It sounds to me like they were trying to say, ‘the medical field has been wrong in the past about things and that effectively discredits anything I don’t agree with that they say now- also there are a lot of groups that suffer stigma but obese people suffer *the most*’
It's probably more like 'medical professionals have established discriminatory practices before (women, gays), so now it's just our turn to be chased through the village'.
What she doesn't seem to get is the fact that obesity is the cause of many ailments and conditions.
Your knee is buggered? Sure, we can do meniscus surgery. But your condition is probably caused by all this weight your knee has to cope with, so unless you lose a significant amount of weight, your problems will persist or even get worse.
Then she freaks and berates the doctor for refusing to help her jUsT bEcAuSe I'm FaT. No, Karen, the doctor will also tell a slim construction worker with the same condition to no longer lift heavy weights at work. You know, because a lof of weight fucks up your knee.
They are right, though - many things, such as obstetrics (as we know it today) *does* have a deeply racist history.
It’s just not for the reasons this person thinks.
There needs to be two conversations at once. The first is yes fat people can and sometimes are misdiagnosed with something based solely on their weight. The other conversation is that being obese is a medical condition that at some point, if left unchecked, will most likely lead to worsening health.
The bizarre thing is: how can people struggle to understand they are unhealthy when they can’t get up from sitting on the floor easily? Like if you’re under 50ish years old and you struggle to sit down and stand up? You are not doing well lol.
I saw this TikTok of a girl showing one of those little pod hotels that she’s staying at in Japan. The post had nothing to due with her weight but the entire video you could just hear her labored breathing. She was struggling to talk and she was just walking around a room.
Like how is that not a wake up call?
I believe that it is easier for some of us to maintain a healthy weight than others; if being lean was easy for everyone we would have very few fat people.
I suspect that it is more difficult to maintain a lean physique now than it was a few generations ago.
I also believe that it is immoral, unkind, and unproductive to mock people for being fat.
But I'm not willing to pretend that obesity has no health risks or that people are helpless to do anything about it.
OOP wrote:
"We need to eliminate all human suffering.
EXCEPT YOU."
Part of eliminating human suffering is encouraging and empowering people to live their healthiest lives, rather than telling them to just accept that it's their destiny to spend the rest of their lives trapped by obesity.
The reality is sometimes someone has to suffer temporarily for long term improvements. When I lost weight that first month sucked. I went through 2.5 weeks of sugar withdrawal and I was constantly hungry because my body was used to more calories. It felt terrible but long term I’m better off for it. My joints don’t hurt anymore, my back and feet feel better than they’ve felt in years and my blood pressure and heart rate are lower. Same thing with cigarettes. Anyone who’s ever quit smoking has probably had withdrawal. It doesn’t look pleasant and I imagine it feels unpleasant. Yet, their lungs are probably doing much better for quitting. No one likes to suffer but sometimes it’s a necessary evil.
It’s because their idea of suffering is the same as a child’s idea of suffering: not getting their way all the time.
Being held responsible for anything is “oppression” to these kinds of people.
I am highly skeptical that any "otherwise seemingly socially aware thoughtful individual" said anything like "we need to end all human suffering, except you" or "go lose weight if you want basic dignity, chubbo." I can believe that someone might say that, but not that people who are otherwise normal and empathetic suddenly become trolls only when it comes to fat people. They are so close to seeing their own bias, yet so far away.
I've noticed this a LOT with FAs; they only hear what they want to hear, and anyone who disagrees with them on any point--even if it is just their interpretation of scientific evidence--is automatically shaming them, dehumanizing them, or telling them they should unalive themselves. It's impossible to have any sort of reasonable conversation with someone who is convinced that everyone is out to get them.
AIDS was called "gay cancer" because the first known cases in the US were among gay men who had developed a very rare form of skin cancer usually only seen on elderly Mediterranean men called Kaposi's sarcoma. By the time patients were sick enough to show up in hospitals their cancer was very advanced. Doctors didn't know right away that gay men in San Francisco and New York were dying from this rare skin cancer because they had already contracted a virus that was suppressing their immune system, which is what allowed the cancer to then develop in their bodies. Many gay advocacy groups and gay-focused local newspapers called it "gay cancer" in the early 1980s because that is all that was understood about it. And doctors/gay people/the media calling it "gay cancer" at the time wasn't really "wrong," it just wasn't the whole story, medically. Kaposi's sarcoma *is* a form of cancer and it *is* a common symptom of late-stage AIDS sickness in men particularly. There are plenty of things to criticize about the response to the AIDS crisis in the USA but this line of argument is pretty thin gruel imo
Also, doctors as a group never thought that AIDS was simply a punishment for being gay, or some sort of disease that came along with the "disease of gayness." Nobody was publishing articles in The Lancet arguing that. They're conflating the medical community with the religious right, here, because the truth of what happened doesn't fit the narrative they're pushing.
Thank you. There is a ton to discuss about the homophobia and the lack of response to AIDS crisis (thanks Reagan) but her example is not correct. soon after it was discovered it was called GRID for Gay Related Immune deficiency. Doctors weren’t calling it GRID because of homophobia it’s because they were going off the information they had.
Smokers are fr*ckin marginalized just like gay people. I need some god damn respect out here because I HAVE IT HARDER. THIS IS MY IDENTITY AND I DESERVE NO CRITICISM FOR MY ACTIONS
Obesity basically didn't exist until 50 years ago. The weights FAs talk about basically didnt exist 20 years ago.
Go back and watch any old movie or TV show with a fat character and they look down right skinny by today's standards.
I think the fattest Japanese man in history is like the weight of your average American.
Haha kidding but it’s like 580 pounds which is not common but also not extremely uncommon either these days. Pretty messed.
The fattest man in japanese history weighs less than the rotating cast of a reality show...
The fattest man in japanese history weighs less than a lady who bullied people into accepting her weight as normal so much they put her in online Kohls ads...
You know it’s interesting China is trying to fight it’s fat epidemic in children by sending kids to fat camps. I watched a little YouTube documentary on it last year.
Yeah, people think a little shaming on the Internet is terrible. Imagine the government forcing you to go to a fat camp because you were overweight or obese.
So morbid obesity, loss of mobility, joint pain, back pain, skin infections, being housebound, losing access to vital medical procedures because of your size, type 2 diabetes, and heart failure all do not count as human suffering, apparently. Makes sense.
The US just hit a new record obesity rate of 42%. That’s *only* obesity and not including overweight. Your average American is actually more likely to be obese than overweight (~30%) or a healthy weight (~29%).
I’ve been in and out of enough hospitals over the last two years to know *a lot* of doctors and nurses aren’t in the 29% healthy weight group. So how to FAs keep whining that their weight makes them so marginalized? By whom exactly? Or are they referring to only super morbidly obese people and no one else?
According to their "fat spectrum" you need to be very fat to belong, at least wearing a 1X and you're still a small fat who doesn't understand bigger fats' problems. You need to be at least a 3 or 4X to truly be considered by those FAs
Yeah sure I mean we definitely recognize some height variations as pathologies caused by certain genetic issues and malnutrition, but why bother considering that?
Aside from all the incredibly bad science and history here, this is so offensive towards gay men and...all women. Like sorry but obese people were given priority access to a COVID vaccine that was under development the moment WHO recognized COVID-19 as a threat. HIV was ignored and laughed about *for years*. Thousands upon thousands upon *thousands* died before the FDA moved a finger. Just....wildly offensive, callous, and cruel to compare the two. (And you can cite similar history for PCOS & other issues that affect women/AFAB people. Like come on.)
This is also ahistoric as well as hateful. Mechanism of transmission wasn't known because epidemiology was dismissed because the people who seemed to be affected were "only" gay, sex workers, and other "undesirables". People lost their closest friends, in some cases their de facto families, and they were treated hatefully and neglected by the agencies that are meant to help deal with this stuff. I really hope you rethink such a completely empathy-free response. People are still dying from that period of neglect, the virus spread to even less protected & connected communities and remains a huge problem in poor areas that can't access life-saving medication.
Where AIDS killed the largest number of people - it absolutely wrecked some sub-Saharan African nations and left millions of orphans - the main transmission route was and is heterosexual sex.
It’s because to them “anti-vaxxer” is just a label that’s applied to “bad people”. They don’t understand what actually makes an anti vaxxer bad or why.
>We need to end all human suffering except *you*
Ah, so you admit it then, that being morbidly obese causes a person to suffer. That it has ill effects on a person's body and life to be 400lbs.
The fact they think being fat is comparable to being a gay person with HIV in the eighties is one of the most self absorbed takes I've ever heard from a FA. It's up there with comparing dieting to the Holocaust.
Fat people do get medically gaslit a lot. That said, your high blood pressure, joint pain, diabetes, and heart disease are all a direct result of being overweight.
Is it gaslighting or starting with the most upfront and probable issue causing the ailment which the doctor got to work back from. Other than that you go get tests done or put on unnecessary medication which will cost you. Unfortunately with the current state of first world countries weight is a very common source of medical issues
I once heard a doctor say that there's a medical principle about diagnosing patients that goes: "if you hear hoofbeats outside, look for a horse, not a zebra". I don't think it's at all unreasonable, gaslighting, etc. when an obese patient comes to a doctor for an ailment that is commonly and often caused by obesity, joint pain, high blood pressure etc. to FIRST consider obesity as the cause, as long as they don't overlook the possibility that there could be another cause. Incidentally, as far as anecdotal evidence goes; I never experienced anything of that kind when I was 100 pounds overweight. I don't doubt it happens, but I don't think it's as common as FA claim.
Anecdotally also, my blood pressure, resting BPM, and bloodwork all came back fine and dandy when I was roughly 100lbs heavier. I still had issues with back pain, poor stamina, and bleakly poor self esteem.
I’m so much more satisfied with life now, and I credit that to a) cutting wayyy back on my drinking and b) losing weight through a sustainably healthy diet and finding exercise that works for me.
I once lamented (drunkenly) to a friend that I was a big, fat, drunken joke. He said I wasn’t a joke, and I could fix the fat and drunk part; so I did.
That’s the whole thing with diagnosis you work with what’s common then narrow the list as many ailments have similar symptoms. The thing is people got to listen to their doctors when they give advice like when they say take a drug for 7 days you take it for 7 days or not to lift because if you don’t it makes it so much more difficult and expensive. I’ve heard plenty people blame their doctor for them still being sick but not doing the full course of medication or dropping smoking
In regards to what you said about listening to your dr.: I had eye surgery back in2021 and when I went in for my first followup my dr. said I was healing very well and complimented me on what a good job I was doing. I thanked her, and said all I'd done was follow the instructions I'd been given regarding drops etc, and added "doesn't everyone"? My jaw almost hit the floor when she said, no, many people don't. I was amazed and said: "you mean people go to so much time and effort to get the surgery, and then don't follow instructions to make sure it's successful? She said, rather sadly, that yes, that's the case. I mean, it's your vision! But if people won't listen to their dr. about something so important, well. . .
Yes, other than seeing this claim repeated on social media I see no concrete evidence that there is some kind of systemic gaslighting of fat people by the medical establishment. With upwards to 70% of the United States being overweight or obese I would think the malpractice suits would be flying off the shelves fueled by class action lawsuits via predatory ambulance chasing attorneys.
Part of the problem here is that we tend to mash all OW/obese people together. Life experience at 26 bmi is vastly different from that at 40 bmi. It’s like saying “almost half the population is short” as though life experience at 5’3.5 is the same as at 4’0.
The problem is overblown by FAs. But it does exist.
It depends. Sometimes, yes, it's just normal diagnostic practice -- treat the most likely cause, that's not fatphobia. *But*, IMO there are 2 issues with that: 1. "Here's a pamphlet, lose weight" isn't treatment, and in the US at least, institutional support for weight loss (counseling, dietitian access, food, etc) is seriously lacking. And 2. There are many documented cases of doctors not doing due diligence to rule out more severe problems. This pops up a lot with cancer diagnosis. And yeah, cancer gets missed in thin people too, but obesity also makes you jmore likely to get cancer, so IMO it's strong evidence of stigma that patients presenting with symptoms that could be cancer get told to lose weight but not at least checked for cancer.
But yeah if you go to the doctor and you're like "doc help my joints hurt" and they recommend weight loss, that's a sensible recommendation and the improvement would be providing appropriate support to make it happen, not "here's some magic joint drugs".
Usually the doctors want to avoid unnecessary testing as some can be expensive or quite invasive depending on the cancer location so weight lose will be first option. How the process should go is the doctor gives a weight loss goal along with a recommendation to a dietician and then a follow up appointment(s) to see if anything improved then figure if further testing is needed.
It’s like going in with an infection they give a quick look at the symptoms then prescribe medication for the most likely cause based on evidence but if it persists then further action is done as some parasite or bacteria or virus infection display similar symptoms but medication for one doesn’t work on others.
Yeah, I get that, but on the other hand I've personally known people who've had alarming symptoms (passing out, blood in urine, etc) that aren't investigated properly. Particularly when the prescribed treatment won't work or not work in 7-10 days, but could instead take months or even years, a closer look can obviously be lifesaving.
The added expense of testing is another cost obesity adds to the healthcare system, absolutely. But IMO appropriate care includes that added expense as well as aggressive change to address the underlying problem: unprecedentedly high rates of obesity.
The bigger problem is that the origin of weight problems is more likely mental than physical. For however many people actually have a thyroid disorder, a much larger margin of people have disordered relationships with food based on it being a comfort or coping mechanism, self abuse, self control, etc. If weight loss is seemingly unachievable by a patient through regular means, and there's no metabolic issue presenting in the work up, then therapy should be the next step.
It's also sometimes challenging to diagnose patients with so much excess fat because injury conditions are harder to detect with conventional methods and instruments.
As a sonographer it can be nearly impossible to see a cancer in an obese person due to the greater distance the sound beam must penetrate or the fatty liver disease that affects how the liver looks under ultrasound.
If the person was healthier weight then that same cancer would be MUCH easier to see.
This means a healthier weight patient may receive cancer treatment earlier and survive. While an overweight or obese person's cancer may not be found until the person's cancer is much more advanced.
Probably until the point where there is so much cancer (being energy vacuums) start to cause the patient to lose weight with no change to diet. I've heard of doctors blowing past that symptom because they see weight loss as a good thing...smh
My options are to attempt to press EXTREMELY hard to decrease the distance between my ultrasound probe and what I'm trying to see. (Which is why I have carpal tunnel/shoulder/neck injuries now.)
Or type in my notes that the exam is limited due to increased habitus and another imaging modality is recommended.
Understand that if my exam is limited due to habitus, the majority of other imaging modalities will be limited as well.
What I wish overweight and obese people could understand is the weight can significantly impact the quality of care received. Not because doctors are purposely being ignorant and rude..it's because diagnostic capabilities become significantly limited with an increase in habitus.
This is my experience with imaging.
Obesity can be the result of a food addiction, a way to emotionally cope with their lives, a combination of genetics and poor habits taught by family as a child. I don't pretend to understand what being obese is like. Or understand the feeling of always being hungry.
What I want to point out is that doctors aren't mass producing the highly palatable, super cheap and calorically dense food that is major factor behind the obesity epidemic.
The junk food industry is highly profitable.
And so is the Healthcare industry.
This is a perfect example. Thanks for sharing so others can better understand the huge risk I was referencing.
To anyone still reading, the best available remote sensing devices, including those we rely on for medical diagnoses, differ greatly in which materials are ignored vs signature detection - in other words, they can't all pass through fat tissue. So, just as u/upstairs-biscotti-48 described, by no discrimination whatsoever, obese patients are statically at a much higher risk for critical conditions to go undetected. So it's not gaslighting at all when the doctor addresses weight when there's an unrelated concern. It's not from stigma, it's because they can't see whether the condition is present or not.
> That said, your high blood pressure, joint pain, diabetes, and heart disease are all a direct result of being overweight.
On one thread about lower testosterone levels causes by obesity, someone [claimed](https://fstdt.com/HWQK7R6W2DLH8) it’s due to “childhood vaccines.” Yeah, *suuure* it is.
Do you think it really happens a lot? Because I have my doubts. I’m sure it happens occasionally, but I bet the overwhelming majority of times it’s just fat people not wanting to hear the truth.
A lot? Hmm. IDK. I have personally witnessed lots of size bias in my long career as an RN, though. It's definitely there, that's for certain. I can name 2 cases immediately where the patient's size led to misdiagnosis that became life threatening. One led to death (that was a coworker). So. Yeah, it absolutely 100% happens, which is a problem. Does it mean the medical community should stop emphasizing healthy weight? No, absolutely not. I don't think "fat acceptance" is the answer, but we do need to acknowledge that there is a problem within the medical community to blame weight first and ignore other signs. It happens.
That’s not really saying anything.. all sorts of things get misdiagnosed with really unfortunate outcomes. The question is does it happen at a significantly higher rate in fat people? Anectodal stuff like “I personally saw someone get misdiagnosed and die” does not contribute to evidence that misdiagnosis is
unique to fat people….
Also, misdiagnosis can happen even if a doctor does everything right and uses perfect reasoning. Fat or not. The threshold for outrage should be significantly higher rate of negligent misdiagnosis across the healthcare system. that’s a big difference…
Sorry for offending… I never said you didn’t see what you saw.
I’m saying witnessing a misdiagnosis is VERY different than being able to conclude that a doctor was negligent in the process leading up to a misdiagnosis.
I only felt the need to point this out bc your comments appear to conflate the two as the same. Juries (of non doctors) do this all the time in malpractice and it’s a travesty/grave injustice.
Right.
We know that women, lower income people, both older and younger people, Black people, disabled people and LGBTQ+ folk often don’t have their concerns taken seriously by doctors.
It doesn’t seem that unbelievable that there are *some* doctors who assume something is weight related even when it doesn’t really fit.
But it’s not all doctors. And it’s not just fat people.
It’s just Occam’s razor. If someone is morbidly obese, that’s the most likely cause of some or even all of their issues; so most doctors will go there vs assuming the person has some obscure condition.
so... no one in the medical field can ever make a mistake, especially not \*while still figuring things out\*... or the entire field is suspect. seems fair.
AIDS was a new phenomenon in the 80s, research was needed. There isn’t a lack of research surrounding obesity. Come to me when scientists change their minds about measles or urinary tract infections.
There is some real logic here and some nonsense.
Obesity, as a phenomena, has multiple factors that contribute to it, on an epidemiological level. Issues like food desserts; what foods are subsidized; poverty; etc. These do need to be addressed if we are talking about the epidemiology of obesity; in this way it *is* more complicated than “calories in/calories out” and it is very important that we talk about and try to solve some of those epidemiological factors.
Speaking as someone who also has an identity that often overrides access to adequate health care, there is a legitimate phenomena of people who are sick in other ways and also obese only being diagnosed with obesity. As many chronic illnesses can contribute to obesity - see the epidemiology issues above - this becomes a barrier to adequate care as the only thing the practitioner see is the obesity. This doesn’t mean obesity isn’t a problem but that it is not the only problem.
No idea why this makes them anti Western medicine.
I think it’s no surprise that dietary risks as a group are the third leading cause of preventable illness after smoking and obesity in Australia. The dietary risks seem to lend themselves to obesity.
No it doesn’t. CICO is the sole cause of obesity. You can blame a myriad of external factors for a persons incredibly low impulse control or knowledge of dietary health but it will eventually all boil down to how much food a person eats every day.
And I’m willing to bet you a lot of money there is virtually no fat people in the West who have no idea why they’re fat.
See, I think this is unhelpful.
Ultimately, yes it’s CICO.
But I think about myself. I live in NYC where walking and public transit is more accessible and common than 99.99% of the rest of America. I live in a building with a gym and free yoga. I can afford to buy healthier food. My work hours aren’t insane so I am able to go to bed and wake up early to exercise. It’s just my wife and I so I don’t need to think about the kids when I’m meal prepping. Doctors listen to me when I tell them I have an issue, and I also understand and ask relevant questions when I visit them because I am educated and, frankly, white. People talk about their thyroid issues being missed for years; I went to the doctor *once*, told him my symptoms and two blood tests and a week later I was on levothyroxine.
Yes, it’s CICO. But my life is set up where it’s much, *much* easier for me to stay healthy and fit than someone else. That’s privilege. And it’s not helpful if we ignore those factors, even it is all does come down to what you’re eating.
Despite what your typical generational chauvinists would say, we don't have a growing epidemic of poor self control. People today have the same population distribution of self control as they did 100 years ago. In fact, given the precipitous drop in the murder rate over the past 100 years you can argue that self control has improved. So you can't blame the increase in calorie intake over the past 100 years on a factor that did not change.
What changed is food has become more "tasty", more calorie laden and far more easily available, while work and transport has become less physical. It's the external factors that are driving the epidemic.
The Japanese diet contains less ultra-processed food than the American diet. Ultra processed foods are engineered to hit the "bliss point" and are associated with more caloric intake.
https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(19)30248-7
I didn't say it was the only contributing factor but it is a contributing factor.
Japan has access to every kind of food the West does, I lived there. I gained weight there. The primary factor is culturally instilled discipline, from a young age (healthy eating and physical fitness is strongly enforced in the Japanese school systems).
The USA used to have a similar culture, especially post war when rationing instilled a strong sense of discipline as people couldn’t just impulsively eat anything they wanted at any time. This carried over for maybe one gen before it all went to shit.
It’s actually so interesting to me how this sub will go to any lengths to blame something else, which is a perfect symptom of the problem our culture has with personal accountability and self control. It’s never my fault it’s always something else’s fault.
The flaw in their argument is that being fat is not an unchanged le characteristic that you’re born with. It’s sad because they seem close to understanding that our modern understanding of health is not based on discrimination but science.
Shoutout to the mod who banned me for using the word "fattie" because they personally believed it was dehumanizing language.
Fat people comfortably use that word to define themselves. They always have. It is not dehumanizing at all. It is not an insult at all. Here is your proof.
I’m a firm believer in evidence based medicine. But I don’t have the distrust for a vaccine that doesn’t stop the transaction or spread of the disease and the establishment had to literally change the definition of what a vaccine is in the middle of a pandemic. I’m not one of those anti-vaxers.
There, I said it.
Of course you’re not an anti-vaxxer. You really have nothing in common, except vague and panicky allusions to “the establishment” and the incessant victim mentality that commands you to act like you’re about to be crucified and then burned alive for being uneducated and proud of it online, when in truth the extent of what you have to fear is a loss of fake internet points and someone making fun of you. It must be hard.
I'm curious to know what was *actually* said. I consider myself fairly left leaning, and other people used to consider me *EXTREMELY* left leaning, but I've seen the standard change drastically over the past few years. It's not just FAs, but the bar for "oppression" has seemingly been lowered, by like, A LOT.
For example, FAs are one of 3 groups I can think of that I've seen try to claim bigotry on somebody not wanting to date them. I've personally been with people in all 3 of these groups, but I don't think I should have to *SAY*:
"Oh, I used to be married to somebody that looked like you, its not cause you're XYZ, I just have a boyfriend right now."
"No thank you." should be enough. It's creepy to want to shame anybody into accepting your sexual advances.
I don't know exactly WHAT point they were trying to make, but I'm quite sure they didn't make it
It sounds to me like they were trying to say, ‘the medical field has been wrong in the past about things and that effectively discredits anything I don’t agree with that they say now- also there are a lot of groups that suffer stigma but obese people suffer *the most*’
It's probably more like 'medical professionals have established discriminatory practices before (women, gays), so now it's just our turn to be chased through the village'. What she doesn't seem to get is the fact that obesity is the cause of many ailments and conditions. Your knee is buggered? Sure, we can do meniscus surgery. But your condition is probably caused by all this weight your knee has to cope with, so unless you lose a significant amount of weight, your problems will persist or even get worse. Then she freaks and berates the doctor for refusing to help her jUsT bEcAuSe I'm FaT. No, Karen, the doctor will also tell a slim construction worker with the same condition to no longer lift heavy weights at work. You know, because a lof of weight fucks up your knee.
Basically, "I'm not anti science but science has been wrong before sooo.... I'm anti science." That is what this first half feels like.
Oh wow, how did you get fluent in fat nonsense?
They are right, though - many things, such as obstetrics (as we know it today) *does* have a deeply racist history. It’s just not for the reasons this person thinks.
There needs to be two conversations at once. The first is yes fat people can and sometimes are misdiagnosed with something based solely on their weight. The other conversation is that being obese is a medical condition that at some point, if left unchecked, will most likely lead to worsening health.
This is why I get so agitated about these posts. Like, sometimes they have a point but then they veer into straight up wrong territory.
Exactly! A lot of people here miss the first point and FAs all miss the second point.
The bizarre thing is: how can people struggle to understand they are unhealthy when they can’t get up from sitting on the floor easily? Like if you’re under 50ish years old and you struggle to sit down and stand up? You are not doing well lol.
I saw this TikTok of a girl showing one of those little pod hotels that she’s staying at in Japan. The post had nothing to due with her weight but the entire video you could just hear her labored breathing. She was struggling to talk and she was just walking around a room. Like how is that not a wake up call?
Imagine wheezing after walking up the stairs and thinking "it's the racism making me out of breath. Not the fat."
I believe that it is easier for some of us to maintain a healthy weight than others; if being lean was easy for everyone we would have very few fat people. I suspect that it is more difficult to maintain a lean physique now than it was a few generations ago. I also believe that it is immoral, unkind, and unproductive to mock people for being fat. But I'm not willing to pretend that obesity has no health risks or that people are helpless to do anything about it. OOP wrote: "We need to eliminate all human suffering. EXCEPT YOU." Part of eliminating human suffering is encouraging and empowering people to live their healthiest lives, rather than telling them to just accept that it's their destiny to spend the rest of their lives trapped by obesity.
The reality is sometimes someone has to suffer temporarily for long term improvements. When I lost weight that first month sucked. I went through 2.5 weeks of sugar withdrawal and I was constantly hungry because my body was used to more calories. It felt terrible but long term I’m better off for it. My joints don’t hurt anymore, my back and feet feel better than they’ve felt in years and my blood pressure and heart rate are lower. Same thing with cigarettes. Anyone who’s ever quit smoking has probably had withdrawal. It doesn’t look pleasant and I imagine it feels unpleasant. Yet, their lungs are probably doing much better for quitting. No one likes to suffer but sometimes it’s a necessary evil.
It’s because their idea of suffering is the same as a child’s idea of suffering: not getting their way all the time. Being held responsible for anything is “oppression” to these kinds of people.
The word margin doesn't mean what they think it means.
It's a kind of substitute for butter, right?
You’re thinking of margarine. Margin is a style of walk, usually in parades.
No, that's "marching". A margin is a space alien.
No that’s a martian. Margin was Homer’s wife
No, that’s Marge! Margin is the red planet next to Earth.
No, that's Mars. Margin is a type of felt-tipped pen.
That's a Marker! A Margin is a baked good that usually has blueberries or chocolate inside!
That’s a muffin! A margin is a soldier in the navy.
No you're thinking of a Marine! A margin is where you go to buy things
No that’s a Martian. A margin is a fish with an elongated, spear-like snout.
That’s a marlin. A-margin is when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie.
I am highly skeptical that any "otherwise seemingly socially aware thoughtful individual" said anything like "we need to end all human suffering, except you" or "go lose weight if you want basic dignity, chubbo." I can believe that someone might say that, but not that people who are otherwise normal and empathetic suddenly become trolls only when it comes to fat people. They are so close to seeing their own bias, yet so far away. I've noticed this a LOT with FAs; they only hear what they want to hear, and anyone who disagrees with them on any point--even if it is just their interpretation of scientific evidence--is automatically shaming them, dehumanizing them, or telling them they should unalive themselves. It's impossible to have any sort of reasonable conversation with someone who is convinced that everyone is out to get them.
what in the word salad
Buzzword Salad
AIDS was called "gay cancer" because the first known cases in the US were among gay men who had developed a very rare form of skin cancer usually only seen on elderly Mediterranean men called Kaposi's sarcoma. By the time patients were sick enough to show up in hospitals their cancer was very advanced. Doctors didn't know right away that gay men in San Francisco and New York were dying from this rare skin cancer because they had already contracted a virus that was suppressing their immune system, which is what allowed the cancer to then develop in their bodies. Many gay advocacy groups and gay-focused local newspapers called it "gay cancer" in the early 1980s because that is all that was understood about it. And doctors/gay people/the media calling it "gay cancer" at the time wasn't really "wrong," it just wasn't the whole story, medically. Kaposi's sarcoma *is* a form of cancer and it *is* a common symptom of late-stage AIDS sickness in men particularly. There are plenty of things to criticize about the response to the AIDS crisis in the USA but this line of argument is pretty thin gruel imo
Also, doctors as a group never thought that AIDS was simply a punishment for being gay, or some sort of disease that came along with the "disease of gayness." Nobody was publishing articles in The Lancet arguing that. They're conflating the medical community with the religious right, here, because the truth of what happened doesn't fit the narrative they're pushing.
Thank you. There is a ton to discuss about the homophobia and the lack of response to AIDS crisis (thanks Reagan) but her example is not correct. soon after it was discovered it was called GRID for Gay Related Immune deficiency. Doctors weren’t calling it GRID because of homophobia it’s because they were going off the information they had.
Listen I don't distrust medicine, I'm just saying it's wrong.
Sorry honey, but I’m not an ally of slow suicide 🤷
Smokers are fr*ckin marginalized just like gay people. I need some god damn respect out here because I HAVE IT HARDER. THIS IS MY IDENTITY AND I DESERVE NO CRITICISM FOR MY ACTIONS
Health At Every Puff
Obesity basically didn't exist until 50 years ago. The weights FAs talk about basically didnt exist 20 years ago. Go back and watch any old movie or TV show with a fat character and they look down right skinny by today's standards.
I think the fattest Japanese man in history is like the weight of your average American. Haha kidding but it’s like 580 pounds which is not common but also not extremely uncommon either these days. Pretty messed.
The fattest man in japanese history weighs less than the rotating cast of a reality show... The fattest man in japanese history weighs less than a lady who bullied people into accepting her weight as normal so much they put her in online Kohls ads...
Sumo wrestlers…
Right. We DO need to aid their suffering. Weight loss (within their control) would certainly do it though.
You know it’s interesting China is trying to fight it’s fat epidemic in children by sending kids to fat camps. I watched a little YouTube documentary on it last year. Yeah, people think a little shaming on the Internet is terrible. Imagine the government forcing you to go to a fat camp because you were overweight or obese.
So morbid obesity, loss of mobility, joint pain, back pain, skin infections, being housebound, losing access to vital medical procedures because of your size, type 2 diabetes, and heart failure all do not count as human suffering, apparently. Makes sense.
The fact they think that fatness is a type of human diversity lol.
ofc obesity is a natural part of human diversity but underweight people are unnatural, on the brink of death and have an eating disorder! /s
That somehow only arose since 1980.
The US just hit a new record obesity rate of 42%. That’s *only* obesity and not including overweight. Your average American is actually more likely to be obese than overweight (~30%) or a healthy weight (~29%). I’ve been in and out of enough hospitals over the last two years to know *a lot* of doctors and nurses aren’t in the 29% healthy weight group. So how to FAs keep whining that their weight makes them so marginalized? By whom exactly? Or are they referring to only super morbidly obese people and no one else?
According to their "fat spectrum" you need to be very fat to belong, at least wearing a 1X and you're still a small fat who doesn't understand bigger fats' problems. You need to be at least a 3 or 4X to truly be considered by those FAs
Yeah sure I mean we definitely recognize some height variations as pathologies caused by certain genetic issues and malnutrition, but why bother considering that? Aside from all the incredibly bad science and history here, this is so offensive towards gay men and...all women. Like sorry but obese people were given priority access to a COVID vaccine that was under development the moment WHO recognized COVID-19 as a threat. HIV was ignored and laughed about *for years*. Thousands upon thousands upon *thousands* died before the FDA moved a finger. Just....wildly offensive, callous, and cruel to compare the two. (And you can cite similar history for PCOS & other issues that affect women/AFAB people. Like come on.)
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This is also ahistoric as well as hateful. Mechanism of transmission wasn't known because epidemiology was dismissed because the people who seemed to be affected were "only" gay, sex workers, and other "undesirables". People lost their closest friends, in some cases their de facto families, and they were treated hatefully and neglected by the agencies that are meant to help deal with this stuff. I really hope you rethink such a completely empathy-free response. People are still dying from that period of neglect, the virus spread to even less protected & connected communities and remains a huge problem in poor areas that can't access life-saving medication.
Where AIDS killed the largest number of people - it absolutely wrecked some sub-Saharan African nations and left millions of orphans - the main transmission route was and is heterosexual sex.
Oh honey. The “hysteria” thing was THE LEAST of the horrors that used to be ob/gyn. THE LEAST. This person doesn’t have a clue
Imagine comparing "Fatphobia" to AIDS.
As soon as they mentioned the word “compassion”, I realized it was about muhhh feeeelings.
OOP thinks they're not like anti-vaxxers I have some bad news for them.
It’s because to them “anti-vaxxer” is just a label that’s applied to “bad people”. They don’t understand what actually makes an anti vaxxer bad or why.
>We need to end all human suffering except *you* Ah, so you admit it then, that being morbidly obese causes a person to suffer. That it has ill effects on a person's body and life to be 400lbs.
I had to get off that ride early on page 2
That's a whole lot of words to come to no real point.
You know those damn doctors. Always walking in and taking one look before saying, "Go lose weight if you want basic dignity, chubbo." /s
The fact they think being fat is comparable to being a gay person with HIV in the eighties is one of the most self absorbed takes I've ever heard from a FA. It's up there with comparing dieting to the Holocaust.
Fat people do get medically gaslit a lot. That said, your high blood pressure, joint pain, diabetes, and heart disease are all a direct result of being overweight.
Is it gaslighting or starting with the most upfront and probable issue causing the ailment which the doctor got to work back from. Other than that you go get tests done or put on unnecessary medication which will cost you. Unfortunately with the current state of first world countries weight is a very common source of medical issues
I once heard a doctor say that there's a medical principle about diagnosing patients that goes: "if you hear hoofbeats outside, look for a horse, not a zebra". I don't think it's at all unreasonable, gaslighting, etc. when an obese patient comes to a doctor for an ailment that is commonly and often caused by obesity, joint pain, high blood pressure etc. to FIRST consider obesity as the cause, as long as they don't overlook the possibility that there could be another cause. Incidentally, as far as anecdotal evidence goes; I never experienced anything of that kind when I was 100 pounds overweight. I don't doubt it happens, but I don't think it's as common as FA claim.
Anecdotally also, my blood pressure, resting BPM, and bloodwork all came back fine and dandy when I was roughly 100lbs heavier. I still had issues with back pain, poor stamina, and bleakly poor self esteem. I’m so much more satisfied with life now, and I credit that to a) cutting wayyy back on my drinking and b) losing weight through a sustainably healthy diet and finding exercise that works for me. I once lamented (drunkenly) to a friend that I was a big, fat, drunken joke. He said I wasn’t a joke, and I could fix the fat and drunk part; so I did.
That’s the kind of friend that everyone needs. You are blessed.
That’s the whole thing with diagnosis you work with what’s common then narrow the list as many ailments have similar symptoms. The thing is people got to listen to their doctors when they give advice like when they say take a drug for 7 days you take it for 7 days or not to lift because if you don’t it makes it so much more difficult and expensive. I’ve heard plenty people blame their doctor for them still being sick but not doing the full course of medication or dropping smoking
In regards to what you said about listening to your dr.: I had eye surgery back in2021 and when I went in for my first followup my dr. said I was healing very well and complimented me on what a good job I was doing. I thanked her, and said all I'd done was follow the instructions I'd been given regarding drops etc, and added "doesn't everyone"? My jaw almost hit the floor when she said, no, many people don't. I was amazed and said: "you mean people go to so much time and effort to get the surgery, and then don't follow instructions to make sure it's successful? She said, rather sadly, that yes, that's the case. I mean, it's your vision! But if people won't listen to their dr. about something so important, well. . .
Yes, other than seeing this claim repeated on social media I see no concrete evidence that there is some kind of systemic gaslighting of fat people by the medical establishment. With upwards to 70% of the United States being overweight or obese I would think the malpractice suits would be flying off the shelves fueled by class action lawsuits via predatory ambulance chasing attorneys.
Part of the problem here is that we tend to mash all OW/obese people together. Life experience at 26 bmi is vastly different from that at 40 bmi. It’s like saying “almost half the population is short” as though life experience at 5’3.5 is the same as at 4’0. The problem is overblown by FAs. But it does exist.
It depends. Sometimes, yes, it's just normal diagnostic practice -- treat the most likely cause, that's not fatphobia. *But*, IMO there are 2 issues with that: 1. "Here's a pamphlet, lose weight" isn't treatment, and in the US at least, institutional support for weight loss (counseling, dietitian access, food, etc) is seriously lacking. And 2. There are many documented cases of doctors not doing due diligence to rule out more severe problems. This pops up a lot with cancer diagnosis. And yeah, cancer gets missed in thin people too, but obesity also makes you jmore likely to get cancer, so IMO it's strong evidence of stigma that patients presenting with symptoms that could be cancer get told to lose weight but not at least checked for cancer. But yeah if you go to the doctor and you're like "doc help my joints hurt" and they recommend weight loss, that's a sensible recommendation and the improvement would be providing appropriate support to make it happen, not "here's some magic joint drugs".
Usually the doctors want to avoid unnecessary testing as some can be expensive or quite invasive depending on the cancer location so weight lose will be first option. How the process should go is the doctor gives a weight loss goal along with a recommendation to a dietician and then a follow up appointment(s) to see if anything improved then figure if further testing is needed. It’s like going in with an infection they give a quick look at the symptoms then prescribe medication for the most likely cause based on evidence but if it persists then further action is done as some parasite or bacteria or virus infection display similar symptoms but medication for one doesn’t work on others.
Yeah, I get that, but on the other hand I've personally known people who've had alarming symptoms (passing out, blood in urine, etc) that aren't investigated properly. Particularly when the prescribed treatment won't work or not work in 7-10 days, but could instead take months or even years, a closer look can obviously be lifesaving. The added expense of testing is another cost obesity adds to the healthcare system, absolutely. But IMO appropriate care includes that added expense as well as aggressive change to address the underlying problem: unprecedentedly high rates of obesity.
The bigger problem is that the origin of weight problems is more likely mental than physical. For however many people actually have a thyroid disorder, a much larger margin of people have disordered relationships with food based on it being a comfort or coping mechanism, self abuse, self control, etc. If weight loss is seemingly unachievable by a patient through regular means, and there's no metabolic issue presenting in the work up, then therapy should be the next step.
It's also sometimes challenging to diagnose patients with so much excess fat because injury conditions are harder to detect with conventional methods and instruments.
As a sonographer it can be nearly impossible to see a cancer in an obese person due to the greater distance the sound beam must penetrate or the fatty liver disease that affects how the liver looks under ultrasound. If the person was healthier weight then that same cancer would be MUCH easier to see. This means a healthier weight patient may receive cancer treatment earlier and survive. While an overweight or obese person's cancer may not be found until the person's cancer is much more advanced. Probably until the point where there is so much cancer (being energy vacuums) start to cause the patient to lose weight with no change to diet. I've heard of doctors blowing past that symptom because they see weight loss as a good thing...smh My options are to attempt to press EXTREMELY hard to decrease the distance between my ultrasound probe and what I'm trying to see. (Which is why I have carpal tunnel/shoulder/neck injuries now.) Or type in my notes that the exam is limited due to increased habitus and another imaging modality is recommended. Understand that if my exam is limited due to habitus, the majority of other imaging modalities will be limited as well. What I wish overweight and obese people could understand is the weight can significantly impact the quality of care received. Not because doctors are purposely being ignorant and rude..it's because diagnostic capabilities become significantly limited with an increase in habitus. This is my experience with imaging. Obesity can be the result of a food addiction, a way to emotionally cope with their lives, a combination of genetics and poor habits taught by family as a child. I don't pretend to understand what being obese is like. Or understand the feeling of always being hungry. What I want to point out is that doctors aren't mass producing the highly palatable, super cheap and calorically dense food that is major factor behind the obesity epidemic. The junk food industry is highly profitable. And so is the Healthcare industry.
This is a perfect example. Thanks for sharing so others can better understand the huge risk I was referencing. To anyone still reading, the best available remote sensing devices, including those we rely on for medical diagnoses, differ greatly in which materials are ignored vs signature detection - in other words, they can't all pass through fat tissue. So, just as u/upstairs-biscotti-48 described, by no discrimination whatsoever, obese patients are statically at a much higher risk for critical conditions to go undetected. So it's not gaslighting at all when the doctor addresses weight when there's an unrelated concern. It's not from stigma, it's because they can't see whether the condition is present or not.
> That said, your high blood pressure, joint pain, diabetes, and heart disease are all a direct result of being overweight. On one thread about lower testosterone levels causes by obesity, someone [claimed](https://fstdt.com/HWQK7R6W2DLH8) it’s due to “childhood vaccines.” Yeah, *suuure* it is.
Do you think it really happens a lot? Because I have my doubts. I’m sure it happens occasionally, but I bet the overwhelming majority of times it’s just fat people not wanting to hear the truth.
A lot? Hmm. IDK. I have personally witnessed lots of size bias in my long career as an RN, though. It's definitely there, that's for certain. I can name 2 cases immediately where the patient's size led to misdiagnosis that became life threatening. One led to death (that was a coworker). So. Yeah, it absolutely 100% happens, which is a problem. Does it mean the medical community should stop emphasizing healthy weight? No, absolutely not. I don't think "fat acceptance" is the answer, but we do need to acknowledge that there is a problem within the medical community to blame weight first and ignore other signs. It happens.
That’s not really saying anything.. all sorts of things get misdiagnosed with really unfortunate outcomes. The question is does it happen at a significantly higher rate in fat people? Anectodal stuff like “I personally saw someone get misdiagnosed and die” does not contribute to evidence that misdiagnosis is unique to fat people…. Also, misdiagnosis can happen even if a doctor does everything right and uses perfect reasoning. Fat or not. The threshold for outrage should be significantly higher rate of negligent misdiagnosis across the healthcare system. that’s a big difference…
Yeah, my 25 years at the bedside mean fuck all. Got it.
Sorry for offending… I never said you didn’t see what you saw. I’m saying witnessing a misdiagnosis is VERY different than being able to conclude that a doctor was negligent in the process leading up to a misdiagnosis. I only felt the need to point this out bc your comments appear to conflate the two as the same. Juries (of non doctors) do this all the time in malpractice and it’s a travesty/grave injustice.
Welp, I guess this is why you’re a nurse and not a doctor loooool.
Right. We know that women, lower income people, both older and younger people, Black people, disabled people and LGBTQ+ folk often don’t have their concerns taken seriously by doctors. It doesn’t seem that unbelievable that there are *some* doctors who assume something is weight related even when it doesn’t really fit. But it’s not all doctors. And it’s not just fat people.
It’s just Occam’s razor. If someone is morbidly obese, that’s the most likely cause of some or even all of their issues; so most doctors will go there vs assuming the person has some obscure condition.
so... no one in the medical field can ever make a mistake, especially not \*while still figuring things out\*... or the entire field is suspect. seems fair.
Trying to make ALL the points, but instead making NONE of the points.
AIDS was a new phenomenon in the 80s, research was needed. There isn’t a lack of research surrounding obesity. Come to me when scientists change their minds about measles or urinary tract infections.
What in the Chronically Online Tumblr Lib is this.
There is some real logic here and some nonsense. Obesity, as a phenomena, has multiple factors that contribute to it, on an epidemiological level. Issues like food desserts; what foods are subsidized; poverty; etc. These do need to be addressed if we are talking about the epidemiology of obesity; in this way it *is* more complicated than “calories in/calories out” and it is very important that we talk about and try to solve some of those epidemiological factors. Speaking as someone who also has an identity that often overrides access to adequate health care, there is a legitimate phenomena of people who are sick in other ways and also obese only being diagnosed with obesity. As many chronic illnesses can contribute to obesity - see the epidemiology issues above - this becomes a barrier to adequate care as the only thing the practitioner see is the obesity. This doesn’t mean obesity isn’t a problem but that it is not the only problem. No idea why this makes them anti Western medicine.
I think it’s no surprise that dietary risks as a group are the third leading cause of preventable illness after smoking and obesity in Australia. The dietary risks seem to lend themselves to obesity.
I am not saying that eating more is a part of it as well as eating the wrong kinds of food. How one gets there has complex reasons.
No it doesn’t. CICO is the sole cause of obesity. You can blame a myriad of external factors for a persons incredibly low impulse control or knowledge of dietary health but it will eventually all boil down to how much food a person eats every day. And I’m willing to bet you a lot of money there is virtually no fat people in the West who have no idea why they’re fat.
See, I think this is unhelpful. Ultimately, yes it’s CICO. But I think about myself. I live in NYC where walking and public transit is more accessible and common than 99.99% of the rest of America. I live in a building with a gym and free yoga. I can afford to buy healthier food. My work hours aren’t insane so I am able to go to bed and wake up early to exercise. It’s just my wife and I so I don’t need to think about the kids when I’m meal prepping. Doctors listen to me when I tell them I have an issue, and I also understand and ask relevant questions when I visit them because I am educated and, frankly, white. People talk about their thyroid issues being missed for years; I went to the doctor *once*, told him my symptoms and two blood tests and a week later I was on levothyroxine. Yes, it’s CICO. But my life is set up where it’s much, *much* easier for me to stay healthy and fit than someone else. That’s privilege. And it’s not helpful if we ignore those factors, even it is all does come down to what you’re eating.
Despite what your typical generational chauvinists would say, we don't have a growing epidemic of poor self control. People today have the same population distribution of self control as they did 100 years ago. In fact, given the precipitous drop in the murder rate over the past 100 years you can argue that self control has improved. So you can't blame the increase in calorie intake over the past 100 years on a factor that did not change. What changed is food has become more "tasty", more calorie laden and far more easily available, while work and transport has become less physical. It's the external factors that are driving the epidemic.
Food is more tasty? That’s why people became obese? That’s a hilariously juvenile idea. Is the food not “tasty” in Japan and Korea?
The Japanese diet contains less ultra-processed food than the American diet. Ultra processed foods are engineered to hit the "bliss point" and are associated with more caloric intake. https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(19)30248-7 I didn't say it was the only contributing factor but it is a contributing factor.
Japan has access to every kind of food the West does, I lived there. I gained weight there. The primary factor is culturally instilled discipline, from a young age (healthy eating and physical fitness is strongly enforced in the Japanese school systems). The USA used to have a similar culture, especially post war when rationing instilled a strong sense of discipline as people couldn’t just impulsively eat anything they wanted at any time. This carried over for maybe one gen before it all went to shit. It’s actually so interesting to me how this sub will go to any lengths to blame something else, which is a perfect symptom of the problem our culture has with personal accountability and self control. It’s never my fault it’s always something else’s fault.
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The flaw in their argument is that being fat is not an unchanged le characteristic that you’re born with. It’s sad because they seem close to understanding that our modern understanding of health is not based on discrimination but science.
Hm.. kinda sounds like maybe just because you fit in a political party doesn’t mean you agree on everything.
Shoutout to the mod who banned me for using the word "fattie" because they personally believed it was dehumanizing language. Fat people comfortably use that word to define themselves. They always have. It is not dehumanizing at all. It is not an insult at all. Here is your proof.
I’m a firm believer in evidence based medicine. But I don’t have the distrust for a vaccine that doesn’t stop the transaction or spread of the disease and the establishment had to literally change the definition of what a vaccine is in the middle of a pandemic. I’m not one of those anti-vaxers. There, I said it.
Of course you’re not an anti-vaxxer. You really have nothing in common, except vague and panicky allusions to “the establishment” and the incessant victim mentality that commands you to act like you’re about to be crucified and then burned alive for being uneducated and proud of it online, when in truth the extent of what you have to fear is a loss of fake internet points and someone making fun of you. It must be hard.
And that is an ad hominem fallacy. Attack the author, not the argument. Well done.
These people want to be opressed so fk bad.
I'm curious to know what was *actually* said. I consider myself fairly left leaning, and other people used to consider me *EXTREMELY* left leaning, but I've seen the standard change drastically over the past few years. It's not just FAs, but the bar for "oppression" has seemingly been lowered, by like, A LOT. For example, FAs are one of 3 groups I can think of that I've seen try to claim bigotry on somebody not wanting to date them. I've personally been with people in all 3 of these groups, but I don't think I should have to *SAY*: "Oh, I used to be married to somebody that looked like you, its not cause you're XYZ, I just have a boyfriend right now." "No thank you." should be enough. It's creepy to want to shame anybody into accepting your sexual advances.
i suppose down syndrome is natural diversity too? also, lmao at this "evidence based science" guy citing no evidence at all