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Elizabeth's avatar

Thanks for this. There's also the point that EVEN IF the correlation between higher weight and health issues is robust, that still does not demonstrate that causation exists, or the direction of the causation if it does exist. You touch on this with your example of baldness and cardiac events, but I think it's worth repeating!

For instance: according to my endocrinologist, there is growing evidence that insulin resistance causes weight gain, NOT vice versa. In other words, higher weight may well be a SYMPTOM of Type 2 diabetes, not a CAUSE of diabetes. If that is the case, then blaming fat people for "causing" their diabetes is as nonsensical as it would be to blame my swollen knuckles for "causing" my osteoarthritis.

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jen's avatar

Thank you so much for this post!

One thing I think about a lot is the stress-health relationship and how damn hypocritical it is for a doctor to be shaming us for our size while simultaneously saying we need to lower our stress levels. They’re the cause of much of my stress! I’m just flabbergasted that these supposedly educated professionals can’t put two and two together here.

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