Unpopular Opinion

There could be so many miracle tips or tricks online that really work

“You know what they call alternative medicine that's been proved to work? - Medicine.” ― Tim Minchin

I'm not really sure you understand just how complicated being a doctor is and making the correct diagnosis is. Sure, it might be something small if you feel sad in the evenings. It might also be a brain tumor. Home remedies might work in both cases, and they might not.

But you know what will probably work more often that not? A doctor's prescription.

Talk to you doctor.

There could be so many miracle tips or tricks online

There aren't. We call the tips and tricks that work medicine. And we train doctors and nurses and associated healthcare workers to know them or know who knows the tricks to refer people to them.

The guys discovering new tips and tricks that work will tell them to the doctors first, and not the internet, and are almost exclusively doctors themselves.

This stupid belief is literally what killed idiots injecting horse medicine without supervision during the last pandemic.

"I have had a dry cough for the past few months." Can mean all sorts of things. Random speculation from somebody working off of very limited information can lead someone to try a "cure" that masks or exacerbates an otherwise treatable or eventually deadly condition.

There is a reason doctors have to go through so much school and gain so much experience before they become an "actual doctor".

Do you have a 10cm mass in your right lung, or do you have allergies? A doctor visit can tell you if your cough can be treated with medication or surgery and chemo that you will die without.

I am not someone who likes to go to the doctor if I know that I can't treat myself, but you can be damn sure I will not ask the internet if it is something I have no idea about.

I'd love it if healthcare was top of the line and free as air, but that is not the world we live in and people giving people medical advice with an unknown level of expertise and next to no empirical evidence of a diagnosis gets people killed or harmed. Let the information doctors have be freely available for people to use as they see fit for their personal use and all medication be cheap as dirt, but medical advice should only come from a licensed doctor that is qualified to practice medicine and not some stranger on the internet that barely has the experience and ability to treat a simple laceration.

A therapist might be able to help you with your anxiety. You should consider making an appointment to talk to one.

You're describing a problem with the health care system, not the problem with doctors.

That being said, actually an unpopular and dangerous and stupid opinion. Upvoted.

Yes, the doctor went to school and rigorously studied medicine for years. They are not a "wizard" they are simply an expert with expert knowledge.

Random people on the Internet are not, which is why they tell eachother to drink horse dewormer and other stupid shit. It doesn't matter how much some random layman thinks they know what's wrong with you, they have no expertise to support that belief.

The idea that people should stop telling others to check with a doctor if they need medical advice is absurd.

Just like with "proof" of aliens or ghosts being presented on UFO and ghost hunting shows: if there really was a miracle cure to be found by talking to randos online, it would be major fucking news that wouldn't be limited to hearing it first from JimboXX42069 on Facebook.

See a doctor? In this economy? Yeah fuckin right

The things is, the stakes can be really high, even for something that seems benign. The people who give you medical advice based on a text post really are being irresponsible. Doctors are trained to ask the right questions and do the right tests. Sure, we might like it if we could just crowd source our diagnosis, but it's a really, really bad idea for most things.

I have a couple fairly serious chronic conditions and discuss them with a wide variety of people online. Sometimes it’s apparent that the knowledge level of someone asking a question is just way too much to be filled in with a reddit comment, and the consequences of them getting it wrong could be very dangerous or fatal - for instance, discussing insulin dosage. Some people rely on their doctor for every adjustment, while others have experience and knowledge and feel comfortable making their own changes to ratios or basal dosage. If someone sounds sorta of clueless I sure as hell am not going to tell them to adjust their dosage in a way that could land them in a hospital or kill their kid or something and at those times, the best advice is “you should probably ask your doctor”.

If you feel sick talk to your doctor. Internet "knowledge" doesn't work in case on medical issues. So called tips and tricks may work for a person who posted it but it could be dangerous for you. If calling a stranger (in this case a doctor's office) invokes anxiety, talk to a therapist.

Sorry that you're going through something OP. Everything I say after this is probably something you don't want to hear, so read on at your peril.

The reason people tell you to go to your doctor when you ask for medical advice online is because the question itself implies you want good or useful advice and nobody besides you're medical team can give you that. You can find some general stuff online or ask to speak to a different doctor if there's trust issues with your current provider, but nobody without access to your personal medical history is able to advise you accurately. It takes at least 8 years of constant study to be a newbie doctor. Human bodies are extremely complex, and we still don't know how everything works. Even if we did, not all bodies work the same way. On top of that, humans are shit at statistics, and we heavily bias anecdotal evidence, especially when it is our own anecdote or from someone we know.

Here's a simple example.

Say I get an upset stomach after eating meals and I complain about it to a friend. Trying to be helpful, they told me they used to get that too, so they tried switching to a vegetarian diet, and they got better. Sounds innocent enough, right? I know what vegetarian means (it's "common sense", right?) so I stop eating meat and start getting salads or fruit for lunch instead. After about a week, I fell asleep while driving home. Turns out, I'm anemic. I was getting just enough iron on my old diet to keep the worst symptoms that would have scared me enough to see a doctor at bay, but when I cut out meat I went from iron deficient to anemic. Had I gone to the doctor, they'd have easily seen my iron deficiency and put me on a supplement or advised me how to change my diet, and the nausea would have gone away. Instead, I end up imaking my condition worse and landing in the ER after an auto crash.

That didn't actually happen, but I think it's a good example for several reasons. It's a common side effect (nausea) of a common problem (iron deficiency) that you're likely to think doesn't warrant a doctor, but you'd still mention to a friend. It's a super common symptom associated with lots of conditions. The friend even gave good advice (for most people, changing their diet wouldn't have been an issue, but because of an underlying medical condition specific to our protagonist, it was bad advice FOR THEM). The friend had no way of knowing or even suspecting it could be dangerous advice because most people don't spend a decade learning about the body and disease more generally and they didn't know about the specific issues related to the specific case. It's the same reason you shouldn't get legal advice online... It's a super complex system, and every case is literally different.

Man, this occur really an opinion, it's a rant.

Which is fine, I guess, but it means you won't get useful responses for the most part.

Here's the thing though. You can't crowd source medical advice. Well, you can, but doing so is an idiot's bet. You might get lucky and get good advice, but chances are it'll range from useless to possibly risky/dangerous.

It's hard enough to diagnose when you have a solid patient history and a good intake interview. Going from there to prescribing is another set of evaluations to get the most results with the least side effects.

And you sure as fuck need to give plenty of disclaimers if you do give advice so that some idiot doesn't follow it without thinking it through.

Me? Idgaf about liability because I won't give advice without a shit ton of disclaimers, and outright telling the person they shouldn't take the advice.

But I agree with you. If you aren't going to do something useful, just scroll on. No need to waste anyone's time with the bullshit.

there are a great deal of people who don't go to the doctor even if they should until it's too late. i have people like that in my family. repeating to them they should go can actually prevent disability or death.

therefore i think you should both, give advice, if you have any, and remind them to go to the doctor.

I'm onboard with this statement purely because nobody is posting asking for advice while sitting around just fucking oblivious to the idea that doctors exist. Like we arent aware that the best advice will come from a trained medical professional who has my complete medical history and access to all manner of tests to confirm their diagnosis.

Saying "Speak to your doctor" is useless, its just you involving yourself in the conversation for the sake of it. Its the advice equivalent of "Thoughts and Prayers". Do you also go on a automotive community and reply to every car repair advice question with "take it to a mechanic"?

For me, "Speak to "your doctor" means getting an appointment for 10 weeks from now OR taking the first available appointment (11am next tuesday, so... take a day off work) at the revolving door medical clinic staffed by doctors who legit have a "patients per hour" quota to keep and you never see the same one twice. Who skimreads 40 years of medical history, pays no heed to what I actually want and pushes me out the door.

It's because most people realize that a doctors advise about your medical issue is probably going to be a lot more helpful than the baseless uneducated opinions of "some guy I talked to on Lemmy"

I was initially going to upvote this but the fact is that if someone cannot go to a doctor and get something resolved they will look elsewhere. Whether its a failure of the medical system or limitations of our medical technology there are many reasons someone cannot get treatment or even advice. That being said if one has access to speak to a doctor that should always be their first action.

If you know your diagnosis, you can certainly look up standard of care treatments, prognosis, stats about the disease, and other really good information. The CDC has a really good website for looking up a lot of that stuff, as does the NIH, StatPearls, and a few others. If you have access to a university health library then you now have access to things like ClinicalKey, Ovid, Taylor and Francis, etc. that provide even more information, and if you're working for part of a hospital system you likely have access to UpToDate which residents, fellows, and attending doctors will pull up if they're unfamiliar with a treatment/disease. Heck even Wikipedia has some really good articles and the source list if you know what you're looking for.

But you don't know what you're looking for, you have a set of symptoms that need an MD, DO, PA, NP to diagnose and treat.

Talk to your doctor - is a general statement for people to not get involved, or to avoid liability, or to say they don't know.

Especially in media, or para-social settings, anything that isn't a 1:1 direct conversation - content creators have to be careful to not give 'medical advice' and take on liabilities, which is why you often hear 'this isn't medical advice, consult your doctor before doing X'

In 1:1 conversations, talk to your doctor is less frequent, but comes up when the issue is serious.

i.e. I got a cut, it stings a little - oh man, sucks, want to go bowling?

vs

I have this wound that wont heal after a few weeks and I keep fainting.. Dude, go to the hospital!

Taking medical advice from random strangers on the internet can be dangerous, sometimes in ways that may not be immediately obvious. I used to have anxiety about a medical condition that I was convinced that I had, and everything I read on the internet just made me more and more anxious.

Eventually, I went to see a doctor, who cleared everything up. But until then, I was a wreck.

Please see a doctor for medical advice.

The last time i called to make an appointment with my doctor they told me to go to the ER (it was for a check up and because i had bronchitis). I sat at the ER for 6 hours before finally being told i should just see my doctor.

My favorite is when the question starts out with "I don't have insurance and can't afford to see a doctor, but I have dandruff and it just won't go away", and the first response is "I know you said you can't afford it, but you should really just see a doctor".

Like, sure, homeopathy is slightly better than snake oil because it doesn't generally have random poison in it, so getting recommendations for that is worthless. But that doesn't mean asking people who have been through similar things for advice is also worthless.

One of the nice things about the internet is being able to draw upon the experiences of others. If you're afflicted with something that someone else has had, then there is absolutely the chance that you can get some helpful advice. At the very least, if none of that works, you can then tell your doctor what you tried to narrow things down. After all, an important step in diagnosing is to match symptoms with the underlying condition. Provided that the advice isn't harmful, it doesn't hurt to try and may save you time and money.

In the backwoods, we know certain barks, leaves, roots for various ailments. We have used spider web to staunch bleeding * for superficial wounds that seem not to stop. But it's still good to get an actual diagnosis, when affordable. If you already have a diagnosis, it helps a lot. Like common cold, allergies are one thing. Bacterial infections needing antibiotics are another.

Agreed, my experience supports what you're saying. I've had dangerous advice and prescriptions from doctors, and great advice from online that's produced long-term resolutions to health problems.

Yeah there's a lot of nonsense out there, you have to be savvy, so yes, some people should just stick with visiting professionals.

Long term, I've had better results for a lot of issues when I've gone online and learned vs when I've gone through the process of visiting multiple highly rated providers, including specialists. I've also been able to develop a good understanding of how my body works which has allowed me to develop a better wellness-oriented approach to my health.

Sad to see so many people in this thread ignoring what you actually said and attacking you with straw man arguments and extreme edge case scenarios.

But have you tried talking to your doctor?

I agree with you. However, in part this is often done because giving or receiving medical advice online is generally ill advised. There can, in theory, even be legal concerns (potentially). Say someone gives bad advice and the person is harmed from it. I also think that all the misinformation that got disseminated during the pandemic left people gun-shy on these topics.

But I still agree with you in spirit. The "talk to your doctor" thing can be a too cold and reflexive with some folks. And there are a few home remedies that do work. And maybe the person asking just wants some emotional support and not the usual soulless canned advice.

This topic reminds me of people who automatically throw an 800 number out there whenever certain key words get mentioned. There's almost always good intentions behind that. But in the USA at least, calling such a number can make a person's life much worse. Loss of agency followed by a huge medical bill. Because it's not really about helping the person. It's about optics and collecting money.

If I were chronically sad in the evenings, I would actually bring it up with the doctor. I wouldn't make a special appointment for it necessarily unless its progressing towards suicidal thoughts or something, but during a regular visit I would bring it up. I'm no stranger to mood disorders, and frankly, I wish I had approached a professional sooner about it. Would have saved a lot of grief not just for me but for family members who also suffered through my episodes.

For something that seems too minor for a doctor visit, I would suggest speaking to a pharmacist. They are readily available without appointment or long waits, and have an encyclopedic knowledge of all sorts of over-the-counter remedies that are backed up by an advanced degree in medicine. Definitely an underutilized resource. Of course they may well suggest you talk to a doctor, but in my experience at least, they give thoughtful consideration to what you have to say and make such a recommendation not out of some lazy buck-passing but rather a genuine concern for your condition. So you would do well to heed their advice, whatever it might be.