Lipedema is NOT obesity

By Tatjana van der Krabben

Lipedema is not obesity. It's like comparing apples and oranges. We say apple - or rather pear - to our doctor, he/she replies orange. We've been going around in circles for some time. Some anomalies in our fat cells have already been reported, like hyperplasia of individual fat cells. The fat distribution in lipedema is also very distinct. Yet, we lose our primary at the word 'fat'. There wasn't much else to prove it's apples and oranges, not just oranges. The fact that our blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol is mostly normal? Dumb luck and ticking time bomb. Those who did have elevated values? Aha, they proved our doctors' point.

Times are changing. Research is changing. Recently I attended two lectures on studies that specifically compared lipedema and obesity and they found clear differences.

Smeenge, Damstra and Hendrickx found that patients with lipedema have muscle weakness. We have 30% less muscle strength compared to what is considered 'normal'. The obese control group didn't share this muscle weakness. This is unpublished at this point, but you can find a summary in English here.

Hoelen, Van Zanten and Bosman looked at the value of ultrasound as a diagnostic tool in lipedema. Again, in the control group obese women were included. I've seen the slides at the lecture in May. It doesn't take a medical background to spot the differences between the scans that were showed of a person with lipedema and of a person who is obese. Also, it was found that the BMI of lipedema patients doesn't match the circumference of their waist; it was smaller than you would expect based on the BMI number. Meaning: BMI doesn't add up for lipedema.* Again unpublished at this point, but you can find some information on this research in English here.

Lipedema is NOT obesity and some proof of that is finally coming our way. Why is that such a big deal? If you are on team obesity, you are, but if you're not, they should be looking at the issues you DO have, not what they assume they would be. They can't help us or think with us, if they don't see us for who we are.

In all fairness, I've seen studies in the past pointing at lipedema-specific pathology, but these studies are all but forgotten. Fingers crossed these studies get the attention they deserve and stick.

*Get in line, because BMI doesn't add up for a lot of different groups of the population. Also see my blog on BMI.