I Watched Colin Mockery's YouTube Video Debunking Lipedema and Here's What I Have to Say About It

This 3 1/2 hour video might take us backwards in our search for answers to diagnosis and treatment

If you want to watch this entire video, here’s the link.

Hey everyone,

I understand if you haven’t seen the dropped YouTube video, “The Debate Around this Fat Disorder,” by Colin Mockery. It’s a very long video (over 3.5 hours) with a lot of context. I’ve whittled away watching it over the past couple of days with as much of an open mind as possible. I believe it’s essential to listen to others who may have a different take and keep our confirmation bias in check.

I also have to say that a lot of people, meaning almost everyone in his comments, loved his video. He presents well, and his arguments at surface level seem sound.

However, what I watched was…concerning. The more I tried to remain unbiased, the more I watched this man become more and more biased, to the point of undoing a lot of what the lipedema community is trying to achieve: getting answers to what is happening in our bodies without getting dismissed that it’s our fault and/or it’s all in our heads.

I’m going to talk about some of the information he discussed in the first hour of the video here because the rabbit hole he goes down is a lot, and of course, when you go down a rabbit hole, you can get entrenched in a ton of overwhelming stuff. So I’m going to make three basic points just in the first hour of his content (I may do more posts later, it will depend if I have it in me).

Let’s get started.

It’s not considered research if you are trying to learn about something you don’t know about

Colin starts by explaining that he himself lost 60 lbs after he’d gained weight in the pandemic. He achieved this by watching how to take off weight through YouTube videos and content creators through exercise and diet. He somehow came across lipedema and, curious about our condition, decided to look more into it.

Colin is admittedly not a medical person. He has a degree in English. That does not mean he shouldn’t express his opinion about a medical condition based on what he’s read and looked into. However, he is obsessed with this and with a particular content creator and calls what he did “research.” That in itself is a problem. Learning and deciphering and then making a (very long) video with your opinions on something poorly understood is not research. At most, it’s investigative journalism, but it’s not research.

He might sound like he knows what he’s talking about because he regurgitates all the basic information found online about lipedema, which can sound very medical and it makes him look like he has some medical experience. And he makes some good points with a healthy skepticism, at least at first. For instance, questioning the name of the lipedema may not be accurate, and the disease vs. syndrome is a good question. However this is pretty much where it ends.

I’m sure he thinks he’s doing a good job on his learning and interpretation, but after watching this, I see him only hurting the lipedema community.

On his YouTube page he describes himself like this:

“I talk a lot about misinformation, disinformation, and approaching online creators with skepticism…mostly th(r)ough the vehicle of the influencer GlitterAndLazers.”

If you don’t know GlitterAndLazers/Anna (I didn’t), she is a plus-sized woman content creator who has been diagnosed with lipedema and documents her journey, including lipo surgery. I’m unsure why he is picking on her, but he focuses heavily on her content—with over two dozen videos to date, some making fun of her clothes—and uses much of what she says to debunk lipedema. Note that Anna is not a medical person either. She’s a content creator (like he is), and she’s trying to figure out what’s going on with her body, like many of us. And although I haven’t seen her videos, I hear she is dramatic and polarizing. I get it. People don’t like her, and she doesn’t have a grasp of how to manage metabolic fat vs. lipedema fat. But, really, to dedicate your content creation to trying to take down another content creator is…not cool.

His other videos expand beyond ‘GAL”, including this video, to say medical professionals are also spreading misinformation about lipedema.

Most medical professionals I’ve met who are dedicated to lipedema have a real desire to help treat lipedema women. A few others have gotten on the lipedema train to make a living on lipedema women. Some of them are predatory. However, we should also understand that this happens for all medical conditions where patients are ill and desperate for answers. That doesn’t mean lipedema should be debunked entirely.

Now, between his debunking of lipedema diagnosis and treatment, he contradicts himself by saying lipedema does exist. But not as U.S. doctors have presented it. Only by how Dr. Tobias Bertsch defines it.

That in itself is biased.

What he throws out there will make your head spin.

The first half hour or so is everything he read about lipedema online, what it is, treatment, lipo surgery, differential diagnoses, The Standard of Care for Lipedema, and mostly focusing on American doctors—mainly Dr. Herbst vs. German Dr. Tobias Bertsch, and the contradictions between them.

Please understand that there is an entire field of German doctors doing lipedema treatment with particular views that are not entirely in line with Dr. Bertsch's, so this isn’t an issue of U.S. vs Europe. He has focused explicitly on Dr. Herbst vs. Dr. Bertsch.

German doctors typically recommend conservative treatment for lipedema, primarily consisting of manual lymphatic drainage (MLD), custom-made compression garments, and a healthy lifestyle with regular exercise and a balanced diet; when conservative methods are not enough, they often suggest specialized liposuction procedures, particularly water jet assisted liposuction (WAL), as a more effective treatment option for managing symptoms and improving quality of life for lipedema patients. ~source

Again, relying on two separate doctors’ research and their contradictions to each other in a condition new to research, including diagnosis, treatment, and surgery, is biased and not considered medical “research” in the traditional sense. It’s called an opinion.

Also, I think it’s great that these two doctors have differing opinions because the academic debate is needed; it means we need MORE research on our condition, and we need MORE doctors to do that research (there are more than these two docs doing lipedema research by the way).

As we know, research takes years, even decades, to get answers. To pick apart the physicians working to find answers with funded research is just…mean and wrong.

Also, liposuction surgery for lipedema isn’t just an American thing. Countries around the world are doing this type of surgery to alleviate lipedema, including many Western European countries (Germany, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Poland, France, Switzerland, Italy), UK, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Brazil, and Turkey, to name a few.

This is a global issue.

Consensus Among Lipedema Researchers

While individual approaches and specific findings may vary, I’ve found that these lipedema researchers and physicians trying to figure out lipedema all share a common goal of improving the understanding and treatment of lipedema. Their collective efforts have advanced surgical and non-surgical interventions, enhancing patient care.

That is a good start. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it must be progressive to better understand our condition.

There are Three Concerning Parts in the First Hour of His Video:

1. Our problem is obesity, which is the issue that should be addressed.

As a lipedema woman, I am very disciplined in my self-care. I love to exercise. I’ve always been athletic and maintained my weight. But that wasn’t enough when I hit menopause, and my symptoms went out of control.

As I’ve interacted with the lipedema community of women, I’ve found that most lipedema women have gone through years of trying to tweak their self-care, including diet and exercise (many run into a calorie deficit), and we’ve been told over and over that our problem is obesity.

We have tried all the diets to the point of severe calorie deficit, have had bariatric surgery, have exercised daily—no matter how little we eat and how much we exercise, our body resists.

It’s only when we learn that there’s an inflammatory component that needs to be managed we can become more successful in managing our lipedema through conservative care.

Instead, Colin makes a point that it really is an obesity problem and that lipedema women should be redirected to losing weight.

That was enough to take me aback. It’s so far from what we’ve tried to accomplish to get some form of treatment. But how can he know? He doesn’t live in our bodies.

That’s my point—he doesn’t live in our bodies.

As the video goes on, it becomes more apparent that he does not grasp medicine and how research works. As he delves deeper into Dr. Herbst's research about lipedema—including the cellular level of what might be happening in our bodies—it’s clear that this has gone over his head; he doesn’t understand it, nor does he attempt to understand it. He even speeds up the video clip where she’s talking about her research.

But he does mention he understands “how thermodynamics work” because he understands calories in and calories out. Obesity is the real problem for us, according to Colin.

Instead, he labels Dr. Herbst and other U.S. lipedema doctors’ research as “pseudoscience.”

2. No Pain, No Lipedema. But the Pain is All in Your Head

The second claim he makes from Dr. Bertsch’s guidelines is that if women don’t have pain, they don’t have lipedema. Instead, he circles back to obesity.

The problem with this is that a lot of women live with pain they don’t realize exists. It’s not the “ouch” pain from, say, twisting your ankle or cutting your finger. It’s the low-level pain that creates an ongoing discomfort one gets used to when we have chronic pain. I believe most lipedema women live with chronic pain. We push through our lives, getting what we need to be done, done.

I didn’t realize I had pain until one of my lipedema doctors pressed on my thighs. Imagine my surprise when I yelled out, “OWWW!!” not realizing how much pain I was in because I existed in it every day.

But the video gets even worse.

Colin then mentions that because we have anxiety, depression, and other “mental health issues” about our large bodies, our pain is psychosomatic.

That’s right. He proposed our pain might be all in our heads.

So, we either don’t have pain, or we are imagining our pain—so it’s not real pain.

Honestly, how dare he.

3. Treatment for Lipedema is a Sham

So, now that he has stated lipedema is obesity and should be treated like obesity and that our pain is psychosomatic, he then attacks conservative care.

Colin goes so far as to say that conservative care measures, including MLD, lymphatic pumps, vibration, rebounding, etc., are “completely pointless” in helping with symptom management because that is the treatment for lymphedema. He took this verbage from an article note on NIH, in reference to a German article about lipedema. He derives this opinion from the contrast between how Dr. Herbst and Dr. Berscht define lipedema and how it’s caused.

However, compression is acceptable because Dr. Berscht believes in compression. However, Colin equated this to “like how athletes wear compression.”

Also, understand that vibration, rebounding, and those types of modalities that help lymph flow are EXERCISE. If you don’t believe me, try doing them for fifteen minutes and tell me they don’t give you a workout.

He also concludes that lymphedema is caused by obesity, not by lipedema.

Similar to experiencing pain, I’ve seen that most lipedema women do experience lymphedema and don’t realize it, even those women (including me) who are not considered obese. A lot of our weight gain is fluid build-up throughout the day, which is why we fluctuate 5-10 lbs or more between morning and night. Most all lipedema women have this weight fluctuation issue.

Although I’m addressing only the first hour of his video, there are a ton of things I did not address, such as his take on supplements, Vitamins, apricot seeds, alternative medicine, and his need to discredit the U.S. research being done on lipedema.

What I didn’t see was Colin interviewing and asking anyone in the medical field questions about lipedema in his video. He is only a talking head who has taken a short time to “research” lipedema, come up with some unchallenged viewpoints and some well-crafted clips, and then put them on a video.

Yes, the medical system and research aren’t perfect—especially with a condition like lipedema that has been ignored for over seventy years. Only in the past few years have we begun making real progress in understanding and treating this complex condition. This is why it’s more important than ever to trust scientific research and continue pushing for medical advancements.

However, we do not need individuals outside the medical field producing countless videos that undermine the efforts of professionals working toward accurate diagnosis, effective treatment, and comprehensive care. If you seek to address challenges within the lipedema research and medical community, then strive to be part of the solution, rather than contributing to the creation of further problems.

Take care,

Michelle