Hi friends,
Is anybody out there a little geeky like me and you go down random data rabbit holes sometimes?
I’m doing some research today to see how much lipedema in the media has changed since I first wrote Jeans on a Beach Day. At the time I published it, in April 2022, I only found 7 books about Lipedema on Amazon. Today, if you look, there are a lot more! (As of today, there are 212!) I thought that was interesting and figured someone out there might like this info, too.
LINKS
Check it out, if you’re a little nerdy like me. You can see the number of products based on your search in the upper left-hand corner of your amazon page if you’re on a computer.
Link: All the books with the word Lipedema in them on Amazon (212 as of this writing.)
Now internationally, there is an alternate spelling, lipOedema, so I checked that too.
Link: EVERY Book with the word Lipoedema in them on Amazon (39 books, from the US Amazon site)
Next, I checked Amazon to see how many products have the word lipedema somewhere in the product information. I wish I had the foresight to have captured this back in April 2022. But as of today, there are 891 products. Now I have NO idea if these products are legit so I’m definitely not suggesting you buy them, but at least there’s a presence there and it’s pretty good.
Link: EVERY Product with the word Lipedema in them on Amazon (891 products)
Link: EVERY Product with the word Lipoedema in them on Amazon (161 products from the US Amazon site)
How Lipedema Compares (on Amazon) to Some Conditions that affect More Men than Women:
Every now and then, I check on lipedema vs. other diseases. Today I did a search on conditions that affect men more than women on Amazon (source at the bottom).
Number of books about:
- Heart Disease (affects both men and women, but men it hits ten years earlier) (More than 40,000!) – EVERY Book with the words heart disease in them on Amazon
- Prostate Cancer (More than 6,000) – EVERY Book with the words prostate cancer in them on Amazon
- Testicular Cancer (479) – EVERY Book with the words testicular cancer in them on Amazon
- Parkinson’s Disease (men are 1.5 times more likely to get Parkinson’s than women) (More than 10,000 books) – EVERY Book with the word Parkinson’s in them on Amazon
One Last Thought – There’s a Reason Why I Showed You This
There is a SIGNIFICANT gap in funding for research in diseases that affect primarily women, like Lipedema. There is research that shows that, “in nearly three-quarters of the cases where a disease afflicts primarily one gender, the funding pattern favors males, in that either the disease affects more women and is underfunded (with respect to burden), or the disease affects more men and is overfunded.” This also seems to be apparent in writings in books available on Amazon – much more info out there on conditions that affect men than women. (Source: Gender Disparity in the Funding of Diseases by the U.S. National Institutes of Health by Arthur A. Mirin)
So, I especially want to take a minute to thank the Lipedema Foundation, who through its Research Awards Program, “has funded approximately $11 million in awards since its inception in 2015. The research projects provide insights to help define, diagnose, and develop treatments for Lipedema.” Largely because of their work, more than half of the lipedema research that’s ever been conducted has been published in the last 4.5 years.
CALL TO ACTION: Keep sharing your stories, sis. Write those books, post those blogs and Insta’s, get out on the YouTube, get to Congress. Do what you can to raise hell. We need funding and awareness of women’s diseases.
Resources:
Lipedema Foundation. The power of a pivotal year in lipedema research. February 24, 2023. https://www.lipedema.org/blog/2023/2/24/the-power-of-a-pivotal-year-in-lipedema-research
Mirin AA. Gender Disparity in the Funding of Diseases by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. J Womens Health (Larchmt). 2021 Jul;30(7):956-963. doi: 10.1089/jwh.2020.8682. Epub 2020 Nov 27. PMID: 33232627; PMCID: PMC8290307.
Olssen, Regen. 6 Conditions that Affect Men More Than Women. Banner Health. https://www.bannerhealth.com/healthcareblog/teach-me/men-vs-women-how-gender-affects-health)
Amazon Associates page. https://affilitate-program.amazon.com (you have to have a password for this, but this is how I did my Amazon searches).
Contains paid links. As an Amazon associate, I get earnings from your purchases stemming from the Amazon links on this page.
