What do doctors know? (warning: rant)

I have a huge problem with modern medicine, specifically because quite simply it's a business. A business has a job to make money, and as such is biased. Aside from the conspiracy on the modern medicinal society which you can get enough bullroar about by using google, .........

Do you get paid by your employer? Does your employer make money? Perhaps you should quit as they're biased......

Do you shop at a grocery store? Last time I looked Loblaws was a business? Maybe you better grow your own food.....

What's wrong with businesses making money? If it weren't for the "modern medical society" we would still see epidemics of measles (oh yeah, we are again because idiots don't get their children immunized), hundred if not thousands of people would die annually from polio and many of use would die before 40 from pneumonia.

Can you suggest a better alternative?

You didn't take my entire post into account when writing this and obviously did not follow the logic. Not all businesses are biased, not all hospitals are there to maximize profits. That being said there certainly are a lot that are. When you go to a restaurant some restaurants are true to their word and only use fresh ingredients, toss the junk. Some on the other hand bleach bad meat in order to serve it up to their customers. Do you know which is which?

My point was the conspiracy is bullroar (I quite literally wrote that. I suppose your eyes were too clouded with rage at what you thought you were reading, to bother taking in what I actually said.), which is why I didn't talk about it. However you always have to take something with a grain of salt and understand that not all doctors are there solely for your health, or even have good intentions. How well do you know the man/woman in-front of you?

That's why my closing statement was to take everything with a grain of salt, and ensure you understand enough to make a properly educated decision. I myself have been prescribed medication on many occasions which I really didn't need, and after further research and seeing a specialist wound up not taking as it would have done nothing to help the problem. Does that mean I distrust all doctors? No. There are a lot of them who went through med school for the sole purpose of wanting to help others. It does mean that I make sure I understand what I'm taking, and why I'm taking it, and I make sure to make it my business to understand a problem before I go see a doctor so I can make an educated decision on his advice.

Hope that clarifies everything for you, and that you can take the time to read a whole post and understand it's full context next time.

I have a huge problem with modern medicine, specifically because quite simply it's a business. A business has a job to make money, and as such is biased. Aside from the conspiracy on the modern medicinal society which you can get enough bullroar about by using google, I would also have to point to the statistics of how many doctors make mistakes, and the fact that a nurse working a normal shift will make an error in 1/4 of her decisions.

Also while your doctor is given tons and tons of classes, they don't do a bit of good if they don't know everything about YOUR body. Every time a doctor prescribes something to you it's based on best guess. Yes they take into account what you look like when you walk through the door, your description of the symptoms etc. However in the end it really is just a quick calculation of something that matches around those symptoms.

The only way to really be sure of anything is to research yourself, know your entire body, and really understand the concept of a drug and what it's made to accomplish. That or get a family doctor who should know pretty much everything about you after 5-10 years of seeing him on a regular basis including yearly physicals.

That all being said, at least a doctors guess is an EDUCATED one. So unless you truly have taken the time to educate yourself on your body and health, and how it all functions, you should definitely take your doctors advice. You may not like the advice, but it is a thousand times better than your best guess, and DEFINITELY a million times better than some random person posting online who hasn't even SEEN you in order to understand what symptoms you have that you don't even know about. Doctors are trained to take everything into account about you from the second you walk in the door, they see subtle things that you likely don't have a clue about.

As with anything, any advice someone gives you should be taken with a grain of salt. Something like your health you should definitely research and fully understand so that you can make an educated decision at any given time. Otherwise you leave yourself at the mercy of others, either your friend who thinks they're a know it all, a random man in a white coat (who you have no idea how well he did in med school), or the internet (good people and trolls a like.).

Okay... so I'll be the first to tell you that the M.D. or Ph.D. behind your name is not magic. It does not make you a god. It does not make you infallible. But good heavens. I keep seeing people post about something their doctor suggested and then a whole bunch of people who are NOT DOCTORS come in and tell that person, 'oh, doctors aren't experts in nutrition, you should ignore their advice' or 'only you can decide what's right for your body' or whatever.

It makes me grouchy. (Unless you're ignoring Dr. Oz. HE makes me grouchy and I'd rather you ignore him, but that's another rant...)

Because... here's the deal. Maybe doctors don't have the classes upon classes upon classes about diet and nutrition that a dietitian has, BUT they do have classes upon classes upon classes about how the human body works.

The human body is incredibly complicated and it's pretty tough to learn everything there is to know about the human body. That's why there are specialists. A general practitioner could never learn it all. And so, yes, doctors aren't going to have all the answer and it is always a good idea to question the information they give you and it's always a good idea to ask for a referral to a specialist if you think it would be helpful.

HOWEVER... the flippant attitude that some people have about doctors (and scientists) is crazy. Odds are, your general practitioner is going to know a heck of a lot more about the human body than an accountant or computer scientist or even a biochemist or pharmacologist/neuroscientist (like me) on MFP.

Please don't dismiss your doctors' advice on a whim or on the council of an MFPer. Read, study, learn what you need to know so that you can be a good consumer. Push for the care you need... but don't be foolish. Don't ignore medical advice unless you've got a good reason to believe your doctor is wrong.

I don't even ignore my doctors' advice... I DO make them explain their rational to me and if I disagree, I'll tell them I disagree and I'll tell them why... but in the end, I follow their advice.

Now of course if they're suggesting Paleo, feel free to label them a quack and move on**.

















**I'M KIDDING! I'm kidding. Paleo works for some people and some doctors will recommend it because they've seen good results. I'm just biased against Paleo.

Indeed.

I was having issues sleeping and my GP prescribed me an anti depressant. I am the least depressed person I know! I never took it but now whenever I'm not feeling well I tell my husband I'm going to go to Dr. X to get an anti depressant.

I am not a big fan of doctors. My "physical" takes all of about ten minutes and it consists of me touching my toes and my doctor whispering a number in one ear while he rustles his hand in the other to see if I'm deaf. The most I've gotten out of a physical is that I have high arches. Seriously. (And no I don't go to him all the time, just use him as the reference for the spot you're forced to fill out when asked who your GP is on forms. I pretty much go to my gyno for everything)

Anti-depressants are great sleeping aids :P Some of them, anyway. And yes, I'm serious about this. One of the side-effects of anti-depressants is sleepiness. Your doctor wasn't a quack, but you should have talked to him about your concerns and said, "no, I don't want to take an anti-depressant. Let's try something else."

I love anti-depressants. They do such cool things to the brain. >.>

P.S. Because you don't know me, please read the above comment as if it were written by a nerdy science geek with an odd sense of humor who is thinking, "huh! That's an interesting approach" and is being impressed by your M.D. and his off-label use of a pharmaceutical agent even if it's not the approach I would have used. No offense is meant.