Relationship of obesity with lumbar range of motion in school going children of Amritsar, Punjab, India.

The purpose of this study was to establish the relationship between obesity and lumbar range of motion in 300 randomly selected normal, healthy school going children (150 boys and 150 girls) aged 6-15 years of Amritsar, Punjab, India. Height, weight, body mass index (BMI), percent body fat, percent lean body mass, lumbar flexion, lumbar extension and lumbar lateral flexion were measured on all the subjects following the standard techniques. The findings of the study indicate highly significant negative correlations both in boys and girls, between BMI and lumbar flexion (r= - 0.528 and - 0.393 respectively), lumbar extension (r= - 0.339 and -0.471 respectively) and lumbar lateral flexion (r= - 0.421 and -0.318 respectively), between percent body fat and lumbar flexion (r= - 0.393 and -0.247 respectively), lumbar extension (r= - 0.221 and -0.413 respectively) and with lumbar lateral flexion (r= - 0.340 in boys only). It could be concluded that obesity in terms of BMI and percent body fat has some strong association with lumbar range of motion in the studied samples.