Got a lot to say but I’ll keep it brief-ish. Corporations love unhealthy people. They will artificially celebrate this and reinforce unhealthy lifestyles. This extends beyond weight.
Once entrapped, escape is hard. Some are passive and depressed. Some are dismissive and defensive. No matter which cycle you are in, it’s unhealthy.
I think smoking is bad like I think being overweight is bad. If a doctor says alcohol is killing you, it probably is. I don’t think hatred is deserved, but don’t expect any validation for those choices.
Surely no coincidence that being obese is a gateway to hyperconsumerism anyway. Sugary, fatty, processed snack foods are way more profitable than healthy meals.
Walking around town is free, can’t have that. Sit at this computer chair, watch advertisements and play video games instead.
Heart disease at 26? That’ll be $2k/month until you die.
Get depressed, buy the meds, never leave your couch, don’t fight back, you’re the evolution of humanity and - most of all - you are beautiful.
I am down 50+ pounds, and have another 20 to go. This is new to me, but I absolutely agree with everything you said.
The meme isn’t about that, I’ve read stories of some doctors refusing to perform surguries to overweight people, but other doctors doing the surgery anyway.
The same way a lot of women get told stuff is just from their period by doctors.
I’m a medical student and I have some direct experience with this. Sometimes, the difference between the surgeon who will do the procedure versus the surgeon that won’t do the procedure is the availability of specialized facilities and equipment that they have access to. An elective surgery (i.e. not an emergency surgery) can go from routine to very high risk depending on the amount of adipose tissue the patient has.
And it’s not just a matter of the fat tissue overlying the surgical site. Morbidly obese patients are much more likely to have things like sleep apnea which can make anesthesia more risky and might require more specialized equipment than a particular surgeon/hospital/anesthesiologist might have access to. The “morbid” part of “morbid obesity” also refers to the fact that people above a certain threshold of weight are much more likely to have other health conditions like heart disease that make anesthesia more risky.
This is what I came to say but wasn’t smart enough to put into words. There’s a lot more factors than just being overweight of why a surgery can’t be performed. For a while an issue at my hospital was we were one of the few in the area that could do MRIs on larger patients. So bigger hospitals would transfer these patients to us just for an MRI because their MRI machine was too small or couldn’t handle the weight.
The reason for that is that surgeons are rated based on their success percentages meaning they’ll recommend against risky surgeries.
The upside of this is that surgeons aren’t operating willy-nilly on people and will make a proper risk assessment. The downside is that overweight people have an inherently higher risk of complications from surgery, so some surgeons will pass.
It’s not because they think these people don’t need it, it’s because they think it’s too risky. They’re usually not wrong about that, you just need to find a surgeon willing to take the risk or, if possible, reduce the risk by losing weight.
There’s also no point to surgeries if the people aren’t committed and are just going to eat even more and put the weight back on. It’s like consolidating debt to make one payment easier but keeping all the credit cards and building up the debt again. It just makes you worse off
Look. Shitty doctors exist, but when 1/3 of the US is overweight, there are underlying issues that need addressing. I only hear horror stories when an addict, alcoholic, or overweight individual in my life is feeling insecure or defensive about a prognosis. Too many people deflect and it’s enabling a much larger issues. Our basic instincts are being exploited.
I have some horror stories about being a normal weight woman seeking medical care. What’s that about then?
America’s obesity epidemic is a function of our car culture. This is the only country on God’s green Earth that feels putting in sidewalks is a moral failure.
My mother had a doctor that refused to move forward with knee surgery because she was so depressed and refused to do therapy because it hurt her knee so much to move around.
I guess I understand, why go through the trouble of surgery if she’s just going to be a bummer couch potato afterwards and never change her ways?
But at least she’d be a bummer couch potato whose knee didn’t threaten to give out on her whenever she tried to do laundry in the basement.
If I take my car in for new brake pads, don’t refuse me service because the transmission is on its way out.
People are more complicated than cars, and surgeons are no magicians. I think your idea of the reason of your mother’s surgeon for refusal might be a bit off:
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Without adequate pre- and post-op physiotherapy, a joint will likely be worse after surgery.
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If simple physiotherapy is already too painful, cutting into this overexcited tissue risks inducing a complex regional pain syndrome.
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If someone suffers from both depression and from too much pain to do physiotherapy, they need a multimodal pain therapy to prepare for surgery.
So, based on the bit of info you provided, refusing surgery was very likely the right thing to do to avoid worsening your mother’s situation. What I di hate is when doctors don’t explain themselves and just say “I can’t help you”, but do not point patients to someone who can.
I’m guessing that’s under the US health system, where doctors are incentivised to only perform surgeries with a low risk of complications
For a lot of doctors, the incentive to not do risky procedures is the fact that you have to live with the guilt of your patient’s death, even if you did everything perfectly. Or, you do everything perfectly, but they still have a poor outcome because they weren’t healthy enough to go through the procedure and the recovery, and you get sued for millions of dollars because you didn’t spend 4 hours going through the informed consent with the patient to ensure that every single possible complication was adequately discussed.
I’ve worked in emergency medicine and I’ve had patients die in my care that we had absolutely no way of saving. The screams of their families still haunt me and I will carry those cries of anguish and loss to my grave. I would not perform a procedure that was not 1000000% necessary if the risks are too high because I have enough blood on my hands already, and I haven’t even finished medical school.
I’m just sitting here waiting for the point of what you said. 60 people upvoted, but you didn’t say anything.
The phrase of the day (which you should Google of you downvote this) is pseudo-profound bullshit.
I think their point is that doctors don’t want their patients to become entrapped by obesity into lifelong poor health, which also traps them as sources of revenue for corporations that profit from sickness and fat: pharma, companies that sell fad diet and/or exercise plans, etc. So if your doctor tells you to lose weight, it’s probably coming from a good place, regardless of what else might be going on with your health.
(And just in anticipation of some replies I might get: yes, it’s absolutely a real and shitty thing when doctors only see the fat and assume it’s the cause of all the patient’s problems. You deserve better healthcare than that. But also recognize that while the fat might not be the cause of a given problem, it might be exacerbating that problem.)
You are ignorant of the genetic factors at play here and I think you need to realize that your rhetoric is identical to victim blaming eugenics ideology. You sound like RFK Jr. and I’m guessing you would want me dead if you could have things that way. It’s honestly despicable and I don’t know how people like you sleep at night.
Hear me out. You’re villainizing me because what I said struck a nerve. You don’t actually believe I want you dead. You’re just upset that I pointed out a deep flaw. Maybe it’s an insecurity, or cognitive dissonance, or whatever. I’m very familiar with this type of response. Whatever it is, realize that someone likely depends on you and that an unhealthy lifestyle is not good for them. I’m encouraging you to do better, if not for yourself, the people in your life you care for. I recognize my ignorance. I’m not a therapist. I’m just stating something I’ve personally observed.
Buddy, you’re over stating the importance of genetics. Time and time again it shows that getting bigger is more nurture than nature. Papers and research retounely come out saying its a two-sides of the same coin issue, but then fail to support their nature/genetics claims, which are often refuted. Slender families get children who end up obese because of lifestyle, and their children become obese. That’s not genetics. The grandchildren end up obese because obese parents place their lifestyle and diets onto their children.
Claiming something is victim blaming is insanely disrespectful to the people who actually get blamed for things out of their control. Your weight is in your control for the vast, VAST majority of people.
People with disabilities who can’t get an opportunity to do something about it? Sure. Can that disability come from genetics, sure. But that’s a small minority of people who are overweight.
Used to see the odd “genetics” fat person and they’d just be built a bit bigger. Now I’m seeing fucking waddling planetoids and that’s not genetics man. Part of that blame belongs to individuals but part of it belongs to the food lobbyists and their quest to add sugar and corn syrup to everything.
Incentivise people to grow their own vegetables (or source them locally from those who already are) and disincentivise the purchase of processed and sweetened food. Have our agencies promote healthy recipes using weight rather than volume measurements and show people how to use scales to properly weigh ingredients and help make it as easy as possible to count calories.
