Lipedema: friend and foe
Yanira Sanchez-De la Torre, Rita Wadeea, Victoria Rosas, Karen L Herbst
Key takeaways
- 01Lipedema is a painful fat disorder in women
- 02
Lipedema is a painful fat disorder that, while distressing, may offer some protection against common obesity-related metabolic diseases.
Background Lipedema is a chronic disorder presenting in women during puberty or other times of hormonal change such as childbirth or menopause, characterized by symmetric enlargement of nodular, painful subcutaneous adipose tissue (fat) in the limbs, sparing the hands, feet and trunk. Healthcare providers underdiagnose or misdiagnose lipedema as obesity or lymphedema. Materials and methods The benefits (friend) and negative aspects (foe) of lipedema were collected from published literature, discussions with women with lipedema, and institutional review board approved evaluation of medical charts of 46 women with lipedema. Results Lipedema is a foe because lifestyle change does not reduce lipedema fat, the fat is painful, can become obese, causes gait and joint abnormalities, fatigue, lymphedema and psychosocial distress. Hypermobility associated with lipedema can exacerbate joint disease and aortic disease. In contrast, lipedema fat can be a friend as it is associated with relative reductions in obesity-related metabolic dysfunction. In new data collected, lipedema was associated with a low risk of diabetes (2%), dyslipidemia (11.7%) and hypertension (13%) despite an obese average body mass index (BMI) of 35.3 ± 1.7 kg/m2. Conclusion Lipedema is a painful psychologically distressing fat disorder, more foe than friend especially due to associated obesity and lymphedema. More controlled studies are needed to study the mechanisms and treatments for lipedema.
The episode was first published on the Swedish podcast Fasciaguiden on June 4, 2025. In this unique episode, we meet Professor Gerald Pollack — one of the world’s most influential…
Fascia research has sparked a wildfire of new insights that are challenging conventional belief about how the living body works. In the last 15-20 years thousands of high quality…