The real reason being overweight is bad for your health:

[hedgehog]

if you are overweight, the default diagnosis for any problem you are having is that you are overweight and the problem will go away if you lose weight.

[Aristus]

1. Or, in the real world, obesity exacerbates already existing conditions.

Like hypertension, or diabetes.

Obesity exacerbates diabetes, especially for anyone in whom obesity manifests as central adiposity - carrying the majority of the excess weight in the lower abdomen. Adipose tissue secretes a hormone called resistin, which, as the name suggests, increases insulin resistance in target cells, cells that use glucose for energy. Even tiny amounts of adipose tissue secret resistin, but if a person has a low body-fat measurement, the presence of resistin is clinically insignificant. But in the aggregate, as with obese patients, the levels of resistin can worsen already existing diabetes.

The focus of my practice is primarily internal medicine. But obesity can contribute to, and exacerbate, musculoskeletal complaints, too.

[hedgehog]

8. You're right - obesity does cause a lot of problems - my foot pain went away when I

lost weight. My post was inspired by someone asking about reflux. All too often, reflux is considered a problem of obesity, but it can have other causes.

[Aristus]

14. I deal with potential causes of reflux every day.

It's yet another condition like the ones mentioned above which obesity may not necessarily cause, but can certainly make worse.

[Schema Thing]

15. I am only just slightly overweight, but I do get in a rut sometimes

wherein I overeat, constantly.


And then I have reflux in the middle of the night. Awful.


I find that I can make that stop happening very quickly by simply cutting my calories in approx half. And as it turns out, that's usually plenty to provide me with the (more) energy I will then have to function well.

Other people's mileage may (probably will) vary.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

16. a shot of raw apple cider vinegar will kill your heartburn.

just hold yer nose and shoot it down.

[Schema Thing]

17. hmm, my technique seems infinitely better for overall health

not that apple cider vinegar isn't good stuff.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

18. both good :)

I try to do a shot every day, but I have to admit that I usually don't remember. I get heartburn about once a year... that's when I remember, lol.

[laundry_queen]

27. I have reflux and stomach problems

and I'm obese. I've had many doctors disregard my symptoms (which are quite severe) tell me to lose weight to fix the symptoms. My current doctor, when I said, "aren't you going to tell me to lose weight?" he said, "it doesn't always help anyway, better to treat the problem as it is right now."

Good, I thought, because my mom, who has all the same problems as me with GERD and gastritis, is nearly underweight (very low side of normal, her doctor wants her to gain a bit). Stomach problems just tend to run in my mom' side of the family, whether someone is overweight or not (most in our family are not).

In my case, my stomach problems likely partially caused my obesity, because I have severe stomach pain whenever my stomach is empty. I don't get 'hunger pangs' I get severe cramping that takes my breath away. Eating cures it. So I eat to make sure my stomach has something in it. Raw veggies aren't substantial enough to make the pain stop so it has to be something more substantial. My current gastroenterologist told me it happens with some patients who have had multiple abdominal surgeries (I have) because it can cause scar tissue around the stomach which can irritate the nerves connected to the stomach, causing pain for obscure reasons. I just have to learn to live with it, apparently.

[marion30220]

36. to much oil

working at the refinery in buffalo makes you fat, working all those round robins and eating at 3 J's did it trying to get in contact with hedgehog anybody know how?

[hedgehog]

38. ?

You could e-mail me here at DU

[Loudly]

2. The morbidity matrix for obesity is pretty impressive.

But do you feel it's being scapegoated for something truly unrelated?

[hedgehog]

4. What I've seen is that issues that could have other, unrelated causes

are attributed solely to being overweight. It results in the patient not getting proper treatment and being made to feel guilty about being sick.

In my case - the series of symptoms of my autoimmune disease were attributed to me being overweight. I've lost the weight, but not the symptoms. I now believe that the autoimmune disorder so screwed up my digestion that it was a major cause for my weight gain in the first place! (It's hard to judge how much to eat when your digestion is so slow that your blood sugar is dropping and making you feel hungry even though your stomach is still full!)

[Loudly]

9. What is the name for what you have?

[hedgehog]

12. Sjogren's

[HockeyMom]

3. Could obesity be a cause of this?

http://www.theindychannel.com/news/u-s-world/study-2-percent-of-americans-have-new-hips-knees_47343143

I am 65. I do not remember my parents, grandparents, even my great-grandma (lived to be 96), walking with a cane, complaining of joint pain, or being in a wheelchair. No, not even my great-grandma.

However, none of them were obese, or actually even overweight.

[whatthehey]

5. Could it be the reverse

I know my exercise regimen became a bit less vigorous when I became crippled.

[mythology]

21. I say they are reinforcing

You don't exercise, so you gain a little weight, so exercising is harder on the joints, so you don't exercise, rinse repeat.

But speaking as somebody who has genetically poor knee health, you can still get out and get exercise. I do four things that are relatively high impact on the knees and while I do spend a lot of quality time cuddled up with ice packs, I'd rather do that than not do the things I enjoy.

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. i will get a knee, I have known this for decades,

was told this by the doctor when I was fifteen. In fact, two knees likely.

It is not obesity, it is literally a bad knee. So far three surgeries on one, and one on the other.


I skated away from a fourth one, but by this much.

So not all knee replacements are due to obesity, though that does not make things better.

I will add one more thing, back in the day knee and hip replacements were kind of non existent. Hell, the surgeries I got at seven and eight years of age were not quite experimental, but not that far from that.

[laundry_queen]

25. A lot of that is overuse injuries

from the current push for competitive sports in younger and younger kids. I'm in university (as a mature student) and the kids in my class that are right out of high school...so many of them are having multiple knee surgeries it's crazy. All from competitive sports.

I think obesity is more likely a result of painful joints and not the cause of them.

My dad is slim and has been all of his life, except for a few years right after he met my mom. he's always been super athletic. He played hockey for years, mostly as a goalie. Because goalies were always in high demand, he played nearly 5 days a week for many years, from the time he was 18. He also was fanatical about playing baseball. All of those butterfly stops and slides into home plate resulted in a need for a hip replacement at age 55.

I'm obese. I wasn't always obese though. I was extremely athletic as a teen. My knees completely wore out. I ended up with a disease in one knee and messed up ligaments in the other. I never did get surgery because it didn't exist back then. As I got older, it became more difficult to be athletic, because my knees were so insanely messed up. So, I gained weight. I also developed hip problems at age 16 when I was thin. I'm sure at some point I'll need a hip replacement.

My brother, also very athletic, has also dealt with serious overuse injuries that necessitated surgery. He has had multiple shoulder surgeries from being body checked in hockey along with being a baseball pitcher for years. He also has knee and hip issues.

None of my grandparents needed joint replacement surgery and they were all long-lived (1 grandmother made it to 85, 2 grandfathers made it to 97 and 102, 1 grandmother still alive and active at age 88). 2 were obese, 2 were not. None of them participated in sports. The only exercise they got was working on the farm (intense work, but not at the level of a competitive sport).

[Brickbat]

6. This.

[JNelson6563]

7. You make an important point!

Certainly a point of concern for anyone overweight & having health issues. So if you lose the weight and the symptoms remain then the condition has had all that time to worsen. *sigh*

Some days...

Julie

[Victor_c3]

10. I would say that most medical problems people experience are based on neglect of their body

in one form or another.

Coming from a former fat kid, it makes all of the difference in your life when you lose the weight. Every aspect from physical to mental and esteem issues improve.

I believe that a lot of medical issues can be mitigated or the severity of their symptoms lessened with a combination of exercise, reasonable eating habits, drinking enough water, and regular sleeping habits. It might not cure or prevent everything, but it will make everything else easier.

[treestar]

34. No there is genetics too

I feel strongly about this, coming from a family where the older generations were very judgmental of disease and illness - like feeling sick wasn't bad enough. They told me my uncle who had juvenile diabetes drank too many sugary sodas! The poor man lived with that kind of guilt over what we now know had nothing to do with it.

[Nye Bevan]

11. I think that only applies to conditions whose symptoms mimic those of obesity.

If someone goes to the doctor with headaches and fainting spells, or is coughing up blood, or has a suspicious mole, I don't think an obese person would be treated differently. But something like knee pain might be attributed to being overweight.

[librechik]

13. Have you been talking to doctors or your neighbors?

I don't know any doctors who are that simple-minded. Ordinary people are always making diagnoses the way you described. And they are full of shit, BTW...

[BrotherIvan]

19. Hypothyroidism

There is an unknown epidemic of hypothyroidism in developed countries. Why? Hypothyroid sufferers are prone to infectious diseases and have weak immune systems. Before the advent of antibiotics and other treatments, they succumbed to infectious diseases such as TB, pneumonia, or flus. In countries where TB was treated, there was a huge upsurge in heart disease, diabetes and cancer (all previously linked to hypothyroid) because they lived longer than before and were able to manifest the long-term symptoms.

These people had offspring where before they were removed from the gene pool. Now we have a rash of obesity, infertility and reproductive problems, joint and muscle pain, arthritis, acid reflux, sleep apnea, migraines, anxiety, depression, heart disease and cancer. Since the advent of the TSH and synthetic hormones, patients are not diagnosed and under treated. You can walk down the street or the mall and see untreated hypothyroids EVERYWHERE. It's as plain as day in puffy bodies and puffy faces. What we think of as fat or chubby people are all manifesting very clear symptoms of hypothyroid. And suffering a host of ailments all while they are shamed for being fat and lazy. It's too damn bad that the medical community has willfully allowed this to happen.

[laundry_queen]

26. My brother had symptoms for awhile

Like me, he had a super hard time losing weight. He had to starve himself, unlike his slim wife who could eat anything. They worked out together for hours, daily, but my brother still had a rough time losing weight. He asked a doctor about it, and the doctor poo-poo'ed him and told him diet and exercise was the way to lose weight (duh).

It took my brother passing out at work and whacking his head off his desk for anyone to take him seriously. Turns out he was so severely hypothyroid it was affecting his heart which caused him to lose consciousness. That's when they took him seriously. Now that he's on medication, he's feeling a lot better, and is able to eat a bit more as well.

I've had hypo symptoms for awhile, but all my tests come back normal...and luckily, because my brother has hypo and there might be a genetic component, I've had more than just my TSH tested. I wonder if I have some 'subclinical' issues, but as for now, not much I can do. They don't test or treat for that.

[BrotherIvan]

29. There is a lot of info out there

It is shameful how many people are suffering from a host of maladies, take a handful of expensive medication for strange unexplained symptoms, and doctors, in their infinite wisdom, are not able to look at underlying causes and see it is a systemic problem. High cholesterol is being treated inappropriately with statins to make pharma companies billions, when high cholesterol and heart problems are hallmarks of hypothyroidism. Infertility--my neighbor (who just looking at her you know she's hypothyroid and so is her brother) spent $30k in order to conceive. Now maybe there are other reasons, but treating a thyroid is incredibly inexpensive and easy. Get up to a high enough dose where the symptoms subside. Maybe that's why they don't do it.

And now, synthroid, the synthetic hormone which only treats half of the problem and is completely ineffective and often makes you worse. But it is the number three prescribed medicine and making billions and billions. I hope you are able to find a doctor who will prescribe the dessicated thyroid in sufficient doses to cure symptoms, not to the test. That is how they were successfully treating thyroid problems before the turn of the century up until the 70s. The pictures on the internet are astounding. There are also a lot of resources out there like "Stop the Thyroid Madness" and the Broda Barnes foundation. I hope you find good treatment because it could help you feel like you got your life back.

Like your brother, so many people have been super shamed as overeating and lazy. I do know people who have an awful diet and don't exercise a bit. Some are fat and some are skinny. But I have never known a person who works so hard at the gym, waking up before the crack of dawn and basically starving themselves on strict diets only to lose a pound here an there as an obese person trying to lose weight. The skinny fit people I know work hard, but more like a maintenance mode. They people bust their ass. They have so much effort and discipline and all they get is sneers from their family and their doctors. It's very sad.

[Jim Lane]

20. I'm glad to say that hasn't been my experience with doctors.

I've been told more than once that I should lose weight, but it's always been an aside, not relate to the diagnosis and treatment of whatever I was complaining of.

It's too bad that your health care providers have taken the lazy way out.

[lolly]

23. It fits with my experience

It's gotten so bad that I prefer to urgent care rather than the physician assigned at my HMO if anything is wrong.

The physicians at urgent care will actually look at my symptoms rather than just walk in and tell me I still haven't lost weight and blame almost anything on it.

Oddly, she won't increase my thyroid medicine, claiming my TSH levels are normal so that obviously couldn't be the problem.

Yeah, I know. I need to get a new doctor. Wish I knew how to find one that would be more open to the possibility that TSH levels aren't the be-all-and-end-all.

[hedgehog]

24. I have never heard of anyone complaining that their thyroid replacement dose is too high!

Thinking about it, it's possible this is another example of stopping at the first answer. If the thyroid is not functioning, there is a reason. Unfortunately, often the reason is the thyroid is under attack as an aspect of autoimmune disease. Many autoimmune conditions are associated with intractable fatigue. So the answer may be, yes, you still have no energy, but no, it's not your thyroid!

[BrotherIvan]

30. It's hard work but worth it to get treatment

Check out some of the resources on the internet to empower yourself. Doctors are no longer trained to diagnose and treat hypothyroidism. If you read a book by Mark Starr, Hypothyroidism Type 2: The Epidemic, he explains why the TSH test doesn't even measure your thyroid (TSH measures the "Thyroid Stimulating Hormone" which is an output of your pituitary gland, not how much hormone your thyroid is putting out) and why you can have "normal" tests and still be acutely hypothyroid.

I started reading these things to try to help my mother and it made me so damn mad. When I started dealing with her prescriptions, I found she had been taking Synthroid for years. I had taken her to a new, highly-touted endocrinologist for over a year who never said anything about it and did not test for it. Both of us didn't even know she was hypothyroid! The very high-priced doctor just rewrote the prescriptions from other doctors, said something inane for the two minutes in the office and billed the insurance company for a hefty fee. For the fifty doctors we visited over the course of five years, (which I always researched and tried to find the best in the Southern California area) I could say only about two were really good doctors. Doctors are for the most part prescription writing services. Some are woefully misinformed or incompetent. It is a lot of work to find good, appropriate care. Some people have much more luck with holistic or alternative doctors because they actually listen to you and care about bringing you to good health. They don't have the false crutch of pharmaceuticals and they can't order a million tests in order to perhaps land on a diagnosis because doctors no longer know how to diagnose properly, they just guess based on tests.

I wish you luck and hope your journey to getting help is not too difficult. It really is worth the effort. I wasn't able to help my mother in time, but I have spoken to many people who feel like they found a miracle once they started being treated correctly.

[lolly]

35. Thanks--

Yes, this sounds exactly like what I'm going through.

Brittle nails, cold all the time, sluggish, eating half of what I did 15 years ago and gaining weight...but TSH results never lie! My thyroid levels are managed just fine with the same dose I've been on for years!

But anything and everything is because I'm not trying hard enough to lose weight. Then she gives me advice straight out of the latest pop magazine for how to lose weight. Rude and clueless.

And, for the record, I'm not THAT overweight.

So, yeah, guess I'll get busy this summer and start looking for someone in my insurance network who will actually treat me instead of berate me.

[PasadenaTrudy]

28. Life is bad for your health....n/t

[joeglow3]

31. Just like those hack anti-smokers

They pretend like if you just quit smoking, all lung cancer will go away.

[treestar]

32. True, no matter what is wrong with you

it is attributed to your weight, yet there are thinner people with the same problem - how did they get it?

[MissMillie]

33. A lot of my health problems disappeared

when I lost a substantial amount of weight.

High blood pressure
Obstructive sleep apnea
plantar fasciitis
bursitis of the hip


It's not to say I don't get sick at all any more. But I'm at the doctor's office far less often than I used to be when I weighed 278 lbs.

[marion30220]

37. don't eat

Two ways to loose weight.

1.) Eat less.

2.) Work hard.

What more is there to say.

[antiquie]

39. There are many causes of obesity not related to over-eating.

A little research aided by a search engine will yield dozens of scientifically sound results.
I personally am a bit underweight, just so you know this is not posted in self-defense.