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doctors - 1235 found
Thin Privilege is Being Allowed to Think You Don’t Have Thin Privilege
It sounds kind of counter intuitive, but somehow it’s a thing. My roommate has been stick-thin her whole life, probably even underweight. Well over a year ago, she underwent surgery to fix a problem that has made her sickly her entire life. My roommate is a very fragile person, and became very sedentary while she healed. Not surprisingly, she gained some weight… (to ask her, it was more like 300lbs. to look at her it couldnt be more than 30lbs) Though as a fat person, I would not qualify her as fat at all. She is still quite thin, fits into most clothes, and has not experienced any notable discrimination due to her weight (I would have heard all about it). (if she was as short as I am, I would easily be twice her size/weight) However, she is convinced that she is as marginalized for her weight as I am, as any other fat person is. And, because she has not experienced notable discrimination, she is convinced that fatphobia really isn’t that bad. When I try to explain that yes, people die from fatphobia, she brushes it off. When I try to explain that doctors and medicine in general are extremely prejudiced, she scoffs. I haven’t even tried to introduce her to the concept of discrimination/marginalization towards fat people existing on a continuum…
Because it’s not really thinsplaining if you think that you have it as bad as someone 2x, 3x, 4x, your size amirite? haha
Hi! I really appreciate your blog and all the work you do, but I want to point out that your recent post claiming that fat people cannot get treatment for eating disorders because of the DSMV definition of anorexia is factually wrong. I am fat and I was admitted (and covered by insurance) for five months in a partial hospitalization program, and I was not the only fat patient there. Although there certainly are barriers that exist and need to be talked about, creating the false impression (ctd)
Asked by
blameitonthepatriarchy
(ctd) that it is literally impossible for fat people to get ED treatment is actually likely to do more harm than good. Certainly we should talk about the many issues in treatment, and the discrimination fat people may have to deal with in their recovery journey, but it’s really important to make sure everyone knows that it IS possible to get professional treatment regardless of your weight, even if it’s not as easy as it should be.
Yes, some fat people can get treatment for EDs if they have access to a health professional who takes their symptoms and issues seriously, AND they have insurance that will cover the treatment regardless of the codes their doctor provides. For fat people who don’t have access to fat friendly doctors with insurance that doesn’t cover treatment or gives less treatment for diagnosis that are considered to be “less life threatening” by their insurance provider the barriers they face can be tremendous.
It’s incredibly disingenuous to assume all people will have the same experience. I have a great doctor who listens to me and gives me the treatment I need. Many people don’t or have insurance that is very specific about what kind of treatment they will cover and when they will cover it. People who are unable to be diagnosed as having anorexia and instead get diagnosed as EDNOS are less likely to get insurance coverage for inpatient treatment. It does happen but not all the time.
-FBP
Weight discrimination in health care is dangerous for fat people
If you are fat and have even been abused or mistreated by a medical professional, know that you are not alone.
This is one of the most dangerous forms of discrimination that fat people experience.
Fear of medical discrimination stops many fat people from seeking medical attention until it is an emergency, which may explain why fat people often fare worse when they contract certain diseases.
Prejudice and lack of training with fat patients causes doctors to offer inadequate medical care to fat patients. For example, fat patients are less likely to receive screening tests for certain cancers, and when they do get cancer, fat patients are routinely prescribed lower doses of chemotherapy than they require, resulting in lower cancer survival rates.
Is it any wonder that fat people suffer poor health outcomes?
Doctors: We’re not going to treat fat people until they lose weight.
Fat People: *have health problems like everyone else that tend to get worse due entirely to lack of or inadequate treatment that leads to worse problems and an early death*
Doctors: SEE?! BEING FAT IS BAD FOR YOU AND MAKES HEALTH PROBLEMS WORSE AND KILLS PEOPLE!
Fat People: Um, no, MEDICAL NEGLECT DOES.Black woman just died outside of a hospital partially because of shit like this
This is a good reminder that different forms of oppression intersect with fat phobia to determine people’s treatment by health care professionals.
For example, there is ample evidence that Black people experience medical neglect at higher rates and receive worse health care than white people (here is but one example). Women’s pain and illness is also taken less seriously than men’s pain and illness. When race-based medical bias and gender-based medical bias intersect with fat phobia, the results are truly appalling. As@peanut-budda-legs mentioned, fat Black women are particularly vulnerable to medical neglect and abuse.
Doctors are people first-and-foremost, and that means they are plagued by all the same implicit and explicit biases and prejudices that affect all of us. But this commonality does not excuse their biases. Rather, their position of social power and influence means that they need to work even harder to overcome their prejudices, because the negative consequences of those biases can be literally fatal.
- Mod D
(via madmaudlingoes)
nobodybetterhavethisoneoriswear:
Hey, ever heard of somebody who just dropped dead of a heart attack suddenly, nobody thought they had anything wrong with them? Everybody thought they were perfectly healthy?
Know why they were never diagnosed with heart problems, never had a chance to get preventative treatments?
Fatphobia.
Medical anti-fat bias means that many thin people never get tested for cholesterol or other things that are indicative of heart disease, because many doctors think there’s no need to test them. Meanwhile, fatties with no history of any problems with these things get tested every single time. Often when they go in to see a doctor for something totally unrelated, doctors want a cholesterol check.
Because a correlation between fat and heart disease exists, some — too many — doctors assume that only fat people are likely to have it.
Fatphobia in medicine isn’t only killing fat people. It’s killing thin people, too.
-MG
Literally experienced this, thin privilege backfiring on me. My small fat roommate and I were the same age. We both went in for a physical at around the same time. She got a whole shitload of bloodwork that gave her cholesterol level, blood sugar, and told her about many vitamin deficiencies. I asked for the same, and was told my insurance wouldn’t cover it. I had better insurance than her.
I had to beg to get my b12 level tested, because my family has a history of depression and I’d heard there was a relationship, and my doctor kind of fudged a reason to check that and one other thing. Later, I got a bill, because my insurance refused to cover it.
Turned out my b12 was DANGEROUSLY low. I was well into the “psychiatric side effects” range. (I’d just gotten used to hiding in the bathroom and sobbing multiple times a week at work. I… don’t do that anymore.)
What other vitamins am I deficient in? I have no idea. I’m taking C and D and kind of hoping for the best.
Because fatphobia and healthism say that because I’m thin and relatively young, I can’t possibly be unhealthy.
Weight first treatment kills everyone
This is why I shy away from the doctor. Every single ailment I have is because I’m fat according to them. It hurts my feelings a lot. Maybe I’m just sick because I’m sick?
My doctor actually recently (two weeks ago) had the gall to try to diagnose me for sleep apnea and allergies (caused by the sleep apnea) because I made an appointment for a check up because I was sick, congested, and had a sore throat.
He gave me a prescription for fucking Zyrtec and told me I should get a sleep study done because my weight was likely the cause.
I went and got a second opinion from a local walk in clinic and turns out I had a fucking upper respiratory infection (caused by a virus) and it was on its way to becoming pneumonia. It had NOTHING to do with my weight.
I’m lucky I didn’t actually end up in the fucking hospital over it.
Yeah, you should let your doctor know that the one study that claimed to prove that fat physiologically caused sleep apnea turned out to have been falsified. The researcher admitted to it, retracted the study, and accepted censure. We’ve posted about it a couple of times now. The researcher’s name is Robert Fogel, and if you look around, you can find the official retraction. Maybe take that in to your doctor.
On the other hand, poor sleep does seem to cause weight gain, which suggests that for any correlation between fat and sleep apnea, the causation runs the other way.
-MG
The amount of fatshaming in medicine is ridiculous. I noticed during the very first year of my medical studies that doctors will try to pin everything on people being fat, including the flu or too thin hair. They will even say stuff like “but they weren’t even overweight????” when a person dies of heart failure as THE FIRST THING they can think of. They never say “but they didn’t even smoke” or “they didn’t even have high cholesterol”. They say “wait they weren’t fat why were they ill”
It gets even worse in Psychiatry. “Well if you lost weight maybe that would help the depression”, “I don’t understand why he’s still so unsure of himself. He lost about 40 pounds, he looks great.”
I have literally heard someone say to a rape victim “He chose you because he knew from your body type that you weren’t likely to outrun him.”
For decades, my mother-in-law had been a bit rounder than most women - mostly genetic, as many women in her family have been that way historically, and been perfectly healthy - but was experiencing a strange, seemingly randomly-occurring symptom of blood in her urine from time to time.
Doctor after doctor would look for the cause, but most fell back on some variation of her being overweight. Meanwhile, she continued steadily gaining weight, year after year, even though she ate less and less.
At the beginning of Thanksgiving week 2010, she went in for a checkup with her new primary care physician. They went over various things - like how tired and drained my mother-in-law felt, for a start - and as they were about to leave, the doctor had them drop off a blood sample, because she had a hunch and wanted to check something (creatinine levels, in case anyone is curious).
When they got home from the visit, the phone was ringing. It was the doctor.
“Good news! I know what your problem is. Bad news, your kidneys are failing. Go to the hospital now.”
Her kidneys had dropped below 10% function, the minimum for healthy living. It turned out, after extensive testing and a lucky incident, that she’d been having small, minor kidney infections for decades, which had been slowly chipping away at her kidney function - hence the ‘random’ blood in her urine.
Doctors had mostly just told her to lose weight and get more fit - when it reality, she was retaining water because her kidneys were slowly failing. She was otherwise completely asymptomatic for kidney failure.
The first week of dialysis, they extracted fifty pounds of water from her. It was agony to go through, but she felt amazingly better after that (wonder of wonders, a working faux-kidney, and she felt better? gasp).
But the fat-shaming didn’t stop there. Later, once we’d determined I could give her a kidney, her assigned transplant doctor’s first statement upon entering the room (she’d been previously instructed to lose weight to a certain point, to make the surgery safer, which she’d actually been doing just fine, if a tad slowly) was, “Your problem is portion control.”
At that point in time, she was eating no more than 800-1000 calories per day, and feeling full from that, but he didn’t believe that she was being truthful, and for the duration of the time she had to interact with him, he continually insisted she was eating too much. (She still eats less than everyone else in the house, and she’s the only one ‘classically’ overweight, though much less so than before the transplant).
By the time of the transplant, she was down to only 3% kidney function, despite dialysis six nights a week. Had this not been caught when it was, we probably would have lost her by then.
Thankfully, since giving her one of my kidneys, she’s been able to maintain a healthy weight and be more active, though she will always remain ‘rounder’ because of her genetics.
For years, doctors assumed all her problems were because she was overweight when, in fact, her being as overweight as she had been was a symptom of an underlying problem.
Unfriendly remind that ~25% of thin people have “obese” problems which leads to awful things, like has been said. If you’re thin, please be careful about believing doctors who just say, “you’re not overweight, so you’re fine!” b/c fatphobia is shit.
This is so obnoxious. I am very small built so not only does everyone think I’m very healthy, but they think I am skinny and constantly comment on how little I must eat. As a small child I was a bean pole and light as a feathery. Then I suddenly gained weight with puberty. I am 5'3" and when I was fifteen I weighed 160 LBs. I was miserable and uncomfortable because I am small boned and lethargic regardless of my weight so I couldn’t handle the extra weight. Literally doctors told me that my weight was healthy. My bmi must have been twice what it is now at 135 LBs. I had chronic knee pain. But because I was “so tiny!” and “not fat just have a cute little double chin!” Because I wasn’t “fat” in other people’s perceptions I was ignored when I complained that my weight bothered me. I eventually lost the weight through vigorous exercise, 90 minutes a day on a bike. (and in hindsight was really over working myself) I still don’t know if that is the cause because due to neglect, poverty and financial abuse I still haven’t received any consistent medical care, my hair became and remains dramatically thinner than during childhood and early adolescence and I have a number of health issues that I don’t recall having before I lost the weight. End rant.
I lost my ovary because of my weight. When I was in college, I was walking to class with my friend, (and carrying about 60+ pounds worth of art supplies), and I felt a hard and painful *pop* in my lower abdomen. I dropped to the ground and was rushed to the campus urgent care, where they told me it was probably a hernia and needed to see my doctor. Now, I’m not exactly skinny. I’m 4'11 and over 160 pounds. Besides fibromyalgia, physically I’m relatively healthy. I went to my physician, a little beanpole of a woman, who, to my every complaint replied “it’s constipation. You need to lose weight and you’ll be more regular.” Well, for two years I kept getting the same response. The same pain, in the same place. Finally one day at work it got so bad that I collapsed on the floor crying in the middle of a breakfast rush. I had to actually get angry and raise my voice before my doctor would send me for scans, and she said “maybe it’s appendicitis.” After getting an MRI, it was discovered that I had a tumor in my ovary that had been there since I was born but started growing when I reached adulthood. In the past two years it had been growing and destroying my ovary. If it had been dealt with when it first presented, They would have been able to save my ovary and since the tumor wouldn’t have been so huge, the surgery wouldn’t have been so invasive and my recovery would have been much shorter and much less painful. But since I was overweight, my doctor just assumed that it could be solved with exercise and a better diet. (Which I had already been working on.) TL:DR because I’m fat, my doctor ignored my unrelated health problems so now I’m less likely to have children.
I was refused birth control by my doctor because of my weight. She essentially told me that she wouldn’t trust me to take the pills on a regular schedule unless I lost a significant amount of weight and proved to her that I had the discipline for it.
When I had my gallbladder problems which I lived with undiagnosed for 5 months, (mix of genetics and the Yasmin I was taking. The Yasmin just sped things along) I had an attack that left me weak and unable to breathe properly. So I was rushed to the hospital. Not only was I asked with serious lack of caring if I was in labour.. When I said no, she took her sweet time checking me in and then handed me that god awful heartburn shit that they give people. I nearly puked it up.
When I finally got to see the ER doctor she was more interested with taking a phone call from another hospital then treating me. When she finally did take a moment to “treat” me it was two slaps on the back declared I didn’t have a kidney infection, and that it was acid reflux and my back injury I got from a 40lbs box of chickens falling on me at an old job. With a thinly veiled comment to lose weight my problems would go away.
Saw my GP the next day and he could feel something poking through my ribs and set me up for an emergency ultrasound.
On the way home I had another attack and my mom just thought I was hungry, since I hadn’t eaten in days. Are two grapes puked them back up pretty much right then and there. She called the doctor office and they told her to take me in and that they were phoning to let the hospital know I was coming. When I finally saw the second doctor (7ish hours after I arrived at the ER) he did lab work and found I had a failing liver.
I had an ultra sound the next day and found out that I had gallstones, pancreatitis that was days away from going septic and because of that a failing liver.
Lucky me got surgery four days after everything was said and done, but that first doctor in the ER could have killed me. I’m glad I didn’t believe her that my problem was weight related.
Doctors blaming all my issues on my weight instead of checking and treating my (turns out) severe autoimmune hypothyroidism (which, wow, was contributing to my weight) meant that I had to have a complete thyroidectomy and follow-up radiation treatment because the damage and hypertrophy in my thyroid had turned into a massive blob of thyroid cancer that was compressing my trachea.
Now I may or may not have lymphoma and will have to be on daily medication and a kidney-pummeling amount of calcium for the rest of my life! Thanks, medical establishment.
Thanks to my old Dr, it was 5 years before I was diagnosed with my autoimmune disease! Everything was because I was fat! Broke a toe stubbing it on a wooden stair, it’s because of my fat.
The constant chronic pain/inflammation all due to my weight
My depression, anxiety and compulsive behaviors are all due to my fat as well
Migraines? Fat
Insomnia? Fatty fat
Anxiety? FAT
Every cold or bout of pneumonia FAT
Gynecological pain? WAY TOO FATThankfully I have a new Dr and he *listens* to me.
I have Fibromyalgia.
I have Akylosing Spondylitis
I have a rheumatologist
I have a pain management specialist
I have a gynecologist
I have a urologist
A fantastic Dr who listens to me, right away.Me: Both my legs hurt. I can’t walk normally.
Doctor: Ok but you have diabetes because fat
Me: I don’t have diabetes. I don’t even have pre-diabetes. Look, here’s my bloodwork. My a1c is so normal it could ski the Bell Curve.
Doctor: Ok but diabetes.
Me: No.
Doctor: Ok but you should lose weight because your big fat ass is causing mechanical issues in your legs.
Me: … that seems fake, but okay. I’ll do what you say.
Me: Hey doc, I can’t lose weight because I CANNOT WALK OR EXERCISE AT ALL. It’s been 2 years. I can’t go to the bathroom on my own anymore.
Doc: How about I do another MRI on your ankles?
@adhocavenger: Fuck this asshole. Let’s go to another doctor.
Doctor Kate: … this is nerve pain. Maybe you have a compressed disc pressing on your spine. Let’s MRI your spine.
Me: Ok.
Doctor Kate: … uhhhhhh, you have a tumor the size of a large grape inside your spine; it’s compressing your spinal cord and that’s why your everything hurts. Good thing we caught it before it destroyed your spine and left you paralyzed entirely.
Me: … so it isn’t because I’m fat?
Doctor Kate: … fat doesn’t make tumors inside your spine. That doctor is stupid and I will call him and tell his office to never call you again, because he is a jerk. But not being able to move probably caused you to not be able to lose weight like he demanded.
Me: Oh. Okay.
So… yeah.
fat hatred kills, fat people aren’t a protected class under any legislation in my state, which means MDs could legally say, ‘I don’t treat fat people’, with no legal consequence, but they don’t, they fake-treat fat people, take fees from us to deliver the same deep medical insights, we can get for free by reading the cover of Cosmo Magazine, and that bullshit delays/prevents fat people, from getting actual medical treatment, it’s a swindle, and it kills people, but hey, the docs get paid, and they’re only hurting fat people, nbd. (via welkinalauda)
There’s a small but growing number of doctors who do refuse to see fat people.
Not to mention health insurance companies that are starting to sneakily list being overweight as a “preexisting condition” and refusing to cover people they deem “too big”.
Under the new laws, they can no longer refuse insurance to people for having pre-existing conditions. They can penalize the fuck out of you, though.
So I went to the doctor yesterday because I’d been sick for five days. And that was fine, diagnosed and dealt with, no problem. But I also had some blood work come back that I’d gotten done recently (hormones because I have PCOS).
It turns out my doctor had also ordered a hemoglobin A1C test (which tests your blood glucose levels over time). We had not discussed this test and I didn’t ask for it. My numbers were totally normal at my last physical, so there was no reason to run it again at this time.
So. The doctor looks at my results, tells me my hormones look good (yay, great). And then. “And you don’t have diabetes anymore!” Except I have never had diabetes at any time, not even pre-diabetes. My glucose tests have always been good.
I have seen this doctor probably 4-5 times a year for over two years. Not only can’t she remember my general health status (which I would understand, she has a lot of patients) but she also can’t be bothered to look at my records where all of my perfectly normal blood tests are readily available to her. Instead, she just looks at me and decides I have diabetes, despite all of her own diagnostic results to the contrary. So gee, I wonder why she thought she should test me for diabetes.
Thin privilege is not being diagnosed with a condition you don’t have based solely on your body type - even when other information is available.
“..risk of early death was higher in fit obese individuals than in unfit normal-weight individuals.”
I tried to find out if this had been discussed in the archives yet, but I did not see it.
Someone threw this at me to ‘prove’ that I am SO WRONG and hypocritical for being a fat paramedic. I did not have an immediate refutation, and I feel horrible.
Current mood: Mad as hell because apparently fat people can’t get breast reductions. Are you fucking kidding me? I have giant fat sacks on my chest that makes me physically uncapable of wearing anything else than sports bras. And even sports bras don’t give the necessary support for pain-free exercise. Really? I don’t care about the bad scarring or shit like that, just God dammit I want to not be in pain! Apparently they want me, who cannot exercise pain-free, to lose weight, through exercise, before I can get smaller boobs? Like what the fuck? And even remove boobs from the equation and I have asthma and fatigue, which again, makes exercise really inconvenient and possibly dangerous.
So my choices right now are get weight loss surgery, which they can apparently do even though I’m too fat to have my boobs chopped off, or have my back and neck messed up forever. Wow, thank you doctors! Chopping up my organs is 200% a-okay but removing breast tissue and fat is apparently oh-so dangerous! The logic is weak in this one.
DUDE this article is from 2013. THREE YEARS AGO the New York Times published the results of a study that said that obesity’s relatively high “morbidity” is essentially a fabrication. Pass this along as proof to the fatphobic assholes that fat bodies aren’t in and of themselves health risks.
If you know how people (doctors) treat fat patients you know they just get sicker from not being treated for what they have. Which would exacerbate any statistics that exist on supposed ~links between weight + mortality. (Just as a thought.)
(via clatterbane)
OCD can be cured by weight loss!
i should never underestimate a medical doctor’s ability to make me feel worse about myself and my life in a significant way.
on tuesday, i had a psychiatric appointment that was a follow up to re-evaluate my anxiety disorders (OCD, social phobia, GAD, panic disorder) and depression (atypical recurrent MDD), neither of which are well-maintained.
the psychiatrist spent twenty minutes (the majority of the appointment) interrogating me about my weight and health status despite me trying to change the subject and reminding him that i do have a GP who i am currently seeing who takes care of issues such as whether or not my fucking knees and hips hurt and blood test results. he also asks me to go through what i ate in the past three days and became incredulous once my panic started increasing and I told him I couldn’t remember what I ate on saturday and sunday (which i honestly couldn’t). additionally, he asks about my exercise habits and doesn’t seem to be satisfied with what i say but doesn’t fight me on it.
he tells me that being fat makes you depressed and anxious. asks me if I want to see a nutritionist. inquires about my past eating disorders and treatment. seems miffed by me stating that i’ve seen the nutritionist at this institution and did not think that it would be presently helpful to see her again.
at this point, i’ve sunk into my seat, i’m feeling humiliated and defeated. i’m giving one word answers and don’t even know how to respond at all to some of these things, and i’ve started dissociating. he briefly addresses my mental health.
on the way out, as an afterthought, he asks me if i’m feeling suicidal. i just look at him. if i hadn’t felt suicidal before this appointment, i certainly now felt suicidal walking out.
overall, an extremely disheartening experience at best. i walked out of there feeling ashamed of myself and my body. i’ve also been questioning whether i should probably stop tapering off my remaining meds because apparently i don’t need them.
i’ve been left with that familiar fear that the the problem is and has always been solely my attitude, laziness, and lack of self-control, and that’s the reason i have suffered from extreme anxiety and depression and whatever else my entire life.
that medical professionals truly believe that if i only worked harder and dedicated my time to losing weight that i might be cured of my anxiety and depression. that i don’t have any real biological/neurological issues and its purely mind over matter and the solution is to lose weight as fast as possible, any way possible.
it has occurred to me on many occasions that the way people, and especially medical professionals, treat me has deteriorated as my weight increased. the only way i can justify this is that in their mind, being overweight/obese is a moral failing, a result of bad habits, lack of willpower, and that encouraging weight loss/glorifying thinness takes precedence over respectful and adequate treatment.
i KNOW my depression and anxiety are not a result of my BMI. otherwise, my mental health would have improved as my weight had gone down in the past and vice versa. as my weight has fluctuated drastically throughout the years, this has not been true. i wish i didn’t feel like i have to starve myself to be treated with respect. i KNOW that diet and exercise plays a big role in maintaining a healthy lifestyle – and factors in both mentally and physically, but that’s not whats going on here. it sucks.
i’m feeling like garbage. at the moment, i’m ready to give up on it all.
Unsure what to do…
tw: weight loss talk, mention of body weight, weight loss surgery
I recently had an appointment with an endocrinologist after more than 1,5 years of feeling terrible, sweating like crazy, being lethargic, having heart palpitations at the smallest physical exertion, significant weight gain that began after those other symptoms (20-30 lbs).. it was horrible feeling so incapable. I could hardly go to work. At first, the doctors didn’t take me seriously because I was fat to begin with and also, I was grieving a family member. I thought it might be the thyroid or estrogen deficiency, so I went back to the doctors over and over. They finally took some blood. Thyroid was normal, but the thyroid stimulating hormone was a bit high. Allergy proteins were high. Estrogen etc. normal. Nobody could figure it out.
Waited for MONTHS for an appointment with an unhelpful cardiologist (“well, you’re fat, so…”) and I normal ECG and stress ECG and then finally the endocrinologist, who, before testing anything or taking any blood etc, asked me if I had considered bariatric surgery. WTF? No. “Just in case we don’t find anything. You could lose 20 pounds!” (That would be less than 10 % of my weight, so it wouldn’t change my body significantly, even if I were on board with it, which I am SO not). I asked if it doesn’t harm your intestinal tract (which I learned it does, on here), and he’s all “Well, you can’t process vit b12 or other stuff from food anymore afterwards, and you’ll have a much higher risk of osteoporosis (when I already have a mobility-reducing disability), but .. there’s always a give and take!”
Then he did another thyroid ultrasound (it was normal), took blood and did a glucose test to see if I had insulin resistance.
I had very low Vitamin D, which he didn’t comment on, and a slight insulin resistance (18 mg when 15 is “normal” lab standard). He wants to give me metformin and asked me to make another appointment.
I am unsure because he seemed to be 100 % weight loss-oriented, when I explicitly told him that I don’t care about weight, I just want to feel like I used to, i.e. not horrible.
I took Vitamin D and was feeling significantly better physically and mentally.
A GP I saw who no longer prescribes weight loss because he said it harmed his patients says he doesn’t recommend metformin so early on. He said other doctors want to give it early because they are convinced it will “stave off” the development of Diabetes type 2.
Does anyone have experiences with this? Should I try metformin? Are there drawbacks? I researched it online and it looks ok, but I found nothing about long-term effects. I don’t know if I am harming myself by doing nothing, or whether I am too vulnerable to “you’re gonna die, fattie!”- hooey, because I’m worried. Nobody in my family has experience that could be helpful.
Thank you.
Please make anon
I’m on metformin (for PCOS, didn’t have general insulin problems when I started). For me, there haven’t been any side effects (stuff like stomach pain, headaches, etc), but I did use it to up my sugar intake (I didn’t feel so odd after eating sweets) and my glucose levels have gotten worse over time. So that maybe wasn’t great, but I also shouldn’t have done that.
Apparently it can reduce the change of getting diabetes (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2669003/). I also saw a study where people on metformin lived an extra 7 years when corrected for other things, so there’s that? (but it is a study, so who knows how accurate it is.) That area of research seems to have proliferated, so I can’t find the original paper quickly.
Unsure what to do…
tw: weight loss talk, mention of body weight, weight loss surgery
I recently had an appointment with an endocrinologist after more than 1,5 years of feeling terrible, sweating like crazy, being lethargic, having heart palpitations at the smallest physical exertion, significant weight gain that began after those other symptoms (20-30 lbs).. it was horrible feeling so incapable. I could hardly go to work. At first, the doctors didn’t take me seriously because I was fat to begin with and also, I was grieving a family member. I thought it might be the thyroid or estrogen deficiency, so I went back to the doctors over and over. They finally took some blood. Thyroid was normal, but the thyroid stimulating hormone was a bit high. Allergy proteins were high. Estrogen etc. normal. Nobody could figure it out.
Waited for MONTHS for an appointment with an unhelpful cardiologist (“well, you’re fat, so…”) and I normal ECG and stress ECG and then finally the endocrinologist, who, before testing anything or taking any blood etc, asked me if I had considered bariatric surgery. WTF? No. “Just in case we don’t find anything. You could lose 20 pounds!” (That would be less than 10 % of my weight, so it wouldn’t change my body significantly, even if I were on board with it, which I am SO not). I asked if it doesn’t harm your intestinal tract (which I learned it does, on here), and he’s all “Well, you can’t process vit b12 or other stuff from food anymore afterwards, and you’ll have a much higher risk of osteoporosis (when I already have a mobility-reducing disability), but .. there’s always a give and take!”
Then he did another thyroid ultrasound (it was normal), took blood and did a glucose test to see if I had insulin resistance.
I had very low Vitamin D, which he didn’t comment on, and a slight insulin resistance (18 mg when 15 is “normal” lab standard). He wants to give me metformin and asked me to make another appointment.
I am unsure because he seemed to be 100 % weight loss-oriented, when I explicitly told him that I don’t care about weight, I just want to feel like I used to, i.e. not horrible.
I took Vitamin D and was feeling significantly better physically and mentally.
A GP I saw who no longer prescribes weight loss because he said it harmed his patients says he doesn’t recommend metformin so early on. He said other doctors want to give it early because they are convinced it will “stave off” the development of Diabetes type 2.
Does anyone have experiences with this? Should I try metformin? Are there drawbacks? I researched it online and it looks ok, but I found nothing about long-term effects. I don’t know if I am harming myself by doing nothing, or whether I am too vulnerable to “you’re gonna die, fattie!”- hooey, because I’m worried. Nobody in my family has experience that could be helpful.
Thank you.
Please make anon
A doctor put me on metformin because I was close to being almost insulin-resistant. The side effects were awful on me.
New doctor. Found out I have Fructose Malapsorption (can only process very small amounts of fructose) and removing most fructose from my diet has cleared up my blood-sugar.
So yeah, second opinions from doctors willing to explore more possibilities are absolutely the way to go if you can.
I was also put on metformin (and am still on it) but wouldn’t take it until I heard a second opinion, then a third just to be sure. Since being on it I’ve had the opposite happen. It has helped me a lot, it has helped balance out my insulin levels, and I only had side effects the first two days on it and haven’t had any side effects since.
This med definitely is not for everyone and I also encourage a second and even third opinion before making a decision to go on any med.
Unsure what to do…
tw: weight loss talk, mention of body weight, weight loss surgery
I recently had an appointment with an endocrinologist after more than 1,5 years of feeling terrible, sweating like crazy, being lethargic, having heart palpitations at the smallest physical exertion, significant weight gain that began after those other symptoms (20-30 lbs).. it was horrible feeling so incapable. I could hardly go to work. At first, the doctors didn’t take me seriously because I was fat to begin with and also, I was grieving a family member. I thought it might be the thyroid or estrogen deficiency, so I went back to the doctors over and over. They finally took some blood. Thyroid was normal, but the thyroid stimulating hormone was a bit high. Allergy proteins were high. Estrogen etc. normal. Nobody could figure it out.
Waited for MONTHS for an appointment with an unhelpful cardiologist (“well, you’re fat, so…”) and I normal ECG and stress ECG and then finally the endocrinologist, who, before testing anything or taking any blood etc, asked me if I had considered bariatric surgery. WTF? No. “Just in case we don’t find anything. You could lose 20 pounds!” (That would be less than 10 % of my weight, so it wouldn’t change my body significantly, even if I were on board with it, which I am SO not). I asked if it doesn’t harm your intestinal tract (which I learned it does, on here), and he’s all “Well, you can’t process vit b12 or other stuff from food anymore afterwards, and you’ll have a much higher risk of osteoporosis (when I already have a mobility-reducing disability), but .. there’s always a give and take!”
Then he did another thyroid ultrasound (it was normal), took blood and did a glucose test to see if I had insulin resistance.
I had very low Vitamin D, which he didn’t comment on, and a slight insulin resistance (18 mg when 15 is “normal” lab standard). He wants to give me metformin and asked me to make another appointment.
I am unsure because he seemed to be 100 % weight loss-oriented, when I explicitly told him that I don’t care about weight, I just want to feel like I used to, i.e. not horrible.
I took Vitamin D and was feeling significantly better physically and mentally.
A GP I saw who no longer prescribes weight loss because he said it harmed his patients says he doesn’t recommend metformin so early on. He said other doctors want to give it early because they are convinced it will “stave off” the development of Diabetes type 2.
Does anyone have experiences with this? Should I try metformin? Are there drawbacks? I researched it online and it looks ok, but I found nothing about long-term effects. I don’t know if I am harming myself by doing nothing, or whether I am too vulnerable to “you’re gonna die, fattie!”- hooey, because I’m worried. Nobody in my family has experience that could be helpful.
Thank you.
Please make anon
A doctor put me on metformin because I was close to being almost insulin-resistant. The side effects were awful on me.
New doctor. Found out I have Fructose Malapsorption (can only process very small amounts of fructose) and removing most fructose from my diet has cleared up my blood-sugar.
So yeah, second opinions from doctors willing to explore more possibilities are absolutely the way to go if you can.
Unsure what to do…
tw: weight loss talk, mention of body weight, weight loss surgery
I recently had an appointment with an endocrinologist after more than 1,5 years of feeling terrible, sweating like crazy, being lethargic, having heart palpitations at the smallest physical exertion, significant weight gain that began after those other symptoms (20-30 lbs).. it was horrible feeling so incapable. I could hardly go to work. At first, the doctors didn’t take me seriously because I was fat to begin with and also, I was grieving a family member. I thought it might be the thyroid or estrogen deficiency, so I went back to the doctors over and over. They finally took some blood. Thyroid was normal, but the thyroid stimulating hormone was a bit high. Allergy proteins were high. Estrogen etc. normal. Nobody could figure it out.
Waited for MONTHS for an appointment with an unhelpful cardiologist (“well, you’re fat, so…”) and I normal ECG and stress ECG and then finally the endocrinologist, who, before testing anything or taking any blood etc, asked me if I had considered bariatric surgery. WTF? No. “Just in case we don’t find anything. You could lose 20 pounds!” (That would be less than 10 % of my weight, so it wouldn’t change my body significantly, even if I were on board with it, which I am SO not). I asked if it doesn’t harm your intestinal tract (which I learned it does, on here), and he’s all “Well, you can’t process vit b12 or other stuff from food anymore afterwards, and you’ll have a much higher risk of osteoporosis (when I already have a mobility-reducing disability), but .. there’s always a give and take!”
Then he did another thyroid ultrasound (it was normal), took blood and did a glucose test to see if I had insulin resistance.
I had very low Vitamin D, which he didn’t comment on, and a slight insulin resistance (18 mg when 15 is “normal” lab standard). He wants to give me metformin and asked me to make another appointment.
I am unsure because he seemed to be 100 % weight loss-oriented, when I explicitly told him that I don’t care about weight, I just want to feel like I used to, i.e. not horrible.
I took Vitamin D and was feeling significantly better physically and mentally.
A GP I saw who no longer prescribes weight loss because he said it harmed his patients says he doesn’t recommend metformin so early on. He said other doctors want to give it early because they are convinced it will “stave off” the development of Diabetes type 2.
Does anyone have experiences with this? Should I try metformin? Are there drawbacks? I researched it online and it looks ok, but I found nothing about long-term effects. I don’t know if I am harming myself by doing nothing, or whether I am too vulnerable to “you’re gonna die, fattie!”- hooey, because I’m worried. Nobody in my family has experience that could be helpful.
Thank you.
Please make anon
There is some evidence that treating insulin resistance early on can make a difference in whether or not someone develops Type II Diabetes and/or when that might happen. I would ask to do a fasting glucose challenge (if you haven’t) and/or an A1C test. The A1C gives you the average of your blood glucose levels over the past three months- it’ll tell you if you are processing insulin properly at the moment whether or not you are slightly resistant. I would want to know that before I started the metformin because low blood sugar can be a side effect and that is not a side effect that it is possible to work around.
There are also ways to deal with mild insulin resistance without medication. It does involve diet and exercise (but not weight loss, although it can happen if your body starts processing insulin better). And exercise = 30 minutes of activity a day. It doesn’t even have to be difficult- walking works really well. So, we’re not talking about two hours in the gym every day or anything. If you’re leery of the medication, I might try this route first. But you do want to do something, because it does matter for Future You.
Unsure what to do…
tw: weight loss talk, mention of body weight, weight loss surgery
I recently had an appointment with an endocrinologist after more than 1,5 years of feeling terrible, sweating like crazy, being lethargic, having heart palpitations at the smallest physical exertion, significant weight gain that began after those other symptoms (20-30 lbs).. it was horrible feeling so incapable. I could hardly go to work. At first, the doctors didn’t take me seriously because I was fat to begin with and also, I was grieving a family member. I thought it might be the thyroid or estrogen deficiency, so I went back to the doctors over and over. They finally took some blood. Thyroid was normal, but the thyroid stimulating hormone was a bit high. Allergy proteins were high. Estrogen etc. normal. Nobody could figure it out.
Waited for MONTHS for an appointment with an unhelpful cardiologist (“well, you’re fat, so…”) and I normal ECG and stress ECG and then finally the endocrinologist, who, before testing anything or taking any blood etc, asked me if I had considered bariatric surgery. WTF? No. “Just in case we don’t find anything. You could lose 20 pounds!” (That would be less than 10 % of my weight, so it wouldn’t change my body significantly, even if I were on board with it, which I am SO not). I asked if it doesn’t harm your intestinal tract (which I learned it does, on here), and he’s all “Well, you can’t process vit b12 or other stuff from food anymore afterwards, and you’ll have a much higher risk of osteoporosis (when I already have a mobility-reducing disability), but .. there’s always a give and take!”
Then he did another thyroid ultrasound (it was normal), took blood and did a glucose test to see if I had insulin resistance.
I had very low Vitamin D, which he didn’t comment on, and a slight insulin resistance (18 mg when 15 is “normal” lab standard). He wants to give me metformin and asked me to make another appointment.
I am unsure because he seemed to be 100 % weight loss-oriented, when I explicitly told him that I don’t care about weight, I just want to feel like I used to, i.e. not horrible.
I took Vitamin D and was feeling significantly better physically and mentally.
A GP I saw who no longer prescribes weight loss because he said it harmed his patients says he doesn’t recommend metformin so early on. He said other doctors want to give it early because they are convinced it will “stave off” the development of Diabetes type 2.
Does anyone have experiences with this? Should I try metformin? Are there drawbacks? I researched it online and it looks ok, but I found nothing about long-term effects. I don’t know if I am harming myself by doing nothing, or whether I am too vulnerable to “you’re gonna die, fattie!”- hooey, because I’m worried. Nobody in my family has experience that could be helpful.
Thank you.
Please make anon
Just my own experience but I was on metformin (glucophage is either the brand or generic name) for a few years and it basically did nothing except make my stomach hurt now and then. I have friends with PCOS for whom metformin was amazing and super helpful… But it doesn’t sound like you have pcos? I was misdiagnosed with it because I was exhausted, fat, hairy, and couldn’t lose weight. It turns out I’m just a hairy lady like everyone else in my family, and have Celiac’s which was wrecking my system so… Yeah. I went to five or six endos before I found one I didn’t hate, so it can be really hard to find a good doc! I have hashimotos thyroiditis tho, so I was in synthroid for a while till it went into remission. An endo who recc’d bariatric surgery is NOT someone you want treating you, though! Please ask your good GP for a recc, and be honest and open about needing a fat positive doc! Good luck!
Unsure what to do…
tw: weight loss talk, mention of body weight, weight loss surgery
I recently had an appointment with an endocrinologist after more than 1,5 years of feeling terrible, sweating like crazy, being lethargic, having heart palpitations at the smallest physical exertion, significant weight gain that began after those other symptoms (20-30 lbs).. it was horrible feeling so incapable. I could hardly go to work. At first, the doctors didn’t take me seriously because I was fat to begin with and also, I was grieving a family member. I thought it might be the thyroid or estrogen deficiency, so I went back to the doctors over and over. They finally took some blood. Thyroid was normal, but the thyroid stimulating hormone was a bit high. Allergy proteins were high. Estrogen etc. normal. Nobody could figure it out.
Waited for MONTHS for an appointment with an unhelpful cardiologist (“well, you’re fat, so…”) and I normal ECG and stress ECG and then finally the endocrinologist, who, before testing anything or taking any blood etc, asked me if I had considered bariatric surgery. WTF? No. “Just in case we don’t find anything. You could lose 20 pounds!” (That would be less than 10 % of my weight, so it wouldn’t change my body significantly, even if I were on board with it, which I am SO not). I asked if it doesn’t harm your intestinal tract (which I learned it does, on here), and he’s all “Well, you can’t process vit b12 or other stuff from food anymore afterwards, and you’ll have a much higher risk of osteoporosis (when I already have a mobility-reducing disability), but .. there’s always a give and take!”
Then he did another thyroid ultrasound (it was normal), took blood and did a glucose test to see if I had insulin resistance.
I had very low Vitamin D, which he didn’t comment on, and a slight insulin resistance (18 mg when 15 is “normal” lab standard). He wants to give me metformin and asked me to make another appointment.
I am unsure because he seemed to be 100 % weight loss-oriented, when I explicitly told him that I don’t care about weight, I just want to feel like I used to, i.e. not horrible.
I took Vitamin D and was feeling significantly better physically and mentally.
A GP I saw who no longer prescribes weight loss because he said it harmed his patients says he doesn’t recommend metformin so early on. He said other doctors want to give it early because they are convinced it will “stave off” the development of Diabetes type 2.
Does anyone have experiences with this? Should I try metformin? Are there drawbacks? I researched it online and it looks ok, but I found nothing about long-term effects. I don’t know if I am harming myself by doing nothing, or whether I am too vulnerable to “you’re gonna die, fattie!”- hooey, because I’m worried. Nobody in my family has experience that could be helpful.
Thank you.
Please make anon