fattypatties

This month, I am participating in a ReVolution! -- Every Monday in January I plan to write a blog post here about my life and how Health at Every Size℠ has changed my life for better. This is the fourth installment of five.

HEALTH AT EVERY SIZE℠ AND THE LIFESTYLE POLICE --
(OR WHY HEATH AT EVERY SIZE℠ IS IMPORTANT TO PEOPLE OF ALL SIZES)

John Kennedy did implement the President's Council on Physical Fitness, which offered students rewards for various achievements in phys ed. I remember winning badges for things like long-jumping and running 100 yards (I had the second best time in my school for a girl in 11th grade). But there was not a lot of rhetoric connecting the physical fitness program with specific diseases and the question of public health. Since the 1970s, "fitness" has become more and more about policing behavior and personal responsibility, not about the joy of movement or the achievement of milestones.

What shifted in the 1970s with the physical fitness craze that led to the 1980s shift into funding lifestyle programs rather than prevention programs, was a fundamental understanding of health. The Baby Boomers seemed to have got it into their heads (as a group) that they could control their health. Jogging became a national past-time. Gym memberships rose. The belief that it was a good idea to do some exercise every day for general well-being became a quest to ward off all diseases. If we just ate the right foods, got the right amount of exercise, didn't smoke, didn't drink, and was conscious about nutrition, we SHOULD NOT GET SICK. EVER!!!

Of course, what that meant is that the poor souls who do get sick are suspected. Catch a cold, you didn't build up your immune system. Had an accident, you didn't stretch well or warm up in exercising. Contracted cancer, well it was obviously something you ate. Have a heart condition, your diet must be laden with, well depending upon who is speaking, too much fat, too little of the right kind of fat or if you eat correctly then it must be your Type A personality.

What started off as a system of promoting general well-being became a blame-the-victim game that has basically divided the population into haves and have-nots of health.

And of course, couple this with fat prejudice (as well as other kinds of prejudice) and a ready-made excuse for bigotry is woven into the culture. Believe that all fat people are lazy, ugly or dirty (the usual bigoted indictments of "other" groups), that's okay, you just care about their health.

This mechanism is, of course, not limited to fat people. Everyone with lung cancer is suspected of smoking. Everyone with AIDS is suspected of sexual "perversion." Liver disease means you must have drank too much. And so forth.

The new part of that rhetoric is "costs" -- almost daily someone somewhere publishes a report that shows how much the bad habits of others are costing everyone.

At the heart of this rhetoric lies two assumptions that need to be examined:

1. We have control of our health.
   
   
   


2. We are personally responsible for our own health and no one else's.

I believe that these two assumptions are patently false, though each with a grain of truth (as most lies need in order to be believable).

It is true that we have influence over our health and if we do things to excess (including exercising too much or restricting our food intake and obsessing over it too much), we will hurt our bodies in the long run and as we get older in the short run. But we do not control our health in full.

One of the original fitness gurus, Jack LaLanne died last week at the age of 96. He live a long and exceptional life, but the fact is he still died. He didn't die healthy. He died. Of course, a lot of people are pointing to LaLanne's life as an example, but I suspect that genetics played a bigger role in his longevity than his supporters would like to admit.

Jim Fixx was one of the thought leaders in the fitness craze of the 70s. He was a well-known runner. He died while running at the age of 52 from a heart attack. In truth, given that heart disease ran in his family and his father died in his early 40s, Fixx may have added some years and even quality to his life through his running. But he died young just the same.

The point is that there are a huge number of factors that determine health: some are under one's influence, most are not. To decide that Jack LaLanne had the superior fitness program over Jim Fixx is to pretend that we are masters of more than we have a right to claim.

Who cost the health care system more? Fixx died young, supposedly sparing us from his old age and the care he would need. LaLanne needed heart valve surgery at age 95. Was he a burden to the system because he prolonged his life until his valve needed care? These are absurd questions, but they are the kinds of questions to which the lifestyle think and victim blaming of current rhetoric lead us.

That leads to why the second assumption is also bogus, but with a grain of truth. We live in our bodies and in those bodies only we know what it feels like. We know our pain and we know our joy in ways that no one else, even our most intimate of lovers can really know. We do owe ourselves care and loving ourselves is, in part, about taking care of ourselves.

But health is not singular. The air we breathe we share. The water we drink we share. Every plant and animal that becomes our food is affected by that air and water as well. We share the planet with bugs. Some of those bugs do us good and some of those bugs under specific circumstances do us ill. We like to think of our bodies are singular, but in fact we have colonies of other creatures who share our body and some of those creatures like the bacteria that lives in our intestinal tracks are necessary for us to function. Where do we end and the bugs begin? Where do we end and the air begins? Where do we end and the water begins?

Carl Sagan once wrote, "We are star stuff." We are the elements and we will return to the elements. All matter does.

This inter-connectivity means that some health problems are better solved at a level different than the individual. Politics, pollution, climate, economics, personal relationships, stranger relationships, historical and sociological contexts affect our health and well-being.

We cannot calculate the cost of the contraction of disease without making some really big and fallacious assumptions. We are assuming that whatever condition or disease that is being examined is preventable and that the incident of that disease could have been prevented. This is always an estimate and it is always speculation.

Calculating the cost divides us and presents some of us as a burden to others of us.

And calculating the cost assumes a set price for our health that is never negotiable or questionable. Health "costs" do not occur spontaneously out of the mouth of some god somewhere. "Costs" are "charged" by people for services supposedly delivered to other people. Want to reduce costs? Charge less or pay less for medical services.

So how does Health at Every Size ℠help us with this understanding of health and the current lifestyle police mentality that essentially want to fault and make victims pay for their "crimes" against the healthy.

The Association for Size Diversity and Health offer 5 Principles of HAES℠:

1. Accepting and respecting the diversity of body shapes and sizes.
   
   
   


2. Recognizing that health and well-being are multi-dimensional and that they include physical, social, spiritual, occupational, emotional, and intellectual aspects.
   
   
   


3. Promoting all aspects of health and well-being for people of all sizes.
   
   
   


4. Promoting eating in a manner which balances individual nutritional needs, hunger, satiety, appetite, and pleasure.
   
   
   


5. Promoting individually appropriate, enjoyable, life-enhancing physical activity, rather than exercise that is focused on a goal of weight loss.

Accepting that people are diverse is a good beginning. Jim Fixx was a different person from Jack LaLanne. Both of these men were a different person from my great-grandfather who lived to be 99 years old, weighed 300 pounds when he died and probably never ran a mile in his life (though I'm quite sure he did his share of physical labor on the farm).

Personally I'm glad the world is full of diversity. I'm easily bored and without the wonderful diversity among us, it would be a really boring place.

Health and well-being are multidimensional and we sometimes choose one thing over another. I like playing poker. But I hate second-hand smoke. Even so-called non-smoking poker rooms are full of smoke because they are rarely cut off from the rest of the casino. I could not play daily, but I enjoy it enough to take the smoke every once in awhile. The exposure is limited but I know it is damaging just the same. Life is full of dimensions and complexities and no one can really draw a straight line of cause and effect with most health-related experiences.

The principles laid out are simple. They suggest that promoting well-being should be about acceptance not creating restrictive and constrictive rules that probably will not have the intended impact.

At the heart of these principles is a belief that all people deserve to be given a chance to show what they are made of -- all people deserve dignity.

The lifestyle policing and cost analyses come from a position of power and control. They are not about good health but about passing the burden on to someone else. They are about blame.

So perhaps you think that because you are average size or smaller this is not an issue for you. Well, the lifestyle think is what drives health care costs. Pre-existing conditions are a brainchild of this way of thinking. Dropping your insurance when you get sick is "only right" in a world where people are to blame for their illnesses. More and more companies are demanding fitness tests of their employees. Better not get too many colds because your boss might decide you ate too much candy or didn't work out enough and compromised your immune system. He will be able to fire you because you are costing the company too much in labor costs and insurance costs for having that cold.

The really sad part of this myopic view of health is that the real problems of pollution, poverty and daily stress are not being addressed. By ignoring the real problems we are making them bigger. You may be worrying about losing weight today, but ignore pollution and global warming and your children may be worried about how to find food for you in your old age.

Adopting a Health at Every Size℠ view of the world can contribute to a broader understanding of health and the major factors that contribute to health as well as creating a more just and sound basis for addressing those factors. Allowing fat people (or any group) to be scapegoated in the name of cost-cutting and blaming will open the door to anyone being blamed for their illness or disability.

First They came... - Pastor Martin Niemoller

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists ,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

This month, I am participating in a ReVolution! -- Every Monday in January I plan to write a blog post here about my life and how Health at Every Size℠ has changed my life for better. This is the third installment of five.

HEALTH AT EVERY SIZE℠ AND GETTING OLDER


When I first decided in late 2000 to quit dieting once and for all, I was chronically ill with what I thought at the time was lupus (and have since learned was probably sub-clinical hypothyroidism). For the most part, these symptoms were chronic but not debilitating on a daily basis. I had flare-ups but had settled into routines that seemed to work. I had some sort of pain almost daily but usually dull pain and with regular exercise and eating good food and getting plenty of rest, I felt generally healthy.

I spent the first couple of years re-learning my hunger and satiation cues. I had dieted so much that I literally did not know when I was hungry or what my hunger felt like. In the past, I depended on outside cues to tell me when to eat and how much to eat. This was a process of mindful eating and, frankly, trial and error. I often waited too long at first, feeling ravenous when I finally sat down to eat and then finding I ate so fast that I was full long before I realized it. I slowed down my eating, learned to savor food and learned how to identify hunger before it was starvation.

In December 2002, I got pneumonia and became very weak. It was months before I could walk without gasping for air. I found a great program that started me working out in water with paddles and eventually I was doing 20 minutes on the treadmill and weight training in the gym. I became stronger and my metabolic health was excellent (blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, pulse rate, etc.). AND I didn't lose weight or gain weight.

By the Spring of 2004, I felt the healthiest I had in years. I was still dealing with arthritic symptoms and flare-ups but not as often and not as severe. When we went on the road in The Ample Traveler, I felt good and maintained that feeling for some time. I turned 47 that summer.

It was easy to believe in Health at Every Size℠ under those conditions. When I wrote Taking Up Space with Carl, I was confident and had no doubt that this was a better way of living than the 30 years I spent fighting my body's natural tendency to be bigger.

I sprang my foot in 2004 and had nerve damage that left me walking with a cane, but even that didn't slow me down or shake my confidence. I had so much experience with chronic conditions at that point, that it became just one more thing to care for with my body--an annoyance, but my view of health had long since changed into an understanding of relative health rather than a set criteria. So I felt I was the healthiest I could be with chronic conditions.

Then I turned 50 and the "other biological clock" for women started. I became menopausal, I started having metabolic problems and I went through a rough period with Health at Every Size℠.

The same conditions that are supposedly connected to fatness are connected to aging, especially in women going through "the change." I began to doubt my choice to not diet and spent many days thinking through the whole process. I felt alone in some ways because I had fat-acceptance friends who were talking about how healthy they were and I knew I was not healthy. In fact, it felt like at the time that I was turning into the poster child for all the conditions that they were bragging they didn't have. For a while I kept quiet. I didn't write here and I didn't reach out. I didn't diet, but my reason for not trying to lose weight was that I was thoroughly convinced that it would not work, that I wouldn't lose any weight. I had been down that road and it made me sick and I didn't want to get any sicker. But I wasn't sure about the new road and whether I'd feel better.

I did reach out to some private groups eventually and I began to see that fat women who were going through menopause and who had type 2 diabetes and other metabolic problems were using HAES℠ to help them deal with their conditions. I started reading about these conditions and discovered that there were strong indications that the dieting I had done for 30 years as well as the aging process probably contributed to those conditions.

Let me be clear about another aspect of this. It didn't help that I had little access to health care due to no insurance and it didn't help that I am an underpaid teacher who has to work several jobs to supplement my income in order to be able to teach. Stress doesn't help. Stigma doesn't help. Fear doesn't help. Isolation doesn't help.

So about 2 years ago, upon realizing that many of my health problems, including the chronic conditions that started in 1997, were probably from hypothyroidism,I had another epiphany like the one I had in 2000. I had been misdiagnosed because of the societal and cultural attitudes about fat. In 1997, when I first got sick, I had chronic fatigue. I couldn't sleep well. I caught one infection after another. I was oversensitive to light and had rashes from exposure. I had an abnormal ANA count. I felt like I had the flu all the time with my joints and muscles aching. It wasn't hard to understand why the doctor thought it was arthritic and sent me to a rheumatologist, who, like most specialists, diagnosed me within her paradigm. Thus, lupus.

Except there was one symptom that I ignored and my doctors ignored: I gained 90 pounds in about 6 months. At the time, my paradigm and my doctors' paradigm was calories in/calories burned. I was eating less because I was too sick to eat much, but I went from someone who rode a bicycle everywhere she went (lived 3 miles from school, so at least 6 miles on school days, probably about 30 miles a week total) to someone who was bed-ridden. It seemed obvious that was the reason for the weight gain.

However, rapid weight gain is a symptom of hypothyroidism and no one even explored the possibility at the time. Hypothyroidism mimics lots of other conditions, especially so-called "check-box" conditions like lupus (positive diagnosis for lupus comes from presence of 4 out of 11 symptoms plus elimination of other possibilities).

So as I face an aging body, I've come to realize that my aging process is affected by several factors: hysterectomy (not ovaries) at age 38, untreated hypothyroidism, and years of yo-yo weight gain and pushing my metabolism and immune system to its limits.

In the past year, armed with this new understanding of HAES℠, one that doesn't depend upon me being perfectly healthy to demonstrate its effectiveness, I have become more pro-active in my health care.

First, I bought a wrist cuff to monitor my blood pressure. This has resulted in a significant reduction of my blood pressure meds and a personal realization that my blood pressure and pulse are heightened when I go to the doctor. I take my basal temperature in the morning to monitor the hypothyroidism. I check my blood sugar often. I am faithful in taking my medications and supplements, including menopausal support. I use assistive devices without hesitation because they improve my stamina and overall health.

And most importantly, I continue to practice intuitive eating and try to move my body as best I can. I do not diet. I do not weigh. I do not worry about my body size. The truth is that under thyroid treatment I think I may have lost a little weight (judging from how my clothes fit), but that is an effect of taking care of my thyroid and not intentional.

I am not the spring chicken I once was and I am angry that much of my health was taken from me by cultural standards and socialization that has made my aging more difficult. But the answer cannot lie in now buying into that thinking. I believe with all my heart that if I tried to lose weight now, I would make matters worse. I believe with all my heart that dieting is not good for the health. I believe with all my heart that I dieted my way into disability and early aging.

I believe with all my heart that if I had known and practiced Health at Every Size℠ when I was younger I would be a much healthier 50+ woman.

I tell my story often because I hope it serves as a lesson for others. I told Sarah on the podcast this week that I was excited to see so many young people involved with fat acceptance because they might be spared the years of dieting and the effects of that dieting.

I think that history will look back on this period as barbaric when it comes to dieting and weight loss. We have abundance and resources and instead of celebrating and sharing that abundance, we have created generations of people afraid of food, afraid of our own bodies.

I have come to realize how strong my body is. I have abused this body and fought this body for years and it perseveres and even improves with love and care. As I have researched what dieting does to a body, I have come to realize that I could be dead now from many of the things I did in the name of "getting more healthy."

So let me affirm, right here and right now, that I may not be the usual poster-girl for HAES℠, I should be, because HAES℠ has saved my life and has made me stronger. Health is relative and has a multitude of factors contributing to one's daily constitutions. But given what I've had to fight and what barriers I've faced and what damage I've staved off, I am healthy at my size.

This month, I am participating in a ReVolution! -- Every Monday in January I plan to write a blog post here about my life and how Health at Every Size℠ has changed my life for better. This is the second installment of five.

CORRELATIONS, CAUSES AND EFFECTS

So a lesson in the modern scientific method before I get personal:

The news media loves to report about scientific studies in absolute terms. Such and such "causes" cancer or diabetes or "fill-in-the-blank-scary-disease-or-condition." Most scientific studies do not purport to establish such a strong or absolute relationship. In fact, NO SINGLE STUDY CAN EVER ESTABLISH CAUSE AND EFFECT. Here is why:

Only in rare cases is the establishment of cause and effect so solid that it can be stated in an absolute. However, science can help make a case for or against cause and effect by applying the scientific method. If enough studies are done using solid scientific methodology, then a very strong case can be made that one thing causes another thing. But three conditions have to be satisfied in order to make that case:

The "cause" has to occur in time before the "effect."

This may seem obvious, but establishing a time line is more difficult than it may appear. Just because something was observed in time before something else doesn't mean it occurred before. It just means a human paid attention to it. In medicine and health this can be particularly difficult because when a condition gets to the point of diagnosis it probably has been around for a while.

But this still remains one of the three criteria for making the case for cause and effect, so many things in health are never going to be established as anything more than related to each other.


A change in the "cause" must be met with a consistent and significant change in the "effect."

This is called correlation. It is probably the simplest and easiest criteria to establish in cause and effect because of the advances made in statistics in the 20th century. Basically, this relationship has to be tested with a sufficient enough data sample to produce results that cannot be explained by mere coincidence or random chance. So it has to be repeatedly demonstrated (which is why no one study would ever be able to solidly establish cause and effect) and that demonstration must be shown to actually be testing what it claims to test.

Small sample sizes, poor measurements or bad data collection means that correlations are not established. Data quality is very important. This includes how questions are posed. When money is involved (and it is always involved), one should take extra care to review how data collection occurred because this is where bias can be seen most often. Throwing out data that doesn't match, skewing questions and measuring techniques towards a particular conclusion and other types of biases can undermine the case made for correlation.


Once the first two criteria are established there must be NO OTHER EXPLANATION for what is being observed

That means that all other explanations should be considered and certainly that is the best reason why no one study or even a group of studies can "prove" cause and effect. All other explanations must be explored. This includes explanations about which the originators of the study can't or didn't think when they did the study.

Alternative explanations are the meat of science. It is where the debate occurs and out of it is how useful things get discovered and created. But it takes time and money to do this right, so this is where most things get subverted.

Each one of these conditions is necessary to establish a case for cause and effect. NONE of these things are singularly sufficient to establish a case for cause and effect. Yet day in and day out the news media uses the word "cause" when reporting scientific studies.

Why would news media so consistently get it wrong? Well, because, for the most part, instead of hiring a science journalist with a strong background in whatever field of science the news story comes, who can critically read the study and write intelligently about it, they just copy and paste press releases from research institutions. Often it is verbatim. So why would research institutions use the word "cause" so easily? Because, again, the person working in the public relations office is not concerned with science as much as they are with further funding and the word "cause" is often more exciting than the phrase "correlated with."

Cause is sexy. Cause sounds like a big discovery. Cause means something important has occurred with this study.

And, of course, there is also the problem in health of when do we move forward even if we can't establish cause. Epidemiology is the use of demographic information (prevalence and incidence of disease) to see patterns in diseases that allow health care workers to act effectively even if a cause and effect hasn't been firmly established. This works especially well with communicable diseases that are airborne or water-born because cutting off and quarantining the patient or the water source may in fact stop the spread of disease even if no one knows exactly which virus or bacteria is causing what. But there are definite limits to epidemiological methodologies. It does not work as well with diseases and conditions that have multiple factors.

What all this means is that you and I as both health care and media consumers have to be especially vigilant in receiving this information.

So what does this have to do with my life with HAES℠?

Before I understood these things, like many others in our society, I accepted what doctors and news media told me about my health and well-being. I figured that the system was basically honestly trying to help.

I have since learned that to be healthy I need to practice a healthy bit of skepticism. So short of becoming a biologist or spending all my waking free time researching this information, what can I do to ensure my own health?

This is my answer: Trust My Body!

Yep. And that was a big request from someone who spent a good 30 years trying to live up to an ideal that didn't fit my body. That was a big request from someone who's body is now broken from those years of trying. But I stand by it.

Science is useful but it is NOT THE ULTIMATE TRUTH. Science is a tool and like all tools, it can be used for good or for evil. Like all tools, it is only as good as the person's hands in which it resides. Like all tools, it is not perfect and can and will be improved through human effort.

Each of us has been issued a physical presence. This is a remarkable thing we have. It takes us places. It interacts with it's environment with or without our awareness. It is sensitive to and gives warning of danger. It feels pleasure as well as pain. It generally knows what it needs when it needs it and that need may or may not make sense rationally.

Health at Every Size℠ is an approach that has much scientific support, most notably, Linda Bacon's study that compared dieting versus non-dieting approaches. But like all science, Health at Every Size℠ should be studied with the skepticism and scrutiny that makes good science. In my own research, I have found that the relationship between health and size doesn't hold up to that skepticism and scrutiny well.

However, I am an advocate for Health at Every Size℠ for more than scientific reasons. My body clicks with this approach. When I was constantly dieting, I become sicker and, frankly, crazier with each dieting experience. There was no peace between me and my body. In the 10 years since I have been practicing HAES℠, I have discovered a trust in my body that has served me well. I don't fight it and even on days when I am ill and don't have the physical strength to be my most productive, I know that my body knows best.

So I invite you to learn to trust your body as well. It is a lifelong journey that begins with a simple premise: Only I know what I feel. But I assure you it is a better way to live.

Previous installments:
1. DIETING MY WAY INTO DISABILITY

This month, I am participating in a ReVolution! -- Every Monday in January I plan to write a blog post here about my life and how Health at Every Size℠ has changed my life for better. This is the first installment of five.

DIETING MY WAY INTO DISABILITY


For the majority of my life, Mondays were the start day. Every diet, exercise or personal improvement kick I tried started on a Monday. Monday was a day of atonement for the weekend.

Don't get me wrong. I was not someone who blew the diet on most weekends. No, when I put my mind to it, I stuck to the project. If I had never regained the weight I've lost on diets, I would have disappeared several times over by now. My problem was never "will-power." Almost every weight loss effort I did ended with illness. I would be working hard and losing weight and then I would come down with a kidney infection or low potassium or pneumonia. OR I would get very close to the goal weight and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't lose the last little bit.

So with each successive attempt, I got more dysfunctional. I tried laxatives, diuretics and diet pills to help with the last little bit. My body would rebel and start gaining. I've gained weight eating nothing but celery and grapefruit.

I get a kick out of stupid projects like Super Size Me where the person tries to prove that eating nothing but fill-in-the-blank will lead to all sorts of symptoms. I ate so many lemons in a 4 week period one time that my face turned bright red and I had to take cortisone shots to get the inflammation down. I ate so many carrots one time that my finger and toe nails turned orange.

Then I turned 40 and nothing I did made me lose weight. My last few diet attempts were extremely discouraging because I was starving myself and over-exercising and not losing weight. I had yo-yo'd so many times that my survivor abilities were honed to perfection. I could subsist on virtually no food at all.

I suspect my story is not that unusual. I suspect that this is the plight of someone like me whose genetic make-up is determined to survive. My non-smoking older relatives have all been fat and have all lived well into their 80s and beyond. My great-grandfather weighed 300 pounds when he died. He was 99-years-old.

I'm what my husband calls "farm-fat," hard working-salt-of-the-earth fat people who need the extra muscle/fat mass because they work hard at daily chores. I suspect that if I had lived in a fat neutral world I would have accepted this early on and I would be a lot healthier today. Probably not as fat, but still fatter than the average.

But I didn't grow up in that world. I grew up in a world that demanded I lose weight from the time I was eleven years old. With puberty, I put on 20 pounds and that is when the panic began. I attended Weight Watchers at age 12. My yo-yo dieting started early and went on for nearly 30 years.

My message, which I tried to convey in our book, is that I dieted my way into disability.

Let me say that again: I am DISABLED TODAY BECAUSE of MY DIETING HISTORY.

I think this is important to say because the prevailing message is that dieting will spare you from disability and chronic illness. But my metabolic problems occurred first and then the weight came on. (see next week's entry for a discussion of cause and effect).

Health at Every Size℠ is an approach that emphasizes health not weight. Weight or BMI is a poor indicator of health with little medical or scientific support. At the beginning of this century, I consciously gave up dieting and weighing myself. I threw out the scale and have only allowed myself to be weight 3 times in the past 10 years and only paid attention to what I weighed once. I started on a journey to eat when I was hungry and stop eating when I was full (some times called "intuitive eating"). I started moving for the fun of it rather than to lose weight. Judging from my clothes, I have not gained or lost significant weight during that time.

The biggest benefit has been the time I have for other things. During the past 10 years, I have finished my Ph.D., wrote a memoir, made several films, co-produced a radio show, ran 3 different companies and taught at a Community College. Mondays are a renewal day for me still, but it is a day when I look back on things I accomplished the week before and things I want to do this week. NOT a day of regrets or self-loathing.

Am I healthier? Yes and no. It turns out I've done a lot of damage. I got sick in 1997 with what I thought was lupus and what I now believe was hypothyroidism. Before HAES℠ I had good days and bad days. After HAES℠ I also have good days and bad days. Turning 50 was not a good time for me. I got all the fun menopausal, hormonal, post-50 metabolic pain-in-the-butt challenges outlined in the textbook and, of course, had to re-work through all the issues of weight and comfort-in-my-own-skin.

But this I believe with all my heart: If I had not found HAES℠, I would be dead by now.

Because of HAES℠,I have approached my health problems as health problems, not "lifestyle, self-blame" problems and they are slowly getting solved. And I remind myself that many thinner counterparts who are over 50 experience the same challenges I do. It is called aging.

So, I may not be the poster girl for HAES℠, but I am a believer. And I hope that anyone reading this will consider this way of life instead of the yo-yo life I've lived. I suspect I won't live to be 99 years old like my great-grandfather because of the ways in which I fell prey to societal beliefs about weight and health. I grieve this often and have a lot of anger about it. But I do know this. I will live longer for having given up those beliefs.

I wish you long-life and health. Stay tuned next week for more on my Life with HAES℠.

So a lot has been said about being fat and having everyone in the world feel like they can give you health advice, but there is a flip side to this that drives me a little crazy as well. Because they believe my health is their business, they apparently also believe that their health is my business.


So today, in a computer lab, about 5 minutes after I met a woman (and was nice enough to give her a recommendation for getting her mother a mobility scooter and told her about how Modest Needs helped me get my scooter), I found myself having to be polite while she told me not only about all the weight she has lost and gave me the website for her doctor's herbal products, but as she described to me her symptoms, including vaginal itching. Really, you've known me for five minutes and you are going to tell me about THAT?!?!

There was a definite language/cultural barrier as well, so I was at a loss as to how to explain to her that I've written a book about fat acceptance and that I don't want to lose weight and so forth.

Just to really put a cherry on the proverbial sundae, she concluded her disclosure with the declaration that God had told her to tell me all this. So now I'm supposed to regard vaginal itching as a message from God.

I honestly had nothing to say at that point. I just smiled and nodded and wished I was any where else in the world and wondered what star was sitting in what house that made me attractive to all the nuts of the world today.

A couple of quick updates. First, because my mom has never had to take higher than 150mcg for her hypothyroidism, I kind of assumed that I was somewhere near a maximum dose. I have since discovered that I am not. So the most likely fix is that I need meds adjusted.

The other bit of good news is the doctor's office called and I can see the doctor tomorrow (Nov 5) instead of having to wait another week. It takes a bit for meds to kick in so the sooner I can up the dosage the sooner I'll know if it is going to be sufficient.

I'm very disappointed/frustrated that I haven't found the maximum replacement level for me yet. But again, I have a lot of hope that this may be a core problem and it is fixable.

Thanks to all both here and on FaceBook who have offered support. It really has helped. To all of you who are struggling/have struggled with this I feel the connection.

I have the distinct impression that in a fat neutral world, this would be something that gets more attention and treatment. But since everyone JUST KNOWS that all weight gain is due to the eating and exercise habits of the person, conditions like hypothyroidism that affect weight are ignored.

BTW, this works on the other end as well. I've known cancer survivors who are complimented to no end about their weight loss even though it is one of the earliest symptoms of some cancers. Sort of reminds me of the "beautiful illness" of consumption (tuberculosis) where 19th century people admired the glow this horrible disease gave to the skin.

In any case, I go to the doctor tomorrow and hopefully will find some balance. I'm so far behind in my work and I find the fatigue is frustrating, especially have sleeping 11 hours and taking a day off (which I essentially did yesterday). One day at a time seems to be the only way to handle it all for now.

I've been in denial for a while now and for my own sanity I need to say something out loud.

Since March of 1997, I've been sick to some degree or another. I don't think there has been a day that has gone by where I have not experienced pain to some degree though some days are better than others and some years have been better than others.

I'm tough. I don't like being sick. I don't like admitting I'm sick. I don't like thinking about being sick. A part of me thinks, even after 13 years, that I can beat this.

Being fat complicates this. Getting old complicates this.

This culture is full of misinformation and blame-the-victim mentality and even though I've spent a great deal of time learning how to deconstruct that misinformation, I, like the rest of us, have some of it living in my brain anyway.

Now I've found out that I may have been misdiagnosed and that I may still be under-treated.

In 1997, I got sick at a party that several other people got sick at as well. We don't know if we all caught a virus or if the food was bad. The other guests had gastric symptoms for about 24 hours. Three days later I was cramping severely and dehydrated from several days of vomiting and other gastric symptoms and had to go to the emergency room and put on an IV. I didn't get well. I've not been well since.

The rest of the year was a series of doctors visits, lab tests and various treatments that eventually got me back to functionality. I managed to make-up the incomplete work and go back to school and actually finished my MA and PhD faster than many of my cohort. But I remained sick.

My husband is probably the only person in the world who knows how sick I've been. He has been my fearless care-taker and protector. For this he is and will remain my hero.

But I am acutely aware that there is so much more that I could have done with that 13 years than I've managed to accomplish. There is so much more I want to do.

I thought I had lupus. I met the criteria. And the preliminary tests sent me to a rheumatologist. Like mechanics and engineers, doctors have a tendency to diagnose within their specialties. I now know that I probably should have went to and endocrinologist. I have come to believe that I've been suffering from hypothyroidism during these 13 years. The lab tests didn't start being positive until 3 years ago, but I've had symptoms for years. Symptoms that have been misinterpreted.

I've slowly been dosed upwards on thyroid medication since being put on it three years ago. I'm back to showing all the symptoms. I feel like I'm walking through jello mentally. I'm cold even when it's over 100 outside. My hair is falling out (this is my most vain loss -- I once had very thick hair and now I'm balding). I'm exhausted when I get up from 9 or 10 hours sleep, when I can sleep. I have what I call energy dumps, where it feels like all my energy leaves my body instantly. I sometimes have pulled over to the side of the road to "nap" because of these dumps. My skin is dry in weird places (like my eyebrows or my finger knuckles). I'm irritable and feel raw with emotions. I'm fighting off weird infections almost weekly. In October alone, I had cold sores in my mouth, a UTI, a boil, and a head cold. My teeth and gums are getting worse. In short, I feel like all systems in my body are falling apart.

Please don't respond to this by giving me dieting advice or the latest alternative treatment. I've researched and I am capable of figuring the terrain out for myself. I just need to say out loud the I'm suffering. There are things I know I could pursue but there is no money to do them. I'm stuck with low-cost health care and therefore specialists and alternative medicines are beyond my reach at the moment.

This is a vicious circle -- I am finding it hard to work and yet I need to work to make enough money to pay for the treatments I need to be able to work.

I'm tired of being sick and sick of being tired.

I will probably write more about this because in the past writing has been my lifeline. Maybe I shouldn't be so public with this but somehow it is more real to put it out here on the net than to keep in my personal journals. So here it is. This is where I am today.

I do want to keep the silver lining in mind, however. If indeed this is thyroid deficiency (or related endocrine issues like hypothalamus and/or adrenals), it is treatable. Lupus is not treatable in the sense of actually changing the disease state. It is going to take some time and testing and money, but there are plenty of people running around quite happily and quite healthfully with hypothyroidism. I resent that this went on for so long without realization of the problem, especially since I gained 100 pounds in 1997 and everyone, including me, but also including doctors who should have suspected something, just assumed it was because I went from riding a bike 20 miles a week to being bedridden. Subclinical hypothyroidism should have been obvious in retrospect. But now that it is obvious, there are treatments.

I go to the clinic on November 10 to get latest blood tests. Hopefully we can figure this out and I can get my life back. Now that would be wonderful.

I used to want to change my body desparately. I knew exactly what I wanted every part of my body to measure. I mean every part -- not just bust, waist and hips, but neck, thighs, calves, wrists, ankles. I weighed myself daily and I measured myself weekly for a good portion of my life. Buried in my mind somewhere is an encyclopedia of the calories, carbs, fat grams and other nurtritional measurements of thousands of food items. I was meticulous. I was disciplined. I was often successful, losing inches and pounds.



But every time I got close to a goal weight/measurement, something went wrong with my health. At first, it was just colds or electrolyte imbalances. Each successive loss and gain, however, led to more and more serious ailments. I now know I dieted my way into disability. I permanently messed up my metabolic and endocratic systems. I don't have a lot of science to demonstrate that statement but I do have personal experience and I believe it to be so.

So 10 years ago I stopped trying. I do not allow myself to be weighed at the doctor. I threw away all my tape measures. I do not measure my food. I spent two years learning to know my own hunger cues and my satiation cues. I learned to do what should be natural. Eat when hungery. Stop when full.

After I turned 50 it got harder. Before then I didn't have a lot of the metabolic problems that are associated with being larger. I had health problems but they were not typical ones for someone of my size. Then I was diagnosed with a bunch of stuff all at one time. I wondered if I was wrong. Maybe there was a way to diet my way to health and beauty. But I rethought it all over again and came to two conclusions that do have some scientific support:

1. It is far more likely that the stress of stigmatization for being fat and disabled contributed to the metabolic disorders;
and

2. It is also possible that the fact that the hyperthyroidism went undiagnosed and untreated for 10 years also contributed to metabolic
syndrome.

I have ample personal experience that suggests dieting will not help me.

So after re-thinking it again, I came to the same conclusion I did 10 years ago:

I LOVE MYSELF JUST AS I AM.

I LOVE MY FAT BODY.

I LOVE MY SICK BODY.

I LOVE MY DISABLED BODY.

I LOVE MY MENOPAUSAL BODY.

I LOVE MY AGING BODY.

I am not and never will be ideal.


I'm posting this on Love Your Body Day.


I encourage you to think about what the world would be like if we all loved ourselves and were comfortable in our own skin. Think about how much time we would have to do productive and fun things. Think about how much love we would have for others. Think about how much money we would save not buying things meant to make us ideal.


This week has also been promoted as "Fat Free Talk Week" by the Tri-Delt Sorority. I have not really been willing to participate in this effort. I applaud the intent. I lived the experiences that they are trying to change. I exercised way beyond reason. I ate less than 800 calories a day for over 2 years at one point in my life. I abused diet pills and laxatives in efforts to lose weight and reach for the elusive thin body. I know how much of my life was wasted and I've paid a high price.


But I cannot support their efforts and I think that it is appropriate as I contemplate Love Your Body Day to explain why.


I am fat. I look fat. I am what I feared and what many people with eating disorders fear. Avoiding talking about fatness or fat is not going to solve the problem. The problem is NOT that fat is bad. The problem is that trying to be something you are not is bad. So while sorority sisters tell each other to love their average-sized bodies as they are by not talking about fat, what do their fatter sisters feel?


I have welcomed the support from eating disordered counselors and advocates in the fat acceptance movement because I do believe the stigma placed upon fat bodies contributes to the convuluted relationship most women have with food, health and their bodies. But the liason has always been and will probably continue to be a tense one. Many eating disorder counselors spend lots of time with clients helping them to see they are NOT FAT. In other words, the reassurance is that they do not look and never will look like me. They do not spend a lot of time with clients helping them to see that FAT IS OKAY. So it does not surprise me that an organization that is trying to stop eating disorders cannot see the inherent stigma is calling something "FAT FREE" asking students to refrain from statements like "I'm so fat."


Imagine how much howling and protest would be lodged against such an effort if sorority sisters were celebrating a "GAY FREE TALK WEEK" in which they were admonished to not talk about their sexuality in negative terms like "I'm so gay." To me this is tantemount to inviting white people to celebrate their whiteness by refraining from racial epithets aimed at each other.





So I encourage all the tri-Delts and all women (and men) to love their bodies and not to worry whether they are fat or thin or average or blue-eyed or brown-eyed or short or tall or whatever. There is NO IDEAL HUMAN BEING. There is NO IDEAL HEALTH.

There is only YOU and YOU ARE UNIQUE. Be who you are. Be the process. Be the journey. None of this will matter if you celebrate and grow and learn and blossom.

So I'm excited that there is a new resource on the web for People of Size.

And I'm very exited to be blogging there:

Why Are We Letting Michelle Obama Off So Easy?

I'm going to try to blog over there at least once a month.

I highly recommend the website.

Take the Pledge!

I Pledge:

* That I will not diet for one day, on May 6, International No Diet Day.
* Instead of trying to change my body to fit someone else's standards, I will accept myself just as I am.
* I will feed myself if I'm hungry.
* I will feel no shame or guilt about my size or about eating.
* I will think about whether dieting has improved my health and well-being or not.
* And I will try to do at least one thing I have been putting off "until I lose weight."

Signed,

Pattie Thomas

Help this video go viral by going to youtube and commenting and/or rating. This is an important documentary. We need to hear the voices of fat people in all media.

I rarely cross-post from my other blogs, but I wanted to tell as many people as possible about a great show I did this morning with Verria Kelly, the Good Health Coach.

Check out the details on Ample Ramblings.

The Obamas are following the Clintons down the road of Health Care Reform and while I had hopes that it was not true this time and I've been impressed with how much further they have gotten, I'm have a feeling of deja vu all over again. I fear that if the stalled health insurance reform does ever get restarted again, it will end up being exactly what the monied interest in health care want: mandatory purchase of health care without or with few restrictions on profit-making at the expense of our health.

But what really is giving me the willies is last week's "Let's Move" campaign "targeting childhood obesity." Does anyone remember the timing of the "Shape Up America"? There stood Hilary Clinton standing behind C. Everett Koop near the end of 1994 while he announced that what America's health care needed the most was for doctors to tell their patients to lose weight like no doctor before 1994 had ever suggested to a patient that weight loss was a good idea. Wait. 1994! Hilary Clinton! Could it be that this was a smoke screen to take the focus off her and her husband's failure to fight the monied interest and give Americans a universal health care system?

Now we have a stalled health care reform that has been watered down to create the same racket we have with car insurance, except that living is something we have a right to and driving a car is a privilege (remember the Declaration of Independence? LIFE, liberty and the pursuit of happiness). So either way, I smell smoke and I see mirrors -- don't look over here where deals have been made with the profiteers. Let us misdirect your attention to the horrors of fatness. Except this time, we'll add the good old, "do it for the kids" line and that way you don't have to worry about the fact that after 16 years of telling Americans to diet and most Americans trying to diet, we still have fat people. What's worse, we managed to kill a bunch of people from the drugs and surgeries in the name of losing that fat along the way.

My more liberal friends are taking a gentle approach. They see something well-meaning-ed in Michelle Obama's motherhood and are gently asking her to consider alternatives. I'm not so inclined to let her off that easily. There's too much data and too much history and too much context to just assume that she is miguided. This is the same ole, same ole and I think it's time to shout from the roof tops: "The Emperor and (the Emperess, in this case) have NO CLOTHES!"

But I don't want to stop there. I do not like negative politics and I do not want to echo the Nopublicans in their negativity about everything these days. So on the off chance that Michelle Obama is sincere in her desire to make life better for the next generation and the generations to come, let me put 7 practical and feasible alternatives on the table that would be better at improving the lives of our children than putting them on a diet and making them exercise to the point that they forget how much fun it is to just play:

7 PRACTICAL IDEAS THAT WOULD MAKE LIFE BETTER FOR GENERATIONS TO COME

1. SAFER FOOD AND DRUGS

Our food system is superior in many ways, but the ever growing greed in food production is leading to more and more mishaps from contaminated food to preservatives that are bad for us to frankenfood to the lack of basic foods in poorer neighborhoods with less nutritious foods in their place. In fact, I suspect that many of the sins laid on the doorsteps of "obesity" have more to do with safety of our food than it does with how much we are consuming of it. In addition, more and more people are dying from their medications, including children. Reform at the FDA is needed and I haven't heard one word out of the administration regarding this.

2. SAFER PLAYGROUNDS AND STREETS

Children still grow up in areas where staying at home and watching television helps them live longer than being out in a playground or playing in the streets near where they live because it is dangerous to be in the streets. (Last time I checked, gunshot wounds or being assaulted were not good for your health.) Schools are closing earlier and earlier. In a world where ecommuting and working at home is more possible than ever, we are still insisting that the 9 to 5 work day is optimal and thus we have latchkey kids with no place to go and no safe adults to be near. This is not a matter of playing police. This is a matter of it takes a village to raise a child. Our communities are not child-oriented. They are profit-oriented. If we wanted to create a village where children could move, they would move. Children do not need to be told to play. When they are safe to do so, they move. And by the way, targeting fat kids is going to make this worse, not better. Bullying kids that are different is one of the ways that the streets are unsafe. Blaming fat kids for their health problems is going to fuel those differences and give ammunition to those bullies. In fact, it turns the federal government into one of those bullies.

3. STOP POSTPONING PAYING THE BILLS UNTIL THEY GROW UP

Deficit spending is putting a burden on the next generation and the ones after that. I'm not just talking about government debt. We had a major meltdown of the "credit industry" 2 years ago and our response was to patch it up and keep it. We have been sold a pack of lies about credit, especially long-term debt. Debt used to be something we entered into until the crops were harvested and then we paid it back with an eye on savings in bumper crop years. Now we are told it is okay to buy our toys on credit. The wake up call is that some day it has to be paid. We hit the snooze button instead of making the hard decisions. That has delayed the collapse of an unsustainable system, not fixed it or bailed it out. All of these things means that it is just going to be a bigger problem for our children. If we really loved our children we'd be re-examining this entire economic system and making some deep and abiding changes in our economy.

4. SPEAKING OF DEBT, GET RID OF BORROWING FOR STUDENTS

Nothing screams "I hate my kids" more than student debt. We put pressure on kids to go to school. We design jobs so that a high school education isn't good enough. Then we make it impossible for them to pay for that schooling without first putting themselves in debt. They leave the starting gate with a burden to carry. This burden makes them wage slaves, pure and simple. Now we are adding to this burden by making it impossible for them to finish the "4-year" degree in 4 years. Overcrowding and cutting back on teaching continues to create a system where students will have to borrow more to finish that degree.

5. SPEAKING OF EDUCATION, MAYBE TEACHING SOMETHING OF VALUE

Student debt isn't even the biggest problem in education. With the "No Child Left Behind" legislation we have made schools less about learning and more about test-taking. Our educational system is creating automaton sheeple, not critical thinking citizenry who question systems in order to improve them. If we really wanted life to be better for our kids we'd teach them how to think about their lives and the social systems within which they live so that they could improve things. Nothing belies the fear that adults have of their kids' brains than the way we do education and nothing points out the lie of "doing it for the children" than this fear. If we truly want them to have a better life than we have, then we should prepare them to be reflective thinkers instead of sheeple.

6. STOP STARVING THE CHILDREN

The real tragedy of the "Let's Move" campaign is the extent to which America's children still are suffering from malnutrition, starvation and lack of food security. Children are dying from lack of food and we are emphasizing starving the ones who have food? How crazy is that?!?

7. REAL UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE

It is long past the time for America to provide health care to its citizens. Children growing up under the "for-profit" health care system are not going to be as health as they would be if they were able to see a doctor without fear of breaking the family bank. There are plenty of preventative measures that will ensure they grow up health that have nothing to do with the size of their bodies that need to be available universally. The hodgepodge, committee-fied bills that are being "reconciled" in committee right now are not going to cut it without a public option. As long as health care is a "for-profit" enterprise, money is going to be more important than our children.

Let's be clear about some things:

I voted for Obama. I did not vote in 2000 or 2004 presidential elections because I saw no viable candidates for whom to cast my vote. I liked Obama's message of change and wanted to give him a try. I had hope that he might be different and I think there are some ways that he has been different.

But I am not as pleased as I hoped I would be and this latest campaign weakens my hope even more. This is nothing new. This is business as usual in Washington and all those things he said in his campaign about continuing down the path of business as usual will come true, even if it is cloaked in the language of change.

We pay a price for those things we believe that are not true. Taking public resources and emphasizing weight loss for children is going to have a heavy price tag. We are going to raise a generation who fear their own bodies, who stigmatize fatness and fat people and who will spend their adulthoods sorting out food issues instead of solving more important challenges. In addition, spending these public resources on this means that we take away resources from more important challenges facing us now. We pay now. They pay later.

We do need a change. The "Let's Move" campaign is not change.

Bevin Branlandingham wrote a beautiful piece on The Queer Fat Femme Guide to Life about her personal loss caused by Phen/Fen fiasco in the 1990s.

In a side note, I tried to find a study of iatrogenic problems with weight-loss drugs, which I suspect account for a lot of medical mishaps and this was all I could find.

Where is the outrage?

An extremely timely article from Slate regarding the complexities of stigma and health when it comes to fatness. Turns out there is ample evidence (pun intended) that stigmatizing a population may lead to the poorer health outcomes, co-morbidity and mortality associated with the so-called disease of "obesity." Can you say spurious? I know that you can. (HINT: stigma is the alcohol, fat is the water)

From the Slate Article:

If anti-fat bias can affect our bodies, then it's worth considering how an all-out war on obesity plays out in terms of public health. When we reach out to poor communities and educate them about the risks of being overweight, we are, in effect, exporting the weight stigma that happens to be most prevalent among rich, white people. Indeed, Rebecca Puhl says the reported prevalence of weight discrimination has increased by two-thirds since the mid-1990s, while media coverage of the "obesity epidemic" has quintupled over roughly the same interval. (Meanwhile, the U.S. diet industry has just about doubled its annual revenues—to nearly $60 billion.)

The bottomline is what many of us have been saying all along. Public Health Policy should be promoting HEALTH AT EVERY SIZE not a war on 2/3 of our population!

Everyone has limits. We have things that we are capable of doing and things we are not. Some of us can sing melodiously. Some of us have tin ears. Some of us can hit a baseball with a bat or a puck with a hockey stick or a golf ball with a club powerfully. Some of us cannot hit the broadside of a barn with a cannon.

I remind myself of this when I think of myself as person with disabilities. I often tell people I am no longer a talented walker or standing for long periods of time is not my best skill. It's funny. I have spoken and written publicly often about disabilities and mobility issues and accessibility, but I forget my own disabilities most of the time. I just don't think about it because I've developed habits that allow me to move around in the world. I don't think about it because I rarely test it.

In August, I got my real estate license. Suddenly, I am now faced with these limitations. Showing properties is a physical activity. There is no getting around it. It requires walking and standing in empty spaces without the support of benches or chairs. It can involve stairs and long sidewalks and porches and a number of other physical activities that put me against my own limits.

Since most housing is NOT accessible, using devices doesn't solve the problems. So even if I could afford a scooter, it would still make it nearly impossible to do this part of the job.

I have solutions in mind, but they are had to explain to others and thus the question keeps coming up and all of the sudden I am thinking about myself as a disabled person a lot more than I want to or am used to doing.

But I am disabled. I have nerve damage in my left foot that makes walking and standing difficult. I have chronic illnesses that sap my energy and make me have bad days with sleepless nights.

I don't like limits.

I don't like them one little bit.

Mary Whorley at Whorley Dervish shared Rachel Maddow's School of Crock segment (those of us over 35 know the reference). She writes:

The Republicans were there so that Baucus would have plausible deniability along the lines of "the Republicans made me do it," which is politically less damning than "I did it for my corporate masters."

This is a game that has been going on in our two party system for years. The Republicrats owe their livelihood to big corporate interests (Read carefully -- I mean both sides of the aisle). Baucus did what he did because he was well paid:

The Montana Democrat is enjoying this largesse — some $3.9 million in contributions from the health care industry since 1989 — principally because of his place as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. The panel is at the center of this year's health care debate, and on Wednesday Baucus released his view of how the medical system should be reshaped: an $856 billion, 10-year package of changes.

The stream of generous campaign contributions from doctors, drug makers, hospitals and other medical interests didn't stop at the chairman's door. It extends to the other members of the so-called Gang of Six, the two Democratic and three Republican senators who labored with Baucus since June to produce what he hoped would be a bipartisan bill. All have received above-average donations from the health-care world.

...

Among them, the six senators have raised $10.7 million since 1989 from the industries and people with the most at stake financially in the overhaul effort. That's an average of nearly $1.8 million apiece over that period, more than triple the roughly $560,000 average for all other senators and representatives.
Read More

So the acid test is here. Now that we have bills going to both chambers. There is a way for good health care reform to still pass. It would have to be fast and it would NOT be bipartisan. But it could happen. If the Democrats have the balls and really mean it, they can do it.

If they don't do this. If they pass the Baucus bill and not the house bill or something closer to the Baucus bill than HR3200, then they never meant it.

We need to hold the Democrats and Obama accountable.

Well the good news is that I haven't had hives a lot, the black cohosh & progesterone cream are helping (not totally, but the hot flashes are down to only a couple a day and not constantly) and I have more work than I know what to do with.

The bad news is I find myself neglecting the fun stuff like writing here and journaling at home and taking a moment to care for myself or spend time with my husband. Oh yeah, and, well, more work doesn't seem to equal more money. But what's new with that.

Here's the big news of the month. My husband finally had a doctor tell him what's been wrong for the past year. He has been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. It is good to know what it is. It is good to finally have a doctor take him seriously. But after the initial relief of having a name, we are now coping with the fact that this isn't going to go away easily and the quick karma that comes with fibromyalgia.

I was diagnosed with this condition in 1997. I've done a lot of reading and a lot of research and I've learned to understand my own body better. In the past couple of years I've come to understand the underlying conditions that led to my condition -- specifically, I have come to believe that the source of much of my problems has been hypothyrodism. I was originally diagnosed with lupus and had many of the symptoms associated with lupus when I started getting ill. But now that I am testing positive for hypothyroidism and have read more and discussed the situation with my doctors, I think the lupus was a misdiagnosis. I believe I had subclinical hypothyrodism.

Our conditions lead me to ponder two big stigmas in health care & health research in this country.

First, is fatness. No one regarded my gaining a considerable amount of weight in a small amount of time in 1997 as a sign that my thyroid was growing weaker. It was decided then that because I was in pain most of the time and had lost the energy to ride my bike the 20 miles a week that I had before, that my lack of exercise led to the 90 pound weight gain in 5 months. Looking back with more critical eyes (it wasn't until 2000 that I started questioning so-called medical science regarding weight), I now realize that probably didn't make much sense. Because hypothyroidism is connected with weight gain it is under-reasearched and under-treated.

Second is gender. Deciding that because something is predominantly diagnosed by one gender or another it becomes a "woman's disease" or a "man's disease" is problemmatic, espcially if doctors remain misinformed. It took 4 months for me to be diagnosed with fibromyalgia. It took Carl 12 months to have the same diagnosis even though his symptoms were much more clearly defined and obvious (especially in retrospect). Expectations of pain and manhood along with the decision that fibromyalgia is a woman's condition really got in the way of what is a very simple diagnosis--a touch test of 18 points on the body. It was a year of negative tests and being told he was just "getting older" before a doctor did the test. The eventual diagnosis took less than 2 minutes.

As we contemplate health care reform in this country, a lot of debate has taken on a "blame the victim" tone. I actually heard a doctor today say on "Talk of the Nation" that health care professionals would take better care of their own bodies if they weren't so busy taking care of lazy people who do not do what they should to prevent their health conditions. Yep, doctors are too busy doing important stuff to eat right and exercise, but the rest of us are just lazy. I turned off the radio at that point, screaming a few explitives.

Stigma doesn't help anyone. Lifestyle and prevention methods have their place, but they are not the solution nor the problem. Stigma will do more to kill than these other issues and the answer isn't to shame others into a better lifestyle.

I checked out season 2 of the X-Files from the Library and have been watching it off and on this week. I saw the episode entitled "Sleepless" yesterday. It is basically about soldiers who were experimented on during Viet Nam war and now haven't been to sleep in 24 years.

I can relate.

It's been about 2 or 3 weeks since I've had a good night's sleep and it is starting to take its toll.

I am trying all sorts of stuff to stop the night sweats and hot flashes but nothing is working.

Between the hormones and the lack of sleep, I'm grumpy and I'm having trouble concentrating at a time when I really need my brain.

Yuck!

Oh yeah, and I'm in that weird stage where all I can do is talk about being in menopause which is beginning to embarrass me. I have learned that when faced with new stressors I jabber and if I fight it, I end up jabbering more. So I generally try to just ramp up the jabbering until I'm jabbered out. As you can imagine, friends and family do not find this stage particularly enjoyable, so I try to mostly jabber to myself. Of course, now I'm cyber-jabbering to you. (Imagine me red faced and adverting my eyes in shame -- of course, the red face part could be because I'm having a freaking hot flash!)

I'll shut up now. I promise. Okay, I can't promise that, but I will try to jabber to myself now and leave you alone.

Wendell Potter is my new hero. I saw him on PBS with Bill Moyer and now he has been featured on a NY Times OpEd. If you believe our current system works and that a public option isn't necessary, I suggest you read about Wendell Potter and also Linda Peeno.

Both of these whistle blowers tell eerily similar stories about the insurance industry. We are currently at the mercy of these megacompanies and their policies.

Here's a taste of their stories: