What Is the Best Treatment for Lipedema in Its Early Stages?
Finding the best treatment for lipedema couldn’t be more important if you’ve recently received a diagnosis. If your condition is in its early stages, you may think you don’t need to consider treatment just yet. However, getting treatment as quickly as possible will help to prevent the disease from progressing quickly. It will also help to improve your mental well-being and your self-confidence.
Lipedema involves the abnormal accumulation of fat tissues. Primarily, in the early stages, this occurs in the lower half of the body. Often, doctors misdiagnose the condition and tell patients they are obese. Therefore, diagnosis at Stage 1 is relatively uncommon. If you have received a diagnosis at this stage, you should begin your treatment immediately.
Is There a Cure?
Unfortunately, lipedema remains a condition without a cure at the moment. As a chronic, progressive disease, it will only worsen over time without treatment. Fortunately, both surgeries and therapies will improve the symptoms in both the short and long term.
Although your doctor may have suggested conservative treatments in the early stages, this may not always be the best idea. Nonsurgical options include the use of compression garments and manual lymphatic drainage. Both of these can negatively affect your life. Wearing compression garments all the time can be uncomfortable. Meanwhile, regularly having MLD is time-consuming. Also, conservative options will only address the symptoms, not the cause of the problem. This means that any improvements will only be short term.
Surgical options, meanwhile, offer a more long-term solution. While they cannot cure lipedema, they can help patients to live a better quality of life for longer.
Liposuction for lipedema is the best way to treat the condition. It permanently removes the fat cells that are causing the problem. As a result, it is possible to maintain mobility, reduce pain, and enjoy a more proportionate appearance for longer.
What Happens in the Early Stages of Lipedema?
Although there’s only a single form of lipedema, it progresses through four different phases.
The earliest stage of the condition is difficult to detect. This is because lipedema fat looks very much like ordinary excess fat across the body’s lower half. Experts can identify lipedema by looking for certain things. These include pain when you apply pressure and a lack of excess fat in the feet and ankles.
If you have not detected or treated the condition, it will progress to Stage 2. In this stage, fatty nodules and deposits will appear beneath the skin. The skin may also take on a bumpy, uneven, or discolored appearance.
If you identify it and treat it at this point, you can enjoy a good outcome. You will experience less pain when you apply pressure to the affected area. You will also delay the onset of the third stage of the disease. As an added benefit, you will also achieve a more proportionate look for your lower body. This will boost your self-confidence and self-esteem, improving your mental health.
If I Don’t Receive Treatment in the Early Stages, What Will Happen?
Doctors do not diagnose some patients until they have reached the third stage of the disease. Others don’t get appropriate treatment early enough and, therefore, experience third-stage symptoms. These include mobility issues because of large fatty deposits surrounding the knees and skin folds, giving a deformed appearance. By the fourth stage, fatty deposits will have begun to damage or block the lymph nodes. This leads to lower body swelling and uneven fatty tissue distribution in the legs and arms, which causes difficulty moving.
Why Should I Consider Surgery in the Early Stages of Lipedema?
Some women find that using nonsurgical methods reduces their symptoms. But there is no doubt liposuction lipedema surgery offers more benefits. The conservative treatments that are currently available are only palliative. No nonsurgical option can significantly alter the disease’s progression.
Meanwhile, doctors have used liposuction surgery to treat lipedema for more than two decades. It is effective and safe when carried out by a skilled and experienced surgeon. It can also cure many of the problems that sufferers experience.
An early lipedema symptom is pain and tenderness when a sufferer applies pressure to the affected area. Having liposuction can completely or significantly eliminate this. Also, liposuction on the affected areas will slow or even halt the return of the abnormal fatty deposits.
Perhaps most importantly, liposuction brings an impressive improvement in the patient’s appearance. It can restore her legs and lower body to a more normal look. This helps women who are suffering emotionally from depression and low self-confidence because of the disease.
To find out more about whether liposuction is the best treatment for lipedema for you, contact the Artlipo team today. We can give you all the information and advice that you need.
