Why is henry viii not fat in the tudors

Helped with our advanced medical knowledge. I think a few favoured late portraits have meant most folk think of him as this obsese King ,yet his antics at the Field of the Cloth of gold showed him off as a young athletic man. Much admired around the courts of Europe for his interlect and athletic prowess. Like most pieces of history the nasty,bad bits capture the public imagination and they stick with that image. Albeit for a short time but we only ever think of him with a deformed back and murderer of his nephews.

So Henry is generally thought of as a fat,bad tempered monarch. I often wonder how future generations will recall our Queen Elizabeth II. Apparently his daughter Elizabeth inherited his love of sweets and, while managing to maintain a girlish figure, was rather insecure about her blackened rotten teeth, until her ladies-in-waiting used ashes to blacken their own teeth In an interrsting court fashion statement.

This is a good educational article. I never even thought Henry could have been a Type II diabetic; however, it does make sense with the supporting evidence you provide.

He was huge and powerful. Being fat never crossed my mind, and I thought signs of ill health and weight gain were due to syphilis and his inability to ride especially after having been injured during the joust he partook in while married to Anne Boleyn. This new research is important and rather than bring disdain by others in the medical, professional or academic fields, it should open new avenues of thought. The worse thing a researcher does is remain in a box.

The idea of being fat or thin equaling a longer or short life span is ridiculous. I had a friend who was a health nut, who cooked clean and took massive amounts of vitamins and she died middle age. I contracted Non-Hodgkins B-cell Lymphoma now gone when I turned 50, and I was very athletic and nutritionally conscious.

Thank you for this article; I look forward to reading more of your research. I would love to learn more. I have always wondered if diabetes was the issue for the miscarriages.

Thank you for sharing this information. I love when new ground is covered in over covered subjects. Thank you for a fascinating article. I hope the book will be available in an ebook version. I may break down and buy a book if this is the case. So much history with so much mystery.

At any rate — I wonder what the feelings were of the people in general when Henry passed. Earlier royal couples had fewer complications. He was tall and could probably have held his weight with dignity.

So, portly rather than obese. He was no longer able to exercise and that is about when the sedentary lifestyle set in, along with inability to burn off the calories he ate, which he ate more of because he was sedentary.

The whole thing, looking at it, did seem to go in a circle. What I am wondering is if the leg ulcers came on because of the jousting accident when his body was crushed, along with his legs and circulation? Then the diabetes complicated the the leg ulcers as well as their healing?

Very interesting article! In your article, you touched on depression being a result of an inactive lifestyle, and possibly the development of type II diabetes. Thank you for a great article. Can modern analytical techniques confirm or shed any light on the theories presented? All the best. I look forward to learning more. I voraciously read all I could about some of these issues in a medical library years ago.

Now, with the internet everyone is working together and sharing information like this. Harry, the man vs. Henry the VIII is a paradox. Having such a privileged diet, diabetes would be likely, but not one I, as a lay person considered. I was mostly intrigued by the fall, the sudden change in personality, the unpredictable pendulum of the man he became almost immediately… Anne going to her death… his remorse as early as June… SO grateful we have people like you who are reassessing the medicine and health of another era with new lenses!

Excellent article. Having suffered an injury that made moving difficult definitely involved gaining weight, then being caught in that vicious cycle. This is very interesting and I feel prompted to do some further research on slight heaviness and longevity.

I had a great-grandmother who was very portly in the hips and bottom and lived until about She was a farmer. Did his parents or grandparents suffer from similar problems? Did other women in his family also have miscarriages and stillbirths? Did his mistresses have pregnancy and birthing difficulties? Furthermore, the number of metabolically healthy obese people is incredibly low: about 1.

Being fat is incredibly unhealthy and a sign of terrible health, as the last decade of this murderous lech clearly demonstrates. Name required. Email required. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. View All Events. First things first Tick the "Email" box to give us permission to email you. Email You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. Posted in : Public. Thanks Louise for your kind words - totally!

The first thing I do when I need to shed a few pounds is control my intake of carbs - I notice I start to pile weight very quickly if I overdo it.

Thanks for reading! Post a Comment. March 09, It's often blamed on his diet of meats, roasted birds and fatty fish. But was it all about his meat intake? Or was something else a bigger factor? One of his coats of armour, made in almost certainly just worn for show measures 52 inches around the waist, making him obese by even today's standards 1.

But as a young king, he was famed for his athleticism at jousting, riding and tennis - and, at the age of twenty-four, was considered by an ambassador "the handsomest potentate I ever set eyes on. So what happened? Prominent historians are quick to point the finger at his diet of fatty roasted meats, poultry and dairy. Phillipa Gregory, writing about Henry's psychology, blames his weight gain on his "fat-rich diet and meats" 3 and various other sources that you'll find with not much Googling attribute it to his love of fatty fish, eels and roasted birds.

The image of jolly old Henry, bingeing on piles of huge, roasted chicken legs and throwing the nibbled bones over his shoulder is set in legend. But was it the meat? I'd argue that there was a much bigger factor - and something much more obvious that explains how Henry ballooned into the man who glares back at us from the dim light of the later portraits. Before we look at Henry, let's look at what we know about the causes of obesity.

What causes obesity, and what fights it? The evidence. Katherine was relatively lucky in having been dispatched so quickly.

Henry VIII pictured with Anne Boleyn throughout his life contracted smallpox, survived malaria and was plagued by weeping leg ulcers.

Even a joke or a drunken song poking fun at him could result in a death sentence. Bubonic plague, which could kill you within 24 hours, was a frequent occurrence. Henry was a raging hypochondriac, and no wonder: at various times he had contracted smallpox, survived four bouts of malaria, suffered blows to the head while jousting, and was plagued by weeping leg ulcers. But Tudor expert Robert Hutchinson dismisses the widely held idea that Henry also had syphilis. Exercising in the way he had done as a young man proved impossible, although he continued to ride and to hunt for some years.

His appetite was, nevertheless, undiminished. He quickly gained weight, which could then not be worked off. An unhealthy cycle was set in place. It is clear that despite his reputation for it, Henry did not suffer from syphilis. Their symptoms include obesity in the upper body, hypertension, irritability, and, in extreme cases, paranoia and psychosis.

Type II diabetes, dementia, and deep vein thrombosis have also been offered for consideration. Such medical hypotheses may appeal, but none can be proven for lack of genetic evidence. Given the recent English predilection for digging up dead kings , however, such evidence may yet come to light—at least we know where this one is buried. Yet, there is only one specific reference to Henry eating too much in all of the more than 20 volumes of the letters and papers of his reign.

Henry was a big man, a great bon viveur, a bully, and larger than life, so he must have been a glutton goes the reasoning. It is very largely the product of film and television portrayals.

Just about every other portrayal of the older Henry has also emphasised his girth in one way or another.