Watch Out For Lipedema

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Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Lipedema affects mostly women, and the risk increases with menopause. It often gets mistaken for cellulite (early) or obesity (later), but there are important differences and very different outcomes.

  • Today’s main feature explains how to know the differences, and what to do about it!

• Red light therapy is uncontroversially effective at improving many metrics of skin health (e.g. complexion, feeling, roughness, collagen intensity, and wrinkles); we’ve written about this before at 10almonds.

  • Today’s sponsor, Bon Charge, is offering a Black Friday discount on its red light therapy range, including their flagship red light therapy masks—if you were thinking of getting one, now’s the time (the sale is now live)!

• Today’s featured book is about the science of eating for metabolic health specifically; it’s a weighty tome, but very much worth understanding

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

A Word To The Wise

Watch and Learn

How to Boost Your Metabolism When Over 50

Dr. Dawn Andalon, a physiotherapist, explains the role of certain kinds of exercise in metabolism:

Prefer text? The above video will take you to a 10almonds page with a text-overview, as well as the video!

Saturday Life Hacks

Watch Out For Lipedema

Lipedema occurs mostly in women, mostly in times of hormonal change, with increasing risk as time goes by (so for example, puberty yields a lower risk than pregnancy, which yields a lower risk than menopause).

Its name literally means “fat swelling”, and can easily be mistaken for obesity or, in its earlier stages, just pain old cellulite.

Cellulite, by the way, is completely harmless and is also not, per se, an indicator of bad health. But if you have it and don’t like it, you can reduce it:

Keep Cellulite At Bay

Obesity is more of a complex matter, and one that we’ve covered here:

Shedding Some Obesity Myths

Lipedema is actively harmful

Lipedema can become a big problem, because lifestyle change does not reduce lipedema fat, the fat is painful, can lead to obesity if one was not already obese, causes gait and joint abnormalities, causes fatigue, can lead to lymphedema (beyond the scope of today’s article—perhaps another time!) and very much psychosocial distress.

Like many conditions that mostly affect women, the science is… Well, here’s a recent example review that was conducted and published:

Lipedema: What we don't know

Fun fact: in Romanian there is an expression “one eye is laughing; the other is crying”, and it seems appropriate here.

Spot the signs

Because it’s most readily mistaken for cellulite in first presentation, let’s look at the differences between them:

• Cellulite is characterized by dimpled, bumpy, or even skin; lipedema is the same but with swelling too.

• Cellulite is a connective tissue condition; lipedema is too (at least in part), but also involves the abnormal accumulation and deposition of fat cells, rather than just pulling some down a bit.

• Cellulite has no additional symptoms; lipedema soon also brings swollen limbs, joint pain, and/or skin that’s “spongy” and easily bruised.

What to do about it

First, get it checked out by a doctor.

If the doctor says it is just cellulite or obesity, ask them what difference(s) they are basing that on, and ask that they confirm in writing having dismissed your concerns (having this will be handy later if it turns out to be lipedema after all).

If it is lipedema, you will want to catch it early; there is no known cure, but advanced symptoms are a lot easier to keep at bay than they are to reverse once they’ve shown up.

Weight maintenance, skin care (including good hydration), and compression therapy have all been shown to help slow the progression.

If it is allowed to progress unhindered, that’s when a lot more fat accumulation and joint pain is likely to occur. Liposuction and surgery are options, but even they are only a temporary solution, and are obviously not fun things to have to go through.

Prevention is, as ever, much better than cure treatment ← ^{_{because there is no known cure}}

One last thing

Lipedema’s main risk factor is genetic. The bad news is, there’s not much that can be done about that for now, but the good news is, you can at least get the heads-up about whether you are at increased risk or not, and be especially vigilant if you’re in the increased risk group. See also:

One Test, Many Warnings: The Real Benefit Of Genetic Testing

Take care!

Our Sponsors Make This Publication Possible

Your Skin Doesn’t Know What A Birthday Is

Your skin, much like most of your body, neither knows nor cares how many times you have flown around the sun.

Biological age is nothing more than the aggregate of a stack of biological markers of aging, and most if not all of those are modifiable.

When it comes to skin, this includes things like:

• Smoothness

• Firmness

• Softness

• Collagen density

…which can all be tested clinically, in various different ways. And guess what, the evidence is overwhelming that red light therapy improves all of these—we’ve written about this before at 10almonds, by the way (we did a main feature back in April; here it is)

And unlike the many pills, potions, creams, and lotions that one can buy… This one’s a case of “buy once, and then use at will”.

So go ahead and treat yourself:

Bon Charge’s Black Friday sale (25% off, applied automatically at checkout, no need for a code) is now on!

Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free

This Or That?

Vote on Which is Healthier

Yesterday we asked you to choose between Brazil nuts and cashews—we picked the cashews (click here to read about why), as did 37% of you!

Now for today’s choice:

Click on whichever you think is better for you!

Bonus (Sponsored) Recommendation

About that Black Friday sale on the red light therapy kit—the sale is live as of today, so you might want to grab yours now before they run out!

One-Minute Book Review

Eat to Beat Your Diet: Burn Fat, Heal Your Metabolism, and Live Longer – by Dr. William Li

We previously reviewed Dr. Li’s excellent “Eat To Beat Disease”, so you may be wondering how much overlap there is. While he does still cover such topics as angiogenesis, organ regeneration, microbiome health, DNA protection, and immunological considerations, and much of the dietary advice is similar, most of the explanation is different.

Because, this time, rather than looking at beating disease in general, there’s a much stronger focus on metabolic disease in particular, and yes, for those who want to do so, losing fat.

The scientific explanations are in-depth, such that you come way with not merely “I should eat an avocado once in a while”, but a comprehensive understanding of the body’s metabolic processes, from the chemistry to the organs involved, from the cellular to the systemic.

The style is on the hard end of pop-science. It’s approachably readable, while having a lot of densely-packed information with minimal fluff. You will be more than getting your money’s worth out of its 496 pages.

Bottom line: if you’d like to perk up your metabolism with a dietary approach that’s enjoyable and very restrictive, then this book will arm you with the knowledge to do that.

Click here to check out Eat To Beat Your Diet, and eat to beat your diet!

Penny For Your Thoughts?

Wishing you a delightfully restorative weekend,

The 10almonds Team