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Cyberchondria
Makarand writes "According to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle the ever-expanding
wealth of health information online is keeping hypochondriacs constantly worried. With websites devoted to every major and
esoteric illness and search engines coming up with many disease possibilities
when you type in a symptom, it is becoming very easy for the health-anxious
to believe that they have a disease. Many continue poring through the easily
available medical information even after their doctors have given them
a clean bill of health."
a very well known and common symptom. before internet those affected just looked through the medical references ...
Actually wouldn't you rather have peace of mind?
Speaking of peace of mind...set your mind at ease. The rumors are true. Click on the link in my sig.
Lindows Steals Copyrighted Art and Promotes Porn
Very much so. And the "I'm fine, really" attitude can be a major problem. Checking whether a pain in your gut should be there or not can be an important factor... it may be the website says "All clear." It may also be that the spot you've indicated means "Get to the damn hospital now."
Two particularly scary problems one can have are
a) Partial vision loss. If a friend has ever had this as the result of a migraine, you might assume that's all it is. If it's an aneurysm, though, and you don't treat it... big trouble.
b) Epidydimitis. Every man sits down wrong as squeezes his testicles in his jeans once in his life. They hurt for a while, then it stops. A person who has testicular pain may chalk it up to that... but if it lasts two hours, it's time to visit the hospital. Wait much longer, and the pain becomes intense to the point of requiring morphine and may cause sterility.
This is exactly the sort of thing the internet is useful for... so that we don't have to have warning labels on our pants. "Warning, if you experience testicular pain, do not assume it is due to wearing a size too small to you. Visit the doctor. Flashy colours may induce epileptic seizures."
What concerns me about this article is that doctors' diagnoses are not always accurate or objective. Certain patient populations (ex. minorities, women, the poor) sometimes face preconceived notions (ex. that they are scrounging for unemployment benefits), or they try to take matters into their own hands because they do not have adequate access to the health care system. Emerging diseases, especially those that cause chronic symptoms that are not readily visible to others (ex. FMS, MS, ME, Gulf War illness) are commonly dismissed as psychosomatic until the body of medical research which shows otherwise becomes too large to ignore.
In my own experience, an orthopedic surgeon--the only one my HMO would agree to cover at the time--dismissed my osteoarthritis as lack of exercise, poor posture, and worrying. He agreed that my hip was malformed, but told me that I would not need to see him for at least another twenty years, and then only as a precaution. I took his advice seriously, gritted my teeth and toughed it out; and if I had pain, I tried to exercise more. Ten years later, I was almost completely unable to walk, and the "new" doctors found that my hip socket was almost completely gone. I needed a total hip replacement with arthroplasty because I didn't have enough bone left to hold the implant. By this time, I couldn't hold down a job, and I had become such a pain-stressed freak that my family and social life was in ruins. I learned my lesson, and never again will I rely on a doctor to be my only or primary source of information.
Funny, the next doctor I went to said he had never heard of that low a dosage before, too.
I'm not sure what you are trying to prove. There are plenty of independant studies of drug effects online. Not that they are any more factual than anything a particular doctor's word, but when I present a doctor with a question about my dosage, then get a blanket answer to not read online, I assume he doesn't have a more intelligent answer and find services elsewhere.
I questioned my dosage after continuing to worsen in my condition, which took a U-turn as soon as I was on the recommended dosage.
So what's your point again? So I saved myself further pain and frustration by finding out my particular doctor was making up his own dosages, then giving to me without explanation. Perhaps you and 30 other trolls could inject further wisdom about how wrong I was. Right.
I've found that doing a site search for site:.gov in Google is a good way of filtering out bullshit. The US government may be slow and inefficient, but they hold research that they publish to pretty tough standards. I was interested at one point in the benefits of having lights with similar spectral profiles to sunlight, as my room is windowless. A lot of vendors claim that it's tough to sync yourself to waking at particular times without *sunlight*, rather than just any kind of light. The current take the government has on it is that most of these claims are pretty much overblown.
The government doesn't have everything out there, but when it does have studies, it usually puts them out there on the Internet, publically available. It's your money that paid for said tough standards and hours of someone shifting away bullshit. I'd suggest taking advantage of some of that.
May we never see th
Actually, I talked with a friend who is interested in this. It turns out that this is why many ads make no medical claims --- just show pictues of happy people and then mention the medicine's name. It turns out that if you make *any* medical claims in an ad, you also have to mention the side effects. However, if you simply reference the medicine's name, you don't.
May we never see th
Jerome K Jerome describes this problem in the classic Three Men in a Boat . After reading a patent Liver Pill circular, J consults his medical encyclopedia. He finds he has every disease in the book with the exeption of Housemaids Knee.
:)
His doctors cure is as follows:
1 lb beefsteak, with
1 pt bitter beer
every 6 hours.
1 ten mile walk every morning.
1 bed at 11 sharp every night.
And don't stuff up your head with things you don't understand.
You can get the book free from Project Gutenberg.
It's well worth it.
siggy played guitar
Hypochondriasis exists along a spectrum of psychiatric disorders, known as the Factictious disorders, where patients seek out care for imagined illnesses.
One of the keys is that they seek out care... with the extreme example being Munchausen's syndrome; patients who seek out the sick role so avidly that they fake illnesses, have unnecessary surgeries done, etc... they often harm themselves just to get medical care, and eagerly submit to any and all tests/interventions, including risky surgery.
Along that same continuum are the hypochondriacs... they often seek out care for imagined or fear illnesses, but it's different from a Munchausen's patient... hypochondriacs see doctors out of fear/anxiety rather than a desire to assume the sick role.
Besides their tendency to seek out medical care, they also have in common (all the somatoform disorders) the characteristic of being very resistant and difficult to treat. You can't confront them, you can't reassure them... they are utterly convinced they have a serious disease. Every doctor has a handful of these patients, particularly hypochondriacs (Munchausen's patients are much rarer), and they can be very frustrating to treat, primarily because they virtually never get better.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
They aren't giving you full service I agree... but read the parent poster's own words.
he perscribed a drug I'd never heard of. My wife called and I told her I'd look it up on the internet.
It sounds to me like the poster wasn't even present at the doctor's office, so he doesn't have any idea what was discussed or not discussed. Why do you think doctors document everything? I can't tell you how many patients forget everything I told them five minutes after they leave... printed discharge instructions are a Godsend for us, and they prevent people from coming back on us, claiming "he never told me that!" I've had patients do that many times, and when I get an irate phone call from the administrator/spouse/family/doctor, I read it right back to them straight out of their chart. I don't like doing that, but it's the only way I can protect myself.
What a moron. It verged on malpractice. But what could you do? Doctors stick up for each other, and I would end up looking like the idiot
He said it, I didn't. Then again, I don't know what else you call someone like that, who attacks his doctor without even a basic understanding of the disease process or its proper treatment...
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I had what was initially diagnosed as possible carpal tunnel syndrome. I'd heard plenty about the standard carpal release operation from people who'd had it. When I run across 3 out of 3 dissatisfied customers (YMMV, of course, this might be your best solution), I decided I'd better look into alternatives REAL fast.
So I googled, and I found something. The something was on the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons site, for A new procedure to alleviate carpal tunnel syndrome uses a balloon catheter to stretch and expand the ligament and relieve pressure on the median nerve in the carpal tunnel of the wrist. It also mentioned a 95% customer satisfaction rate.
Well, the chief of Orthopedic Surgery who was examining me was very interested, this was new at the time and new to him as well, and the URL was from a source he was extremely unlikely to dismiss, given that he was probably paying them membership dues.
He referred me to a lab test, an EMG (electromyogram) checking nerve conductivity that showed I did not have carpal tunnel, and when the results came back, sent me to a physical therapist who essentially, taught me how to use my wrists and hands on the keyboard so as to reduce the specific actions that led to the problem. That was 8 years ago, and I've had no problems past minor wrist pain since then, and the use of ice several times and wrist braces once or twice took care of it.
While this did not help me directly other than getting more respect and perhaps better care than I might have otherwise, I'm sure that any patient who the doctor might have considered standard carpal tunnel release surgery for was well served because the doctor knew of a less intrusive alternative.
I think this is how doctor-patient interaction for the common purpose of getting fixed is supposed to work. Use common sense, listen to the doctor, and if you want him to listen to the information you've found, find sources he is unlikely to argue with because he, too regards them as authoritative..
If he suggests alternatives to surgery or medication, LISTEN, this is his field of expertise. He'll probably listen to you if the question is Linux vs OpenBSD.
You've got the time to google, use sources like Medline, etc. ... time a doctor frequently doesn't have. If you're here, you might be even better at using websearch and possibly even searching medical databases than she/he does. You can use this time to give a doctor information he doesn't have time to get. Your common purpose is getting your ass fixed.
If you have a doctor that won't work with you towards this common goal, find another doctor.
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