Healthy weight management is critical to prevent various health risks and continue living healthily. Studies revealed that being obese or overweight can increase your risk of developing psoriasis. It further can cause inflammation, stiffness and pain in your joints, eventually leading to psoriatic arthritis. In situations where you have existing psoriatic arthritis, excess body weight can worsen your symptoms. However, weight alone is never responsible for causing psoriasis. Instead, it, along with many other factors, can contribute to your psoriatic arthritis. Hence, your personal weight loss trainer in Mississauga can help develop customized weight loss solutions to manage a healthy weight and arthritis symptoms.
Can Overweight Cause Psoriatic Arthritis?
Though obesity has been found to increase the risk of psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis, the link between the two has not been clear. Psoriasis is an inflammatory condition. Excess fat cells can release cytokine, an inflammatory chemical that can cause psoriasis symptoms. Besides, extra body weight can stress your joints, ligaments, and tendons. It further can make it challenging to move freely or perform exercises. All these can make your symptoms worse. Health experts believe that even losing a few pounds can help reduce psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis symptoms.
Effects of Psoriatic Arthritis on Body Weight
As mentioned, psoriatic arthritis can cause joint swelling, stiffness, pain and other symptoms. It can further affect their mobility, strength, and flexibility. As a result, it can contribute to further weight gain. Biologics are a newer class of medications that doctors prescribe to treat this condition. These are disease-modifying anti rheumatic drugs. Though these medications are quite effective in treating your symptoms, they can cause side effects such as unwanted weight gain.
Patients with psoriatic arthritis are at a high risk of developing various metabolic syndromes, such as heart ailments, high blood pressure, abdominal obesity, diabetes, etc. Hence, managing a healthy weight can not only help reduce your psoriatic arthritis symptoms but also the risk of many other health conditions.
How can losing weight help?
Achieving and managing a healthy weight can offer the following benefits to psoriatic arthritis.
- Alleviate pain
- Reduce inflammation
- Improve mobility
- Improve effective of medication
- Prevent cardiovascular diseases, Type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol and blood pressure levels
How A MD And RD At Modest Medix Can Help Manage Psoriatic Arthritis And Obesity Symptoms?
At Modest Medix, our experienced medical doctor (MD) and registered dietitian (RD) will offer customized medical help to lose weightand reduce psoriatic arthritis symptoms. The weight loss programs vary based on unique patient needs. However, we may use the following methods to help psoriatic patients to lose weight safely.
Identify Triggers
Patients with autoimmune diseases, such as psoriatic arthritis, have different triggers that can contribute to flare-ups of their symptoms. Our health team will help identify these triggers to reduce your pain and inflammation. Avoiding these triggers can help reduce excess fluid and inflammation responsible for causing inflammation.
Making healthy dietary changes
Whether you have obesity or psoriatic arthritis, your diet is critical in managing your symptoms. Our RD will help develop a structured meal plan to support your weight loss journey and manage your condition. It will likely involve the following-
- Balanced diet – We will ensure your meal plan includes the essential nutrients as per your health needs.
- Portion size – Controlling portion sizes can also help you manage a healthy weight
- Staying hydrated – Drinking adequate water can boost metabolism. Besides, drinking water before a major meal might help satiate you faster.
- Mindful eating – Eating slowly and savouring each bite might help reduce calorie intake.
- Meal replacement shakes – If needed, we might recommend replacing one or all meals with meal replacement shakes to manage your calorie intake.
Regular exercise
Exercising regularly, especially if you have psoriatic arthritis, is critical to maintain your mobility and manage a healthy weight. Further, it can help reduce your pain, improve sleep and daily functioning, feel energized, etc. Psoriatic arthritis can cause varying levels of symptoms. Hence, based on the severity of your symptoms and your genetic makeup, we can help create an exercise plan that would help you achieve optimum results.
Learn about your medications
It is a critical step in developing customized weight loss solutions. Knowing whether any medication that you take is responsible for gaining weight will allow us to make an action plan to help manage your condition effectively.
Doctors often prescribe corticosteroids to treat psoriatic arthritis. Sometimes, they might additionally prescribe biologics to improve the efficiency of medications. In such cases, you may notice unexplained weight gain once you start taking these medications. The reason behind such cases of unwanted weight gain is that these medications can increase your appetite, cause water retention and affect your sleep. As a result, despite your efforts, you may find it challenging to manage a healthy weight. If you experience these side effects, you should consult your healthcare professionals to suggest alternatives to prevent further weight gain. Moreover, we will work with you to help build healthy lifestyle habits to achieve and maintain your healthy weight.
Hence, whether your excess body weight is responsible for causing psoriatic arthritis or vice versa, Modest Medix can develop customized weight loss programs in Ontario, Canada, to help you in healthy weight management. Get in touch with our obesity physicians and allow us to help you manage your condition. Nothing should take precedence over your health and quality of life.
