You may or may not know by now that Google Images now has over a million photographs from the LIFE magazine archives available for viewing. I love photograph archives and was all over that looking for some never-before-seen Margaret Bourke-White, and then I thought to look up ‘fat’ and ‘obese’ and the like.
Well, I came across what looks like a proto-NAAFA meeting, with a roomful of fat people rockin’ their awesome 1951 outfits. Search Google Images with <“fat people” source:LIFE> and wow. I’m fairly sure it’s not a fat camp promotional seminar, there are no skinny people in white coats up the front at the speakers’ table and none of the fat people looks terribly ashamed, but I don’t know for sure. I wonder what it was?
Check out this woman’s amazing hairdo! And dress!
I want to go out swing dancing and drinking cocktails with these women!
Who says there were approximately three fat people (Alfred Hitchcock and two Coney Island performers, obviously) before the “obeeeeesity crisis”? Obviously there were enough in one city for interested parties to fill a ballroom for some kind of meeting.
And once again proving that weight loss is never particularly new or fresh reporting, there are also pictures of joyful successful dieters and appropriately-remorseful-looking chubby people at fat camps.
If you search for <obese source:LIFE> you get two pictures of singers at the Bower Follies, both of whom look kickass. A search for <obesity source:LIFE> gets you a lot of before-and-after pics on an “Obesity Sotry”, a few others of fat people going about their business, and some fat camp pics. Like this 1938 gorgeous babe, Jewel Mauclaire:
If you click on the Related Images with that one, you get pictures of other women at the camp exercising in high heels, and “low calorie vegetable plates”.
Then there’s this awful one tagged “weight loss”. A woman is in hospital on a weight loss program, presumably a liquid diet where she gets to suck a disgusting-looking concotion out of a jug in her bedside fridge. But we don’t do that these days! All our modern weight loss diets are sensible lifestyle changes! Yeah, right. [OK, I was going to link there to one of those "medically-supervised very low calorie diets" which is all meal replacement shakes all the time, but decided against it. They don't need any more clicks and you don't need to see any more vile shakes.]
There’s thousands of other topics to look up the archives, and it’s a great internet timewaster research tool.
Wow, it’s been a while. A lot’s been going on, but at the same time nothing much, you know what I mean? I’ve been getting more and more tired and distracted and having some distressing memory problems, amongst other things.
After Rachel at The F Word posted a brilliant series of posts on hypothyroidism (Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6), I finally got it together to compile a list of the symptoms I’ve been having (and blaming on various different things), and whaddya know, a match for hypothyroid. Except I can’t tell for 100% sure yet because the pathology lab is being an ass about actually testing my FT3 and FT4 levels despite my doctor telling them to do so, at my behest. Their reasoning? “As the TSH (Thyroid Stimulating Hormone) is normal, we see no benefit in testing the other stuff.” Frustrating. This lab uses an outdated range of 0.3-5.0, and in other countries the top end of the range is being lowered to 3.0 and even 1.5 for some. Even a rather conservative endocrinologist in this town, who has some of his lecture notes published on his website, states that a TSH of 2.0 or above is hypothyroid if symptoms are present. Which they are, and my TSH was 2.0 last time we checked. And thyroid antibodies are present, if a little under the lab range. And I came back alarmingly positive for thyroid inflammation. A bunch of other glandular stuff I got checked also came back with markers pointing to a thyroid and/or pituitary problem.
But my GP, while excellent in many respects, is not terribly cluey about thyroid problems and seems extremely dubious that I have anything wrong going on because my TSH is “normal”, despite all the other signs and symptoms. Reading around the web, this seems to be quite the problem amongst doctors – the sole reliance upon TSH as a diagnostic for thyroid problems – and is causing a lot of people to go undiagnosed or undertreated and have a resultant poor quality of life.
I encourage you to go read Rachel’s posts on hypothyroidism and do some further research, if you think you may have a thyroid problem. The symptoms are a pretty close match with all the things doctors love to blame on being fat, and especially on being a fat woman: being fat (duh); fatigue; depression and anxiety; wonky periods (if female); joint pain; foot pain (including plantar fascitis); disordered sleep/apnoea; abnormal blood sugar; high cholesterol, and many more. It can even be mis-diagnosed as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, diabetes, kidney failure, PCOS, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic mental illness [*], etc. Left untreated, hypothyroidism can cause some of those serious conditions, as well as heart problems. And the main culprit is lack of understanding about the TSH lab range and what it can and can’t signal. I’ve come across a case study from a psychiatrist who has on several occasions tested people in psychiatric wards with severe depression and several suicide attempts, running a full thyroid panel and finding that while the TSH was in range the FT3 and FT4 levels of these patients were severely deficient. They were well enough to go home after getting thyroid replacement therapy. OK, I don’t mean to scare anyone, really, just illustrate that this is something a lot of doctors seems to know jack shit about.
Diabetes is the popular kid with medical professionals these days, and I often wonder how many fat people have been misdiagnosed and are subsequently receiving only band-aid treatment for their real problem. According to the statistics, hypothyroidism is actually far more prevalent than diabetes and far more underdiagnosed. And I wonder just how much undiagnosed and undertreated thyroid conditions contribute to the correlation between “obesity” and poor health. (Or any other number of conditions that fat people don’t get treated for because some doctors are too busy telling them to lose weight and everything will be fine.)
There is a lot of information on hypothyroidism on the web, and it can be difficult to sort out. And honestly, I reckon the F Word posts are some of the best balanced and researched. Here are some other sites I’ve looked at and my comments:
- Thyroid.about.com – there’s some useful information here if you can ignore the weight loss crap that’s prominent on the front page.
- Stop the Thyroid Madness – it’s very pro-Armour/natural thyroid, but it does have some interesting information on conditions associated with hypothyroidism, such as adrenal fatigue, and explains more about why TSH alone is a poor diagnostic.
- Thyroid-Disease.co.uk – a lot of info specifically for UK people, and some “alternative” stuff I’d personally ignore, but there are a few papers with comprehensive bibliographies and references from peer-reviewed and respected publications, which might help convince some doctors
- Thyroid Patient Advocacy UK – See previous.
- Thyroid Australia – You have to become a member to see a lot of content, but you can get some good info.
Regarding Armour/natural thyroid, the most sensible information I’ve seen has come from pharmacists (as is often the case): Some people do well on the synthetic T4 alone, others need a T3/T4 combo, and others still do best with natural thyroid, and in all cases it’s what relieves your symptoms that should guide your treatment. And make sure the pharmacist educates you on how to store your medication properly.
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[*] And people with some of these conditions also often have a hard time convincing doctors there’s something wrong, too.
