Heavy Lifting

People often ask me if heavy lifting can cause a hernia. I would say that in general, patients usually already have the beginnings of a hernia or a weakness in their abdominal wall and when they lift something heavy, that increases the pressure inside their abdominal cavity enough to cause either some intestine or some fat to bulge out of that hole or that weakness and develop a hernia. But it’s not so much the heavy lifting that causes a hernia. It’s just that the heavy lifting allowed you to manifest the hernia which was already there.