What you need to know about lipedema so that you don't believe anyone

And finally, there are those who, when they complain, are told that this is cellulite, swelling, obesity or that they should conform because they have “thick” legs like the women in their family – well, this may be true, because we are talking about a disease with a genetic background. . Yes, a progressive disease that causes excruciating physical pain. And emotional too.

Officially a disease

Lipedema is not an invention, nor is it a modern fad. This condition was first described in 1940 by doctors at the Mayo Clinic in the United States. It came to their attention that some women have thin bodies, but there is a lot of fat in their lower extremities – a third of it is on their arms, but never on their forearms. The fatty deposits were completely symmetrical, equal on the left and right sides. Moreover, they looked particularly fiery.

But it took more than 80 years for this disease to be recognized as a disease that goes far beyond what we see in the mirror. Only in 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) included lipoedema in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), where more than 50 thousand conditions have their own code so that doctors from different parts of the world know when they are talking about the same thing. It is an identifier or CPF for diseases recognized as such.

It almost only affects women

“It is very rare to find a man with lipedema, and when it does happen, he has very low levels of testosterone due to, for example, prostate cancer treatment,” says endocrinologist Cristiano Grimaldi Barcellos, professor at Unifesp (Federal University of Sao Paulo). Paulo) who in December gave a lecture on the topic at OLHAR Abeso, an event run by the Brazilian Society for the Study of Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome.