians that take care of adults. They tend to stay a little bit more natural. I don't know why that is, and it might be anecdotal, but that's what I've seen. So getting in there and having great conversations with those pediatricians in your community about non pharmacological ways to take care of spinal pain, and the paper and study just like this that showcase how that can impact their ability to decrease dramatically the likelihood that they become overweight. But very, very important, and we think about it longitudinally from the parent and from the child, him or herself, man, you know, decreasing their likelihood of getting overweight is one thing. Consequently decreasing their risk and likelihood for all of these chronic health conditions later on in life is absolutely insane. Now, I'm not saying the adjustment you deliver today mitigates every single health challenge that somebody could have 50 years down the road, not at all. But it does plant the seed. We do see these stats, we see these trends, and we see these statistics. And I encourage you My point of saying that is to encourage you to not take it lightly. Decreasing somebody's mid back pain, thoracic pain, cervical pain, SI joint issues as a child has far reaching and potential for big implications later on. Not with every child always. But as you do that throughout your career, there's no question that you're going to change the trajectory of some people's lives in a significantly positive way. So get out there, share the study. I'll link it down below. Of course, as you can imagine, we're going to include this in some upcoming evidence based chiropractor marketing research briefs to help our docs get out there and bridge the gap with other healthcare providers in their community. This is one of those absolutely fantastic studies to share with pediatricians and I'm going to encourage you. Get out there, do it, have the conversations. The research is out there supporting it. It's your job now to just take it and translate it for those other healthcare pros in your town. As we wrap up, I wanna give a shout out to the entire Cairo office coverage team. If you are, they're just doing a fantastic job helping docs stay profitable when they need to be out of the practice. If you have been injured, if you have maternity, a paternity leave. If you wanna take a vacation. Yes, I actually said the V word here. Vacation. If you wanna take a vacation to close your doors in any of those circumstances, quite often you can actually be profitable and pay for some of those things while you're out of the office by utilizing a coverage service. We do it each and every day@chiroofficecoverage.com so if you are planning on being out of the office vacation, ces, maternity, paternity or you're a doc listening and saying, man I would love to get that experience. We are always looking for fantastic talent across the country. So hit us up@cairoofficecoverage.com, let us know how we can help. Have a fantastic week in practice and I will talk to you soon.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Evidence Based Chiropractor. If you want to grow your practice, come back for next week's episode. If you want to grow faster, visit the evidencebasedchiropractor.com and join our MD Marketing membership today.