yakalskovich | **wibble**

Entry tags:

wibble

I finally took a deep breath and started a Fat Acceptance blog in German.

I already got referrers from Twitter. Let's see where this leads...

Special thanks to

saphyria for the user name I am using over there...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Good luck with it :). Google kindly translated (sort of) your link and it was a good read.

I'm very much in favour of fighting that weight/appearance should not be a judge of a person's value. (I'm professionally compelled to consider health issues associated with obesity, but practically everyone does something unhealthy).

I'm getting to the health thing later, over there.-

On the other hand, define 'professionally compelled'. Does that come up in exams?

I've heard before some of your take on the health thing - I think you made a lot of valid points.

By professionally compelled, I mean that 'big and healthy' school of thought is not represented in our training. We are taught that obesity is associated with many illnesses, and were I to argue the opposite in an exam would quite certainly fail it.

I actually think the reality is somewhere in between, with having more weight decreasing your chance of some illnesses and increasing the chance of others. Ischaemic heart disease is one that springs to mind.

My personal take on it is that size doesn't matter when it comes to a person's beauty or 'value', and that when you're young it is perfectly possible to be overweight and healthy.

But in my experience of working with people in hospital it makes things harder for the person health-wise if/when they do get sick, and when they get older.

Even if, for the sake of this debate, being overweight doesn't affect the chance of an illness occurring. Obese people are still more difficult to examine effectively, more difficult to intubate and operate on, more difficult to scan, etc. And this may in itself turn lead to a poorer outcome. The other issue is mobility; knees are your friends when you're old and or sick.

I don't mean this in any offensive way, so I apologise if it comes across as such.

No, you're not offending me. At the moment, I'm listening more for what they teach young doctors that they then set on the population as GPs.

I'm no good at all the scientific data and statistics; I get what HAES is about and that correlation isn't causality, but everything above that, my slightly dys-mathematic tendency comes into play. But what interests me is what people learn is the truth, people who will then talk to fat people who, unlike me, are still fully in the space of diet talk and body hate, from a position of expertise and authority.

I don't want to offend you, either. You're not supposed to reflect on or criticize everything you're taught. You're supposed to pass exams and get a job and help people.

But if I knew what you are taught, then I would get where the other side is coming from: - the very doctors that do tend to offend. Like this one that drifted by on my tumblr some days ago.

What they teach young doctors who are soon to be GPs is that Overweight is Bad For You.

What they don't teach, and should, is when pushing too hard on the issue does more damage.

A friend of mine not on LJ told me once that she was often pestered by her doctor to lose weight, whatever she went in with, but that trying to do so exacerbated her severe depression. It's healthier for her to be a little overweight than suicidal.

If it weren't for her, and you and a few others on the flist, the psychosocial side would not have occurred to me.

I think if it was my GP surgery, I would advise/help with weight loss if the patient 1. asked me to do so, or 2. was suffering from something with which it might help.

I can't access the link for some reason, but I'm assuming it's a doctor disagreeing with you in a 'I'm big, you're small, I'm right, you're wrong, and there's nothing you can do about it' fashion? I can only apologise on behalf of some members of my profession - there are a lot of judgemental doctors out there.

The link there works for me all right, butI can quote it:

went to see the endocrinologist
he said all my symptoms were caused by being fat
and that any that couldn’t be explained by being fat were because i was depressed about being fat
i explained that i wasn’t depressed about being fat, actually eat very healthily and get a lot of exercise
he said i must be mistaken and eating “hidden calories”
because i am obviously oblivious about nutrition because i am fat
he warned me about high blood pressure in fat people
then took my blood pressure and realised it was fine, if a bit low
he then warned me it could have been high though
“aren’t low blood pressure and heart rate symptoms of this disease i have though?”
“yes. but fatty boom boom”

That's what the post says.-

Wait, is the "Yes, but fatty boom boom" what the doctor said? If so, what a twat...

Sounds like hypothyroidism. Whatever it was, there's no excuse for being patronising.

I think that's a paraphrase of what the doctor said, yes.-

I know you're never going to do so, now.

Except in an exam. If you have to, please do the full 'fatty fatty boom boom' routine for the edifications of the examining board. I want you to pass as well as you can!

Haha, thanks.

I certainly wouldn't do it that way.

Like I said, I'd say something if it was relevant. If someone is 20 stone and has angina for example, losing weight might help.

My job is to give people information to empower them to make their own decisions, not to judge on it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

wibble

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject