“Why are there so many sick/disabled people on Tumblr?”
Maybe because we can’t get out of bed and need to laugh at bad memes to keep our minds off of the fact that we’re dying a little faster than the rest of you able-bodied little shits, Susan.
Maybe because, under the protection of semi-anonymity (our urls are attached yes, but not our real names and identities), people are more willing to share their issues that in public would be considered shameful and embarrassing. 🙄
I was 25 the first time I met someone with RA. 25 whole long ass years without ever knowing anyone else ever suffered like I do.
It really fucks with your mental health feeling like you are the only one in pain like that. I cried big ugly tears when the other woman I met described something so simple as going to her rheumatologist or taking mtx.
Plus! when I’ve been prescribed a new med, its helpful to search around online and see what other people’s experiences have been.
There IS a scientific reason for it! It’s called “starvation syndrome,” which is a constellation of psychological and physical changes that result from consuming less energy than your body needs to thrive.
The syndrome was first described by researchers during the Second World War who studied a group of men who ate a reduced-calorie diet of just 1,600 calorie/day for three months. The researchers wanted to document the effects of starvation due to wartime interruptions in food supplies, and this amount of calories was deemed similar to what many war refugees were eating at the time (a fact that is quite disturbing when you consider that most weight-loss diets direct people to voluntarily consume this same small amount of food).
Researchers carefully documented the outcomes of this restrictive eating and this is what they found [all quotes from Junkfood Science]:
As the men lost weight, their physical endurance dropped by half, their strength about 10%, and their reflexes became sluggish… The men’s resting metabolic rates declined by 40%, their heart volume shrank about 20%, their pulses slowed and their body temperatures dropped. They complained of feeling cold, tired and hungry; having trouble concentrating; of impaired judgment and comprehension; dizzy spells; visual disturbances; ringing in their ears; tingling and numbing of their extremities; stomach aches, body aches and headaches; trouble sleeping; hair thinning; and their skin growing dry and thin. Their sexual function and testes size were reduced and they lost all interest in sex. They had every physical indication of accelerated aging.
The psychological changes were just as disturbing, and included nervousness, anxiety, depression, loss of interest in hobbies, and social withdrawal. Most relevant to your Ask, the men’s relationship with food also changed dramatically:
…they became obsessed with food, thinking, talking and reading about it constantly; developed weird eating rituals; began hoarding things; consumed vast amounts of coffee and tea; and chewed gum incessantly (as many as 40 packages a day). Binge eating episodes also became a problem as some of the men were unable to continue to restrict their eating in their hunger.
I am sure this will all sound very familiar to anyone who has dieted to lose weight or suffered from food insecurity or suffered from an eating disorder! The body needs energy to survive and to thrive, and if it doesn’t get it, you are going to “hear” about it.
A recent study (Lipson & Sonneville, 2017) examined 9713 students from 12 different colleges and found that body weight was the most consistent predictor of eating disorder symptoms. Students with a BMI in the “overweight” or “obese” range were at the highest risk and students with a BMI in the “underweight” range were surprisingly at the lowest risk… A 2013 article by Sim et al. that I wrote about in an earlier post found that eating disorder symptoms in adolescents with a weight history in the “overweight” or “obese” range not only were under-diagnosed, but symptoms were actually encouraged by medical professionals who congratulated these patients for losing weight…
Eating disorder prevention and intervention efforts are often targeted at people in the “underweight” range while people categorized as “overweight” or “obese” are targeted for weight loss interventions. Fat people are told to diet, even though dieting is one of the strongest predictors for both development of eating disorders and weight gain. Isn’t it time we stopped prescribing behaviors to people at higher weights that are diagnosed as eating disorder symptoms in people at lower weights? Food restriction, purging food (either through laxative use, self-induced vomiting, or exercising to compensate for calories consumed), viewing foods as “good” or “bad,” and defining our self-worth based on the numbers on the scale are unhealthy at any weight. We need to recognize these symptoms as what they are—signs of an eating disorder—even when the person who is engaging in them lives in a fat body.
Well my dear, if you read my most recent posts you will see that a young person your age and size needs to be eating about double what you are currently eating. So “eat more” would be my main advice! “Throw your scale in the garbage” would be my second piece of advice. And third, learn about weight-inclusive models of health like Health at Every Size. (see my “HAES” tag to learn more)
But more generally, and contrary to what you may think you know, type two diabetes is not caused by your eating and exercise habits. It is primarily a disease of social adversity, caused by the physiological changes that can accompany poverty, food insecurity, and social marginalization in people who are genetically susceptible. (see my “t2diabetes” tag for more).
If this sounds like your family’s experience, perhaps the best things you can do to support your health is to educate yourself about the social determinants of health and to join local community organizations working towards health justice. I say this because I believe that, for many of us, our only choices in life are to rebel against social expectations or wither and die trying to conform. And this includes attempting to conform with dominant models of “health” that actively exclude fat bodies, racialized bodies, disabled bodies, LGBTQ+ bodies, et al. I choose to rebel. I hope you do too.
Choice facts from the linked article: Type 2 diabetes is far, far more common among the poor and excluded. Poor women are particularly susceptible. And over 90% of the population variance in occurrence of metabolic syndrome [which includes Type II diabetes] cannot be explained by individual health behaviors.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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