The Very Real Consequences of Weight Discrimination

Weight discrimination has very real health consequences, especially when some of the most common perpetrators are medical professionals.

Hosted by: Hank Green
----------

----------
Huge thanks go to the following Patreon supporters for helping us keep SciShow free for everyone forever:

Eric Jensen, Matt Curls, Sam Buck, Christopher R Boucher, Avi Yashchin, Adam Brainard, Greg, Alex Hackman, Sam Lutfi, D.A. Noe, Piya Shedden, Scott Satovsky Jr, Charles Southerland, Patrick D. Ashmore, charles george, Kevin Bealer, Chris Peters
----------
Looking for SciShow elsewhere on the internet?
----------
Sources:
Is obesity stigmatizing...in the United States (2005)

The stigma of obesity: does perceived weight discrimination affect identity and physical health? (2011)

Does this Tweet make me look fat? A content analysis of weight stigma on Twitter (2016)

How and why weight stigma drives the obesity epidemic and harms health (2018)

Obesity, perceived weight discrimination and hair cortisol: a population based study (2018)

Weight bias internalization and health: a systemic review (2018)

[PogieJoe]

I have a friend who was experiencing horrible symptoms for a year, ranging from loss of movement in parts of their body, to not being able to breath properly. They went to their doctor who told them to simply lose weight.

They went to another doctor. Turns out they had cancer that could have killed them in six months.

Thanks for calling this out, SciShow.

[berryberrykixx]

I was a victim of weight discrimination that almost killed me. When I was 13, I was running track and sticking to a strict diet plan, but I was still gaining weight and I was getting more and more fatigued as the track season wore on (which is exactly the opposite of what should have been happening to me). My mother took me to multiple doctors, more and more as I began to sleep longer and longer (toward the end of the season I was coming home from meets around 5pm, I'd be in bed by 7pm, and I would still have difficulty waking up at 6:30am for school). Every doctor we went to told us, I need to exercise more and diet. Summer vacation began and I was barely getting out of bed. Constantly tired, and I had gained close to 70 lbs since the beginning of track season in early March. Then my mom took me in to see yet another new primary care doctor, a gamble really because she had just opened her practice and was fresh out of medical school. When she began her exam, she asked me, what I thought, was an unusual question, "Have you had the mumps recently?" I told her no, my mom passed her my vaccination card the school had given her, so she sent me in for an ultrasound on my neck and blood testing. As it had turned out, I had a goiter on my thyroid. My TSH (thyroid stimulating hormones) was somewhere in the 400's. T4 and T3 both near trace in my bloodstream. She was absolutely shocked that I hadn't been hospitalized for myxedema crisis. I had to take 500mcg of Synthroid for 3 weeks to get my thyroid levels to near normal before we could adjust my dosage. Even after medication, my numbers were still off, so I was sent to see an endocrinologist who diagnosed me with Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. A few years later, the diagnosis of PCOS was added to my list of metabolic issues. It was so out of control that I'd end up in the ER regularly with burst cysts and anemia. I'd had heavy periods that would last for months, then it'd go away and stay away for months more. When I was 27, one of my cysts turned out to actually be a tumor, and I chose to have a complete hysterectomy due to all of the other issues that stemmed from PCOS. But a hysterectomy didn't take away the insulin resistance, and no matter how much I diet and watch my carb intake, my sugar always teeters on pre-diabetic whenever I have fasting glucose blood testing done. All in all, I'm now 35, I'm disabled, and my weight varies between 200 and 250. And if I ever end up in the ER, I always get told about my weight, sometimes before the doctor does anything, and sometimes as a side note after I've been treated. And I always get a paper about dealing with obesity stapled as the last page in my notes that go home with me when I am discharged.

[grass]

I feel like a lot of people in the comments are missing the point. No one is saying obesity does not have serious health implications or that being overweight could *never* be the cause of someone's illness. of course being obese is not a good thing.

The issue here is that some doctor's will dismiss issues that are potentially unrelated to weight just because their patient is overweight. If I were overweight and I had severe migraines, the doctor can tell me that my weight might be the issue, but they should also look at other potential causes and make sure it's nothing serious. It's not that wild of an expectation, and there are definitely plenty of cases of people getting life-threatening diseases like cancer misdiagnosed because they were overweight.

[safaiaryu]

I have been sick for years, and most of those years UNDERweight. One med my doctors tried caused me to gain 50lbs in the space of three months. Now, miraculously, those same doctors who caused me to gain weight are saying that losing weight will solve all of my health problems. 🙄 It's really been enlightening about weight bias, but has certainly screwed up any progress we made on figuring out why my body hates me so much.

[holypicklesmofo]

If you've never had real issues ignored because of your weight, you may not fully understand how dangerous this can be.

[SilkyBBW]

A few years ago my mother started feeling pain in her stomach. She was unable to use the toilet, unable to eat and kept burping a lot. After 3 days of this she finally went to the ER where the doctor told her, quite rudely, that she was fat and that she had "old food" in her stomach and to take laxatives. In pain my mother returned home, endured the pain for 2 more days and miraculously got better. A few months later the symptoms returned. My mother went back to the hospital, knowing something was wrong. While with the doctor she threw up.... in front of him... and it was fecal matter, undigested food and black goop. The doctor insisted. She was fat, it was her "fatness" making old food stay in her stomach. In tears my mother left and finally went to another hospital, a private hospital. She was rushed into surgery.



Cancer had caused a tumor to block her intestines, food wasn't being passed and finally was thrown up by my mother. According to the surgeons if she had waited another day she would have died. We spent our life savings on that surgery, all because a doctor told my mother she was just FAT. Something that could have left money for us to treat her cancer was denied because of this bias.

The worst part? According to the surgeon she could have not metastasized if that doctor had treated her right away.



A year later my mother passed away. The cancer took her, our money, our home and family and our trust in any health professionals with it.
I have since never trusted a doctor again. My depression? Fat. My pneumonia? Fat. My broken hip? Fat.
It wasn't until 5 years later that I moved to another country and finally found a doctor who focused on me as a human, and not me as a fat human. I have since lost weight, treated my depression and am in line for a hip replacement next year.


If you want fat people to be healthy, then treat them like humans and not like a way to embody your disgust.

[pastaestel]

My mother used to intentionally make me feel miserable (that's literally what she was trying to do, she said it herself) to make me lose weight. And I did. My skin was breaking, my menstruation stopped, I was constantly on a verge of fainting and sometimes literally couldn't move. And she couldn't stop telling me how HEALTHY I look.

[IMakeupStuff]

I've had drs tell me I should "strive to eat less than 1200 calories/day." When I said that if I was in the hospital in a coma, they'd be giving me probably double those calories/day for my age and size, they were just like, "well, if you /really/ want to lose weight, you need some willpower...." Those are literal starvation calories. That's not promoting weight loss, that's promoting eating disorders.

[yaminohere]

A good friend of mine has been told for years that she "just needed to lose weight" because of back problems. Turns out, nope. She was born with rotoscoliosis and it was never caught growing up.
I've also seen women get told, "you're to fat to have EDS" and then OH LOOK, they do get an EDS diagnosis....
And like Hank said, it's not just fat people. Skinny people too this happens to. I've had friends that are just that skinny, they eat healthy, exercise regularly, and everything, but doctors just tell them when they go in, OH EAT MORE.

[HeiwaSolnum]

All I would get from doctors for my health issues is lose weight. Now that I've lost weight they say it's stress. : /

[Charlie-uphy]

When I was 13, I suddenly gained a lot of weight, doctors dismissed it as me "not exercising enough and eating too much". 5 years later, it turns out I had a slow thyroid, causing me to gain weight without changing my eating habits. My mom had the same problem but it took her twenty years to figure it out and by then she had nearly died of the consequences.

[burrito-town]

I completely agree with Hank. If someone wants to lose weight, they don't need to be told to lose weight. That's already obvious. What they need is a system or the tools necessary to make lifestyle changes that will eventually lead to weight loss. This is similar to many other activities such as feeding yourself. If I'm hungry, someone can tell me I need to eat food, which is useless information. I already know food cures hunger. Instead, I need someone to teach me how to fish so that I can catch the food that will address my hunger.

[anthonybeard]

Wow. So many people missing the point, it almost seems intentional. Literally nobody is saying being overweight is healthy or that weight doesn’t cause any problems.

All they’re saying is that weight isn’t the only factor for *overall* health and that treating a fat person differently from a thin person can actually make their weight problems worse. (Duh!)

[anneplowman]

When I was vegan, I was diagnosed with Kidney stones. The doc told me to, "eat a hamburger" ... 10 years later, after putting on weight- I get kidney stones again and find they are from a high protein diet and obesity. Can't win!
My point is, less opinion and more testing is always the responsible medical answer to our issues.

[justedith]

im a person who experienced weight discrimination and still do i now cry and can barely speak when people taunt and talk about my weight or just mention it i get into panic mode

[bobbiecooper]

I had a doc that would say every issue I had was because of my weight. I was only 25-50lbs over weight. Some of my weight gain was from my depression I went into. She still wanted to put me down about my weight and not help me with my depression. It was so bad that I didn't want to make appointments to see her. I talked to a nurse who said I shouldnt have to deal with it and gave me a name of a better doc for me. I feel much better with the treatment this one gives me. No one should put up with body shaming.

[MonteiroM]

My grandmother went to the doctor in the 90's, and the doctor with sarcasm said "what did you expect you are old". The bast%rd died first.

[mouseluva]

My friend is forever being told to lose weight to relieve her chronic fatigue syndrome when the weight is a symptom of the CFS! It's like telling a person on the poverty line to just invest in a good property and they'd get some money!

[DeiwosN]

As someone struggling with serious mental health issues that have /caused/ my weight problems, it sure is discouraging to get 'lose some weight and everything will be fixed' from both GPs AND Psychiatrists who I would've assumed know better. Does it contribute to my mental health problem? Might do! But I sure as hell wasn't overweight as a child when the problem started.

[Lady-Four]

I got diagnosed with chronic fatigue 5 years ago. For years my doctors only suggestion has been 'try mindfulness'. I finally moved to a different GP and straight away they referred me to a chronic fatigue clinic. Hallelujah 🙌 I thought. Only the next week I got a letter to say I was not eligible for the clinic because my BMI is too high. Chronic Fatigue causes weight gain, I have gained 84lb since diagnosis. So now I can't get treatment for the thing that has caused weight gain because I'm over weight. The logic is baffling. My doctors new advice is go to the local slimming world group and come back when your BMI is down. I'm over weight so I'm not their problem anymore.