@cstehansen thank you for your input, all help is very welcome.

Dr Hyman is awesome, great video.

Your point re fats makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately I am not even certain if the problem is fats. The endo thinks it is fluids and has exams to back it up. I've been searching online and while it looks like a massively underdiagnosed problem it also looks like no one is really certain how to manage it. Mostly it's "compression and drainage might help". And I haven't seen "cure" mentioned anywhere.

This is a very old problem, it has been with me since my early teens. And it has been worsening all my life, until I started LCHF. 20 years ago I had liposculpture on both legs, between the ankles and the knees, the doctor said there was "no fat left in the ankles". If anything, the ankles got bigger and less responsive to rest after that.

There is a genetic component to the problem, several women on my mother's side had it (skipped her generation though). All my life I ate barely no fat at all, I never liked the taste or texture of fat. And being a vegetarian for 30+ years, what little fat I had was vegetable. So the unbalance you mention was certainly present and probably contributed to the evolution of the disease. But most of the fat I eat now is of animal origin except for the occasional olive oil or coconut oil. And I take omega 3 supplements. And yet after the improvements in the first year everything has stayed more or less the same.

I'm going to take the steps that look logical to me:
1. Be even more careful with any food that might cause inflammation and avoid them like the plague.
2. Continue to supplement Omega 3s, Curcumin and Collagen to help the body fight inflammation and improve skin condition.
3. Start regular drainage.
4. Start using compression garments.
5. Be very, very patient.

And keep researching and learning from the experience of others. What else can I do?

::flowerforyou::

RowdysLady wrote: »

I'm late to the party here but kudos for improvement and being brave. I did not read every post so if this was said, my apologies. There are massage therapists out there who specialize in lipidema/lymphodema and can really help. Have you gone that route?

@RowdysLady I have done massage/drainage treatments before, both with therapists and with pressure boots, with mixed results. I feel immediate relief in the heaviness but it doesn't stay, next day it is back to the same. But that was before LCHF and my woe was very inflammatory (vegetarian, heavily grain based) so I'm hoping that maybe now it will have better results.

::flowerforyou::