I didn’t downvote, but “Ragen Chastain, a fat athlete, has found that her knees are successfully treated by being given the attention and treatment they’d get if a thin person had the same knee problems” is not relevant to the discussion. I’m aware that it’s pretty common for doctors to suggest weight loss as a sole solution when this is inappropriate and other treatment is needed. But by “helpful” I did not mean “sufficient” or “a complete cure” or anything like that, or even “helpful in all possible particular types of joint problems”, and I think this should have been clear from a reasonably charitable reading of my comment.
That losing weight will help joint problems seems obvious, not just to doctors, but to the general public—I’ve talked with people who don’t seek other care for joint problems because they assume that weight loss is the one correct solution.
The belief that weight loss is the one and only approach can occasionally be deadly. The comments to the Chastain article include an account of a woman whose doctor told her that her back pain was caused by her being fat. The bone cancer wasn’t noticed in time.
You did say “seems helpful” rather than “the one and only cure”, but I’m honestly not sure how careful I should have been. It does seem reasonable to me to point it out when something that commonly seems reasonable is actually not reliably true, especially when the stakes are high.
The stakes aren’t usually life and death, but years of pain from a joint problem isn’t a small thing.
I didn’t downvote, but “Ragen Chastain, a fat athlete, has found that her knees are successfully treated by being given the attention and treatment they’d get if a thin person had the same knee problems” is not relevant to the discussion. I’m aware that it’s pretty common for doctors to suggest weight loss as a sole solution when this is inappropriate and other treatment is needed. But by “helpful” I did not mean “sufficient” or “a complete cure” or anything like that, or even “helpful in all possible particular types of joint problems”, and I think this should have been clear from a reasonably charitable reading of my comment.
That losing weight will help joint problems seems obvious, not just to doctors, but to the general public—I’ve talked with people who don’t seek other care for joint problems because they assume that weight loss is the one correct solution.
The belief that weight loss is the one and only approach can occasionally be deadly. The comments to the Chastain article include an account of a woman whose doctor told her that her back pain was caused by her being fat. The bone cancer wasn’t noticed in time.
You did say “seems helpful” rather than “the one and only cure”, but I’m honestly not sure how careful I should have been. It does seem reasonable to me to point it out when something that commonly seems reasonable is actually not reliably true, especially when the stakes are high.
The stakes aren’t usually life and death, but years of pain from a joint problem isn’t a small thing.