A new study from the School of Health at Jönköping University shows that women who have the disease lipedema have significantly more health problems and a lower quality of life than many others. Even so, it usually takes decades from the onset of the disease to a correct diagnosis in healthcare.
– I’ve been told all the time that I have to lose weight, lose weight and lose weight – and I’ve tried in different ways and succeeded partially and a little and sometimes quite a lot. But it always comes back with full force and even worse, says Angelica Rundberg, who lives with the disease.
Lipedema is a painful chronic disease of the fatty tissue that almost exclusively affects women. The disease causes the body’s fat cells to increase abnormally and the symptoms are usually dismissed as overweight or obesity – with the advice to lose weight. The unknown number is probably large, but around ten percent of all women may be affected and despite the disease being known since the 1940s, there are few international studies.
– I have been waiting a long time. It broke out already in my teens but I was undiagnosed until the age of 45. Had I been diagnosed earlier, I might have avoided looking the way I do, if I could have been treated correctly, says Angelica Rundberg.
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