This is in reference to an old column from '91 about ice cream headaches that was recently posted in the the FB group.
In that article Cecil writes:
Perhaps Cecil recalls this but I don’t. Does anyone know what he was referring to? Was
this simply an attempt at a joke or was there a real incident?
Hypoglycemia means low sugar. Which is exactly what it is. I’m not sure what’s supposed to be shrewd about a literal naming. Maybe just the fact that it’s in Greek makes it look more important?
I think Cecil was referring to the fact that there had been a recent flurry of blaming everyday ills on hypoglycemia, much like the current “gluten intolerance” fad.
Unca Cecil was not referring to an incident of someone complaining about the name of hypoglycemia. “Hypoglycemia” was the name that was attached to the set of symptoms associated with hypoglycemia. The symptoms are brought to the attention of a medical professional in the form of a complaint* (on the part of the patient) that the Patient is Feeling Vaguely Punk.
One imagines that some shrewdness was involved in noticing that the complaint would be relieved upon the administration of some nutrition, and that perhaps a Greek-ish word meaning “low blood sugar” would be a good label, and maybe inspire a few rounds of funding to study the phenomenon (in contrast to the dearth of attention given to the term “Ice Cream Headache”).
Pretty sure that was Cecil’s joke.
*see the monograph titled “Portnoy’s Complaint”, pub. 1969 by Philip Roth, under the auspices of Random House (who, to the best of my knowledge, never published a medical journal, so who knows how this one got through?)
Duh! It wasn’t that someone complained about someone naming something hypoglycemia. What Cecil was referring to was a physical ailment (or complaint) that someone gave the name “hypoglycemia”.
Don’t I feel dumb!
I think it’s a fatphobic joke. They made up a fancy scientific name like hypoglycemic as an excuse to snack instead of “I’m hungry”.