The Problem of Diagnosis by BMI
June 8, 2016 8:09 AM   Subscribe

Doctors frequently ignore the symptoms of fat patients-- instead, the prescription is to lose weight. I've seen a lot of anecdotes of this sort of medical neglect, but the article is the first I've seen in the mainstream press. Doctors who ignore symptoms cause patients to have years of preventable misery, and sometimes diseases are allowed to progress until they're crippling or deadly.

I've never been able to figure out what the proportion of doctors who neglect fat patients is-- the typical anecdotes seem to be either "I had to go to three or four doctors before I could find someone who would listen" or "I must be lucky, I found a great doctor right off".

A list of fat-friendly medical professionals

The magic words are "What would you prescribe for a thin person who showed up with these symptoms?" This is applicable even when a fat athlete has knee problems-- the PT which works for thin people works for her, too.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz (2 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Heya, no big deal but posts on the front page of MetaFilter generally need to have more of a "here is a thing" framing and not a "here are my personal thoughts on this subject"; it's more of an arm's length distance style compared to the often much more personal narrative framing of Ask MetaFilter questions. -- cortex



 
Yeah. I mean, I feel like I should write more here, but as a very fat woman, all I can really say is 'yep, been there, done that'.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:18 AM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm scared of the ensuing comments but thank you so much for posting this!
posted by masquesoporfavor at 8:19 AM on June 8, 2016


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