NYT: Is BMI a scam?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:BMI is a rough guideline - it is not a precise determiner, and isn't helpful for people who are physically active and likely have greater muscle mass.

LOL. People telling themselves that because they lope around the block or on a treadmill for 30 minutes every other day they likely have a greater muscle mass.

BMI isn't the end all and be all (most people already know if they are too skinny or too fat), but the muscle mass it takes to throw off the charts is not even obtainable by most desk jockeys.

Agree. The BMI heathy weight range is a pretty large span. Therefore, there is a lot of room for variance due to bone structure, muscle mass, ethnicity. If you are just over the border into "overweight" and not carrying a lot of belly fat, your Dr can see this and is unlikely to be concerned about your weight if you are otherwise healthy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have mixed feelings about this. I think all these things are true:

1) Doctors rely too much on obesity being the be all end all health problem source of a fat person and this results in bad care

2) For people in the 'normal' BMI category it can mask health problems unrelated to weight because they believe they are healthy

3) For people who are 36 BMI (like I was!) it can be a useful to be a really be a sure sign that you need to do something about it and for me personally I used the 'BMI doesn't matter' to blow past a lot of numbers I should have cared about.

So like it isn't the be all and end all but I think it has its uses.

It isn't so much that it results in bad care, but obesity IS just about the worst chronic health problem to have because it negatively affects nearly all of your other systems-over the long term. It puts strain on your heart, lungs, joints, builds fatty deposits around organs so they don't function as well, disrupts hormones, circulation, and on and on. Even something like a minor hemorrhoid is a lot harder to treat on an obese person. But harder to treat I mean the treatments approved for use are just not as effective- or in some cases- not effective at all due to obesity. What may seem like "bad care" is often that people can't get the therapeutic results they want due to the obesity.

You are showing how true #1 up there is. I had a friend sent home from the ER twice with a saddleback pulmonary embolism because the ER thought her being winded was due to her obesity. She survived, and she's lucky AF to have survived, because she kept going back. Your examples are about people who got diagnosis but for whom the obesity hinders treatment, but the truth is that many obese patients don't get diagnoses because their discomforts are blamed entirely on their weight. Fat people are frequently disregarded by doctor's when they try to discuss medical problems and frequently told to just lose weight to fix it.

I am not saying that obesity is not a health problem in and of itself that people should address, it is, but fat people should also get the same rigorous standard of care that other people get. They shouldn't have cancers go undetected and autoimmune diseases untested for because all of their problems are blamed on their weight.

Two things can be true at the same time, obesity is a condition that exacerbates poor health outcomes and should be faced and doctors do not provide the same level of care on the population level to obese patients.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have mixed feelings about this. I think all these things are true:

1) Doctors rely too much on obesity being the be all end all health problem source of a fat person and this results in bad care

2) For people in the 'normal' BMI category it can mask health problems unrelated to weight because they believe they are healthy

3) For people who are 36 BMI (like I was!) it can be a useful to be a really be a sure sign that you need to do something about it and for me personally I used the 'BMI doesn't matter' to blow past a lot of numbers I should have cared about.

So like it isn't the be all and end all but I think it has its uses.

It isn't so much that it results in bad care, but obesity IS just about the worst chronic health problem to have because it negatively affects nearly all of your other systems-over the long term. It puts strain on your heart, lungs, joints, builds fatty deposits around organs so they don't function as well, disrupts hormones, circulation, and on and on. Even something like a minor hemorrhoid is a lot harder to treat on an obese person. But harder to treat I mean the treatments approved for use are just not as effective- or in some cases- not effective at all due to obesity. What may seem like "bad care" is often that people can't get the therapeutic results they want due to the obesity.

You are showing how true #1 up there is. I had a friend sent home from the ER twice with a saddleback pulmonary embolism because the ER thought her being winded was due to her obesity. She survived, and she's lucky AF to have survived, because she kept going back. Your examples are about people who got diagnosis but for whom the obesity hinders treatment, but the truth is that many obese patients don't get diagnoses because their discomforts are blamed entirely on their weight. Fat people are frequently disregarded by doctor's when they try to discuss medical problems and frequently told to just lose weight to fix it.

I am not saying that obesity is not a health problem in and of itself that people should address, it is, but fat people should also get the same rigorous standard of care that other people get. They shouldn't have cancers go undetected and autoimmune diseases untested for because all of their problems are blamed on their weight.

Two things can be true at the same time, obesity is a condition that exacerbates poor health outcomes and should be faced and doctors do not provide the same level of care on the population level to obese patients.

DP. Currently the adult obesity rate in the US is 42.4%. While historically obese people may have been treated worse by doctors and nurses than normalweight people, now obese people are half the population. Obesity is normal now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have mixed feelings about this. I think all these things are true:

1) Doctors rely too much on obesity being the be all end all health problem source of a fat person and this results in bad care

2) For people in the 'normal' BMI category it can mask health problems unrelated to weight because they believe they are healthy

3) For people who are 36 BMI (like I was!) it can be a useful to be a really be a sure sign that you need to do something about it and for me personally I used the 'BMI doesn't matter' to blow past a lot of numbers I should have cared about.

So like it isn't the be all and end all but I think it has its uses.

It isn't so much that it results in bad care, but obesity IS just about the worst chronic health problem to have because it negatively affects nearly all of your other systems-over the long term. It puts strain on your heart, lungs, joints, builds fatty deposits around organs so they don't function as well, disrupts hormones, circulation, and on and on. Even something like a minor hemorrhoid is a lot harder to treat on an obese person. But harder to treat I mean the treatments approved for use are just not as effective- or in some cases- not effective at all due to obesity. What may seem like "bad care" is often that people can't get the therapeutic results they want due to the obesity.

You are showing how true #1 up there is. I had a friend sent home from the ER twice with a saddleback pulmonary embolism because the ER thought her being winded was due to her obesity. She survived, and she's lucky AF to have survived, because she kept going back. Your examples are about people who got diagnosis but for whom the obesity hinders treatment, but the truth is that many obese patients don't get diagnoses because their discomforts are blamed entirely on their weight. Fat people are frequently disregarded by doctor's when they try to discuss medical problems and frequently told to just lose weight to fix it.

I am not saying that obesity is not a health problem in and of itself that people should address, it is, but fat people should also get the same rigorous standard of care that other people get. They shouldn't have cancers go undetected and autoimmune diseases untested for because all of their problems are blamed on their weight.

Two things can be true at the same time, obesity is a condition that exacerbates poor health outcomes and should be faced and doctors do not provide the same level of care on the population level to obese patients.

DP. Currently the adult obesity rate in the US is 42.4%. While historically obese people may have been treated worse by doctors and nurses than normalweight people, now obese people are half the population. Obesity is normal now.

Well men are treated better than women and they make up 51% of the adult population so I'm not sure what your point is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have mixed feelings about this. I think all these things are true:

1) Doctors rely too much on obesity being the be all end all health problem source of a fat person and this results in bad care

2) For people in the 'normal' BMI category it can mask health problems unrelated to weight because they believe they are healthy

3) For people who are 36 BMI (like I was!) it can be a useful to be a really be a sure sign that you need to do something about it and for me personally I used the 'BMI doesn't matter' to blow past a lot of numbers I should have cared about.

So like it isn't the be all and end all but I think it has its uses.

It isn't so much that it results in bad care, but obesity IS just about the worst chronic health problem to have because it negatively affects nearly all of your other systems-over the long term. It puts strain on your heart, lungs, joints, builds fatty deposits around organs so they don't function as well, disrupts hormones, circulation, and on and on. Even something like a minor hemorrhoid is a lot harder to treat on an obese person. But harder to treat I mean the treatments approved for use are just not as effective- or in some cases- not effective at all due to obesity. What may seem like "bad care" is often that people can't get the therapeutic results they want due to the obesity.

You are showing how true #1 up there is. I had a friend sent home from the ER twice with a saddleback pulmonary embolism because the ER thought her being winded was due to her obesity. She survived, and she's lucky AF to have survived, because she kept going back. Your examples are about people who got diagnosis but for whom the obesity hinders treatment, but the truth is that many obese patients don't get diagnoses because their discomforts are blamed entirely on their weight. Fat people are frequently disregarded by doctor's when they try to discuss medical problems and frequently told to just lose weight to fix it.

I am not saying that obesity is not a health problem in and of itself that people should address, it is, but fat people should also get the same rigorous standard of care that other people get. They shouldn't have cancers go undetected and autoimmune diseases untested for because all of their problems are blamed on their weight.

Two things can be true at the same time, obesity is a condition that exacerbates poor health outcomes and should be faced and doctors do not provide the same level of care on the population level to obese patients.

I see your point, but medical resources are limited. Obesity is the cause of lot of thing- such as shortness of breath. So most Drs are going to rule out the most likely causes (obesity) first before doing rigorous testing. It wouldn’t make sense to give every obese person who complains of shortness of breath a CT scan. That is over treating and would bog up any system. Drs always rule out common things and the most likely causes first. So yes, a thin person with no health issues who shows up to ER with shortness of breath will get a more aggressive quicker. But if it is a women, they will blame anxiety first. But often times it is, so there is that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have mixed feelings about this. I think all these things are true:

1) Doctors rely too much on obesity being the be all end all health problem source of a fat person and this results in bad care

2) For people in the 'normal' BMI category it can mask health problems unrelated to weight because they believe they are healthy

3) For people who are 36 BMI (like I was!) it can be a useful to be a really be a sure sign that you need to do something about it and for me personally I used the 'BMI doesn't matter' to blow past a lot of numbers I should have cared about.

So like it isn't the be all and end all but I think it has its uses.

It isn't so much that it results in bad care, but obesity IS just about the worst chronic health problem to have because it negatively affects nearly all of your other systems-over the long term. It puts strain on your heart, lungs, joints, builds fatty deposits around organs so they don't function as well, disrupts hormones, circulation, and on and on. Even something like a minor hemorrhoid is a lot harder to treat on an obese person. But harder to treat I mean the treatments approved for use are just not as effective- or in some cases- not effective at all due to obesity. What may seem like "bad care" is often that people can't get the therapeutic results they want due to the obesity.

You are showing how true #1 up there is. I had a friend sent home from the ER twice with a saddleback pulmonary embolism because the ER thought her being winded was due to her obesity. She survived, and she's lucky AF to have survived, because she kept going back. Your examples are about people who got diagnosis but for whom the obesity hinders treatment, but the truth is that many obese patients don't get diagnoses because their discomforts are blamed entirely on their weight. Fat people are frequently disregarded by doctor's when they try to discuss medical problems and frequently told to just lose weight to fix it.

I am not saying that obesity is not a health problem in and of itself that people should address, it is, but fat people should also get the same rigorous standard of care that other people get. They shouldn't have cancers go undetected and autoimmune diseases untested for because all of their problems are blamed on their weight.

Two things can be true at the same time, obesity is a condition that exacerbates poor health outcomes and should be faced and doctors do not provide the same level of care on the population level to obese patients.

I see your point, but medical resources are limited. Obesity is the cause of lot of thing- such as shortness of breath. So most Drs are going to rule out the most likely causes (obesity) first before doing rigorous testing. It wouldn’t make sense to give every obese person who complains of shortness of breath a CT scan. That is over treating and would bog up any system. Drs always rule out common things and the most likely causes first. So yes, a thin person with no health issues who shows up to ER with shortness of breath will get a more aggressive quicker. But if it is a women, they will blame anxiety first. But often times it is, so there is that.

Misogyny and fat phobia all in one poster! Wonderful. Maybe there was some benefits to lobotomies too right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have mixed feelings about this. I think all these things are true:

1) Doctors rely too much on obesity being the be all end all health problem source of a fat person and this results in bad care

2) For people in the 'normal' BMI category it can mask health problems unrelated to weight because they believe they are healthy

3) For people who are 36 BMI (like I was!) it can be a useful to be a really be a sure sign that you need to do something about it and for me personally I used the 'BMI doesn't matter' to blow past a lot of numbers I should have cared about.

So like it isn't the be all and end all but I think it has its uses.

It isn't so much that it results in bad care, but obesity IS just about the worst chronic health problem to have because it negatively affects nearly all of your other systems-over the long term. It puts strain on your heart, lungs, joints, builds fatty deposits around organs so they don't function as well, disrupts hormones, circulation, and on and on. Even something like a minor hemorrhoid is a lot harder to treat on an obese person. But harder to treat I mean the treatments approved for use are just not as effective- or in some cases- not effective at all due to obesity. What may seem like "bad care" is often that people can't get the therapeutic results they want due to the obesity.

You are showing how true #1 up there is. I had a friend sent home from the ER twice with a saddleback pulmonary embolism because the ER thought her being winded was due to her obesity. She survived, and she's lucky AF to have survived, because she kept going back. Your examples are about people who got diagnosis but for whom the obesity hinders treatment, but the truth is that many obese patients don't get diagnoses because their discomforts are blamed entirely on their weight. Fat people are frequently disregarded by doctor's when they try to discuss medical problems and frequently told to just lose weight to fix it.

I am not saying that obesity is not a health problem in and of itself that people should address, it is, but fat people should also get the same rigorous standard of care that other people get. They shouldn't have cancers go undetected and autoimmune diseases untested for because all of their problems are blamed on their weight.

Two things can be true at the same time, obesity is a condition that exacerbates poor health outcomes and should be faced and doctors do not provide the same level of care on the population level to obese patients.

I see your point, but medical resources are limited. Obesity is the cause of lot of thing- such as shortness of breath. So most Drs are going to rule out the most likely causes (obesity) first before doing rigorous testing. It wouldn’t make sense to give every obese person who complains of shortness of breath a CT scan. That is over treating and would bog up any system. Drs always rule out common things and the most likely causes first. So yes, a thin person with no health issues who shows up to ER with shortness of breath will get a more aggressive quicker. But if it is a women, they will blame anxiety first. But often times it is, so there is that.

Misogyny and fat phobia all in one poster! Wonderful. Maybe there was some benefits to lobotomies too right?

Good lord. I almost cried reading the bolded. My mother had undiagnosed cancer for months because she was overweight and had emphysema. And anxiety. Her doctors ignored increasingly worse symptoms until she was admitted to the ER one night, unable to breathe. She was dead five days later. She was only 64.

So yeah.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have mixed feelings about this. I think all these things are true:

1) Doctors rely too much on obesity being the be all end all health problem source of a fat person and this results in bad care

2) For people in the 'normal' BMI category it can mask health problems unrelated to weight because they believe they are healthy

3) For people who are 36 BMI (like I was!) it can be a useful to be a really be a sure sign that you need to do something about it and for me personally I used the 'BMI doesn't matter' to blow past a lot of numbers I should have cared about.

So like it isn't the be all and end all but I think it has its uses.

It isn't so much that it results in bad care, but obesity IS just about the worst chronic health problem to have because it negatively affects nearly all of your other systems-over the long term. It puts strain on your heart, lungs, joints, builds fatty deposits around organs so they don't function as well, disrupts hormones, circulation, and on and on. Even something like a minor hemorrhoid is a lot harder to treat on an obese person. But harder to treat I mean the treatments approved for use are just not as effective- or in some cases- not effective at all due to obesity. What may seem like "bad care" is often that people can't get the therapeutic results they want due to the obesity.

You are showing how true #1 up there is. I had a friend sent home from the ER twice with a saddleback pulmonary embolism because the ER thought her being winded was due to her obesity. She survived, and she's lucky AF to have survived, because she kept going back. Your examples are about people who got diagnosis but for whom the obesity hinders treatment, but the truth is that many obese patients don't get diagnoses because their discomforts are blamed entirely on their weight. Fat people are frequently disregarded by doctor's when they try to discuss medical problems and frequently told to just lose weight to fix it.

I am not saying that obesity is not a health problem in and of itself that people should address, it is, but fat people should also get the same rigorous standard of care that other people get. They shouldn't have cancers go undetected and autoimmune diseases untested for because all of their problems are blamed on their weight.

Two things can be true at the same time, obesity is a condition that exacerbates poor health outcomes and should be faced and doctors do not provide the same level of care on the population level to obese patients.

I see your point, but medical resources are limited. Obesity is the cause of lot of thing- such as shortness of breath. So most Drs are going to rule out the most likely causes (obesity) first before doing rigorous testing. It wouldn’t make sense to give every obese person who complains of shortness of breath a CT scan. That is over treating and would bog up any system. Drs always rule out common things and the most likely causes first. So yes, a thin person with no health issues who shows up to ER with shortness of breath will get a more aggressive quicker. But if it is a women, they will blame anxiety first. But often times it is, so there is that.

Misogyny and fat phobia all in one poster! Wonderful. Maybe there was some benefits to lobotomies too right?

Someone else who is not interested in a discussion.

[Anonymous]

Currently the adult obesity rate in the US is 42.4%

Is that percentage who are obese or overweight?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 5 year old who is so skinny that he can’t keep his pants up was at the pediatrician last week and his BMI was high. She said not to worry about it. BMI is such a rough measure that it doesn’t tell you much, especially in kids.

+1. My 6 year old's BMI came up high in his last checkup. The doctor stared asking about it and I just looked at her and said, "Come on, look at him. He's not overweight at all." He's pretty skinny but he's always just been heavier than he looks. Plus, with kids I find they gain the weight and then they shoot up during a growth spurt. The kid eats a big breakfast, and then hardly eats the rest of the day. I don't trust BMI at all.

[Anonymous]

Over 73% of U.S. Adults Overweight or Obese
— Obesity rate up by half since 1999-2000, NHANES data indicate; nearly 10% severely obese

About 42% of American adults had obesity in 2017-2018, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data showed.

Among adults ages 20 and older, 42.4% were identified as having a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher, while 9.2% had severe obesity, defined as a BMI of 40 or higher, reported Cheryl Fryar, MSPH, of the National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Maryland, and colleagues.

Another 30.7% of American adults were overweight, with a BMI of 25 to 29.9.

[Anonymous]

^^ https://www.medpagetoday.com/primarycare/obesity/90142

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have mixed feelings about this. I think all these things are true:

1) Doctors rely too much on obesity being the be all end all health problem source of a fat person and this results in bad care

2) For people in the 'normal' BMI category it can mask health problems unrelated to weight because they believe they are healthy

3) For people who are 36 BMI (like I was!) it can be a useful to be a really be a sure sign that you need to do something about it and for me personally I used the 'BMI doesn't matter' to blow past a lot of numbers I should have cared about.

So like it isn't the be all and end all but I think it has its uses.

It isn't so much that it results in bad care, but obesity IS just about the worst chronic health problem to have because it negatively affects nearly all of your other systems-over the long term. It puts strain on your heart, lungs, joints, builds fatty deposits around organs so they don't function as well, disrupts hormones, circulation, and on and on. Even something like a minor hemorrhoid is a lot harder to treat on an obese person. But harder to treat I mean the treatments approved for use are just not as effective- or in some cases- not effective at all due to obesity. What may seem like "bad care" is often that people can't get the therapeutic results they want due to the obesity.

You are showing how true #1 up there is. I had a friend sent home from the ER twice with a saddleback pulmonary embolism because the ER thought her being winded was due to her obesity. She survived, and she's lucky AF to have survived, because she kept going back. Your examples are about people who got diagnosis but for whom the obesity hinders treatment, but the truth is that many obese patients don't get diagnoses because their discomforts are blamed entirely on their weight. Fat people are frequently disregarded by doctor's when they try to discuss medical problems and frequently told to just lose weight to fix it.

I am not saying that obesity is not a health problem in and of itself that people should address, it is, but fat people should also get the same rigorous standard of care that other people get. They shouldn't have cancers go undetected and autoimmune diseases untested for because all of their problems are blamed on their weight.

Two things can be true at the same time, obesity is a condition that exacerbates poor health outcomes and should be faced and doctors do not provide the same level of care on the population level to obese patients.

I see your point, but medical resources are limited. Obesity is the cause of lot of thing- such as shortness of breath. So most Drs are going to rule out the most likely causes (obesity) first before doing rigorous testing. It wouldn’t make sense to give every obese person who complains of shortness of breath a CT scan. That is over treating and would bog up any system. Drs always rule out common things and the most likely causes first. So yes, a thin person with no health issues who shows up to ER with shortness of breath will get a more aggressive quicker. But if it is a women, they will blame anxiety first. But often times it is, so there is that.

Misogyny and fat phobia all in one poster! Wonderful. Maybe there was some benefits to lobotomies too right?

Someone else who is not interested in a discussion.

I was very much interested in a discussion, but not with someone who believes that it is actually reasonable to disregard women's complaints as due to anxiety. Women, particularly mothers, DIE in this country because of that bias. Obese people die unnecessarily due to the bias against them. Your position assumes to be that this is reasonable. I don't see anywhere we can meet in the middle there. I am saying that obesity is a negative health condition that should be dealt with (although, notably, being a woman is NOT a negative health condition), but that shouldn't prevent people who are obese from receiving adequate healthcare from conditions that are unrelated to their obesity. See PP who's mother died of cancer and my friend who had a pulmonary embolism as a result of her birth control. And for the record she did not have run of the mill shortness of breath, they diagnosed her (incorrectly) with bronchitis when they sent her home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have mixed feelings about this. I think all these things are true:

1) Doctors rely too much on obesity being the be all end all health problem source of a fat person and this results in bad care

2) For people in the 'normal' BMI category it can mask health problems unrelated to weight because they believe they are healthy

3) For people who are 36 BMI (like I was!) it can be a useful to be a really be a sure sign that you need to do something about it and for me personally I used the 'BMI doesn't matter' to blow past a lot of numbers I should have cared about.

So like it isn't the be all and end all but I think it has its uses.

It isn't so much that it results in bad care, but obesity IS just about the worst chronic health problem to have because it negatively affects nearly all of your other systems-over the long term. It puts strain on your heart, lungs, joints, builds fatty deposits around organs so they don't function as well, disrupts hormones, circulation, and on and on. Even something like a minor hemorrhoid is a lot harder to treat on an obese person. But harder to treat I mean the treatments approved for use are just not as effective- or in some cases- not effective at all due to obesity. What may seem like "bad care" is often that people can't get the therapeutic results they want due to the obesity.

You are showing how true #1 up there is. I had a friend sent home from the ER twice with a saddleback pulmonary embolism because the ER thought her being winded was due to her obesity. She survived, and she's lucky AF to have survived, because she kept going back. Your examples are about people who got diagnosis but for whom the obesity hinders treatment, but the truth is that many obese patients don't get diagnoses because their discomforts are blamed entirely on their weight. Fat people are frequently disregarded by doctor's when they try to discuss medical problems and frequently told to just lose weight to fix it.

I am not saying that obesity is not a health problem in and of itself that people should address, it is, but fat people should also get the same rigorous standard of care that other people get. They shouldn't have cancers go undetected and autoimmune diseases untested for because all of their problems are blamed on their weight.

Two things can be true at the same time, obesity is a condition that exacerbates poor health outcomes and should be faced and doctors do not provide the same level of care on the population level to obese patients.

I see your point, but medical resources are limited. Obesity is the cause of lot of thing- such as shortness of breath. So most Drs are going to rule out the most likely causes (obesity) first before doing rigorous testing. It wouldn’t make sense to give every obese person who complains of shortness of breath a CT scan. That is over treating and would bog up any system. Drs always rule out common things and the most likely causes first. So yes, a thin person with no health issues who shows up to ER with shortness of breath will get a more aggressive quicker. But if it is a women, they will blame anxiety first. But often times it is, so there is that.

Misogyny and fat phobia all in one poster! Wonderful. Maybe there was some benefits to lobotomies too right?

Someone else who is not interested in a discussion.

I was very much interested in a discussion, but not with someone who believes that it is actually reasonable to disregard women's complaints as due to anxiety. Women, particularly mothers, DIE in this country because of that bias. Obese people die unnecessarily due to the bias against them. Your position assumes to be that this is reasonable. I don't see anywhere we can meet in the middle there. I am saying that obesity is a negative health condition that should be dealt with (although, notably, being a woman is NOT a negative health condition), but that shouldn't prevent people who are obese from receiving adequate healthcare from conditions that are unrelated to their obesity. See PP who's mother died of cancer and my friend who had a pulmonary embolism as a result of her birth control. And for the record she did not have run of the mill shortness of breath, they diagnosed her (incorrectly) with bronchitis when they sent her home.

No, what they posted is that in the ER, shortness of breath can be due to anxiety. DH went to the ER with chest pain, due to anxiety. Panic attacks feel like heart attacks but are anxiety, not heart related.

You're not interested in a discussion because you didn't like PP's language. She was speaking dispassionately, not offensively.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have mixed feelings about this. I think all these things are true:

1) Doctors rely too much on obesity being the be all end all health problem source of a fat person and this results in bad care

2) For people in the 'normal' BMI category it can mask health problems unrelated to weight because they believe they are healthy

3) For people who are 36 BMI (like I was!) it can be a useful to be a really be a sure sign that you need to do something about it and for me personally I used the 'BMI doesn't matter' to blow past a lot of numbers I should have cared about.

So like it isn't the be all and end all but I think it has its uses.

It isn't so much that it results in bad care, but obesity IS just about the worst chronic health problem to have because it negatively affects nearly all of your other systems-over the long term. It puts strain on your heart, lungs, joints, builds fatty deposits around organs so they don't function as well, disrupts hormones, circulation, and on and on. Even something like a minor hemorrhoid is a lot harder to treat on an obese person. But harder to treat I mean the treatments approved for use are just not as effective- or in some cases- not effective at all due to obesity. What may seem like "bad care" is often that people can't get the therapeutic results they want due to the obesity.

You are showing how true #1 up there is. I had a friend sent home from the ER twice with a saddleback pulmonary embolism because the ER thought her being winded was due to her obesity. She survived, and she's lucky AF to have survived, because she kept going back. Your examples are about people who got diagnosis but for whom the obesity hinders treatment, but the truth is that many obese patients don't get diagnoses because their discomforts are blamed entirely on their weight. Fat people are frequently disregarded by doctor's when they try to discuss medical problems and frequently told to just lose weight to fix it.

I am not saying that obesity is not a health problem in and of itself that people should address, it is, but fat people should also get the same rigorous standard of care that other people get. They shouldn't have cancers go undetected and autoimmune diseases untested for because all of their problems are blamed on their weight.

Two things can be true at the same time, obesity is a condition that exacerbates poor health outcomes and should be faced and doctors do not provide the same level of care on the population level to obese patients.

I see your point, but medical resources are limited. Obesity is the cause of lot of thing- such as shortness of breath. So most Drs are going to rule out the most likely causes (obesity) first before doing rigorous testing. It wouldn’t make sense to give every obese person who complains of shortness of breath a CT scan. That is over treating and would bog up any system. Drs always rule out common things and the most likely causes first. So yes, a thin person with no health issues who shows up to ER with shortness of breath will get a more aggressive quicker. But if it is a women, they will blame anxiety first. But often times it is, so there is that.

Misogyny and fat phobia all in one poster! Wonderful. Maybe there was some benefits to lobotomies too right?

Someone else who is not interested in a discussion.

I was very much interested in a discussion, but not with someone who believes that it is actually reasonable to disregard women's complaints as due to anxiety. Women, particularly mothers, DIE in this country because of that bias. Obese people die unnecessarily due to the bias against them. Your position assumes to be that this is reasonable. I don't see anywhere we can meet in the middle there. I am saying that obesity is a negative health condition that should be dealt with (although, notably, being a woman is NOT a negative health condition), but that shouldn't prevent people who are obese from receiving adequate healthcare from conditions that are unrelated to their obesity. See PP who's mother died of cancer and my friend who had a pulmonary embolism as a result of her birth control. And for the record she did not have run of the mill shortness of breath, they diagnosed her (incorrectly) with bronchitis when they sent her home.

No, what they posted is that in the ER, shortness of breath can be due to anxiety. DH went to the ER with chest pain, due to anxiety. Panic attacks feel like heart attacks but are anxiety, not heart related.

You're not interested in a discussion because you didn't like PP's language. She was speaking dispassionately, not offensively.

No I don't like what she said. Perhaps the way she constructed her last two sentences led to my misunderstanding that point. I think both of our readings could be accurate upon rereading. If that poster would like to clarify that she does not think it is acceptable to write off women's shortness of breath as anxiety because women are more prone to anxiety than I would be happy to have been wrong.

But the bolded I still just disagree with. They are saying that because medical resources are limited and because obesity COULD be the reason someone is sick, that it is reasonable that they are misdiagnosed all the time and on a much higher level than normal weight people. That is just unacceptable to me. It is as unacceptable as just 'accepting' the fact that black women are treated with less care and curiosity than white women.

My parents are doctors, I don't think doctors are bad people. but when large scale societal biases become apparent it is on doctors to see that, accept what the science is saying, and making an effort to combat it. I reject the seeming point PP is making that this is essentially the cost of obesity, that you become too complex to treat effectively.