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It's Not All In Your Head

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Re: It's Not All In Your Head

#81

Post by rpaddock »

sterlind wrote: post #77
rpaddock wrote: post #75

I've lost count of the number of doctors that told my late wife the headaches were all in her head (Mentally to be clear here). When she laid down, she had no headache. When she would be upright the headache would return. This is frequently, and incorrectly, called "An Afternoon Migraine". After nearly two decades, because the Medical Establishment had written her off as a mental case, she figured out what she had he…

I'm sorry for your loss. Fluoroquinolones are indeed scary. I was saved from them in college by my hypochondria, when I developed a UTI and my doctor prescribed one to me. I googled, found tendon damage issue and asked for a different Rx. Years later, I was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and told never to take this class of antibiotics, since our faulty collagen triggers this side effect and can cause arteries…

This obscure FDA document prepared by the FDA itself for the 2015 hearing says that for UITs, Sinusitis and Bronchitis, the three most common things docs give FQs for, work no better than placebos.

This document also gives the damage caused by FQs the name Fluoroquinolone-Associated Disability or FQAD.

The EU equivalent of the FDA says FQs should be removed from the market due to their devastating side effects.

"FDA Briefing Document Joint Meeting of the Antimicrobial Drugs Advisory Committee and the Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee

November 5, 2015 The Benefits and Risks of Systemic Fluoroquinolone Antibacterial Drugs for the Treatment of Acute Bacterial Sinusitis (ABS), Acute Bacterial Exacerbation of Chronic Bronchitis in Patients Who Have Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (ABECB-COPD), and Uncomplicated Urinary Tract Infections (uUTI)."

https://web.archive.org/web/20170113234645/http://www.fda.go...

Re: It's Not All In Your Head

#82

Post by bckr »

Half way through -- this is so far an ideal essay (dare I say Platonic?)

It has everything: 1) a series of reversals that leave you wondering what the conclusion will be 2) late modern, contemporary, and personal histories that make you feel more informed as well as touched and entertained, and 3) that timeliness that makes you feel like you've written this essay yourself in the spare moments between thoughts, over the last 7 years

Re: It's Not All In Your Head

#83

Post by RobertRoberts »

bena wrote: post #69
RobertRoberts wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An old guy once told me how veterinarians were often better doctors than medical doctors because their patients couldn't confuse the diagnosis with bad input. But, I've also met simply belligerent doctors before, that simply couldn't be wrong no matter what the evidence said... There's human error on both sides to take into account.

Which is really my point here. The person I responded to is laying the fault completely with doctors. But doctors see patients like him all the time. And they're often wrong. The cases where they're not wrong is survivorship bias at work. It makes "patient knows better than doctor" feel more common than it is.

But if you are the kind of person very conscience of your health (or lack of it) and know very, very well what is going on. Your experience will be "most doctors ignore my (the patient) input".

So it's easy to see how skewed this can get based on perspective.

I have been told once by a doctor that he flatly refused to see me anymore if I didn't do exactly what he said, but he was just wrong.

Re: It's Not All In Your Head

#84

Post by mariodiana »

The article talks about "the values and ­structures and injustices," but I think what's really behind the author's sentiment is, to put it in Judeo-Christian terms, man being driven from the Garden of Eden. I say this because, as the author notes, "demonic possession" has been around for a long time. Call it what you will, but it's found across cultures and across time. I think what he's talking about is fundamentally human.

In the past, and to put things in more secular terms, I've made two jokes on the subject. The first is: Evolution operates as if the work is being done by government contractors chosen because they've put in the lowest bid. The second is: Our brains are wired like the lights in a Christmas tree.

So, imagine Christmas tree lights being strung up by government contractors!

What I'm getting at is that we don't have the "luxury" of the animals, who simply go about their lives more or less moment by moment, dealing with the immediate. We're self-aware, socially aware, and most importantly temporally aware. Because of these things, we have conquered the world. The downside is that's all work done by the lowest bid has allowed for. Our brains work according to spec — and nothing more. Now and then, some of us simply crack from the strain. That's the bug.

What I'm saying is that to think hysteria — or, again, whatever you want to call it — isn't real is simple hubris. All of human history makes mention of it.

Re: It's Not All In Your Head

#85

Post by amiantos »

smeej wrote: post #26

I think doctors aggravate this problem of people believing they're ill even when the clinical evidence doesn't support it. I can't tell you how many doctors I've had tell me, explicitly, within 15 minutes of having met me that they know my body, symptoms, and experience better than I do. It used to come much later in the process, after I'd spent months following their instructions to the letter and having my symptoms…

> But the complete failure to consider the possibility that I might also be intelligent, educated, and able to understand the applicable research just because my day job isn't in medicine immediately disqualifies a doctor for me.

To my eye, this reads quite a bit like the same sort of thing anti-vaccine and Flat Earther types think. Just because you think you're smart in some area, or even in general, doesn't mean you've got a natural aptitude for anything else. Maybe you're the exception to the rule, (probably not) but you can't blame other people for not taking your layperson confidence as gospel truth that you're smart and not at all being misled by your own or others hubris.

Re: It's Not All In Your Head

#86

Post by randomopining »

Borrible wrote: post #14

The moment the mind, a mere tool for the survival of the body, declared itself extremely important. From then on, any imperfection means that death is lurking in the shadows. Entropy eats up everything. You can run away, but you can't hide. The extreme narcissism of our time is only the most refined form. Sharpened and promoted by the extreme free-market competition of individuals. Whereby, this did not create it, it…

You write that? Nice.

Yeah everything is for survival, construction of ego and neuroticism. Depression too.

Re: It's Not All In Your Head

#87

Post by TheCoelacanth »

MisterTea wrote: post #42
smeej wrote: post #26

I think doctors aggravate this problem of people believing they're ill even when the clinical evidence doesn't support it. I can't tell you how many doctors I've had tell me, explicitly, within 15 minutes of having met me that they know my body, symptoms, and experience better than I do. It used to come much later in the process, after I'd spent months following their instructions to the letter and having my symptoms…

The trope that doctors are very smart isn't one Ive ever understood. A funny story was my shop teacher (Electrician class in high school) told us after he was sued by a customer who's doctor son attempted to rectify a "mistake" the electrician made. I forget the details but the doctor wound up blowing out or damaging something in his botched attempt to play electrician. Doctors father sues electrician for doing a fau…

That seems more like a demonstration of arrogance and lack of wisdom than lack of intelligence.

Re: It's Not All In Your Head

#88

Post by mistermann »

bena wrote: post #78
mistermann wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am directly challenging the notion that you considered it an exaggeration at the time you wrote the comment. Considering you were criticizing the judgment of others in the comment, it seems a bit rich to play off examination of yours as somehow unfair or weird. Cognition is often a group activity (comments on social media have effects upon the beliefs of others), and some of us actually take that very real phenomen…

Then you are simply wrong.

It's certainly plausible, but considering your epistemic track record I am skeptical.

Re: It's Not All In Your Head

#89

Post by boublepop »

smeej wrote: post #26

I think doctors aggravate this problem of people believing they're ill even when the clinical evidence doesn't support it. I can't tell you how many doctors I've had tell me, explicitly, within 15 minutes of having met me that they know my body, symptoms, and experience better than I do. It used to come much later in the process, after I'd spent months following their instructions to the letter and having my symptoms…

> But the complete failure to consider the possibility that I might also be intelligent, educated, and able to understand the applicable research just because my day job isn't in medicine immediately disqualifies a doctor for me.

It’s not that doctors think you unintelligent, but you are not a doctor. It doesn’t matter how many YouTube videos you’ve watched on a subject or how many hours you’ve spent reading about your current symptoms to convince yourself that your special intellect justifies doctors paying closer attention to your opinion, if you haven’t gone through the 7 years of education and passed the exams, then you are not a doctor and you will not be treated as one. Patients should be more accepting of this fact. It does not make sense in general to have doctors ask their patients to self-diagnose, even if their patients are intelligent, it doesn’t add value.

The problem is that every gambler will tell a statistician that actually their odds are abnormally high. And it’s true, if you pull 5 cards from a deck, the odds of getting exactly the cards you drew are incredibly small… no matter what you draw, so when you try to post rationalize events that have already occurred you even feel that statistics will back up your claim, but that’s not how it works, you can’t do that, just like patients being correct occasionally does not mean they should be treated as doctors because they don’t have the required education and experience.

Re: It's Not All In Your Head

#90

Post by Borrible »

randomopining wrote: post #86
Borrible wrote: post #14

The moment the mind, a mere tool for the survival of the body, declared itself extremely important. From then on, any imperfection means that death is lurking in the shadows. Entropy eats up everything. You can run away, but you can't hide. The extreme narcissism of our time is only the most refined form. Sharpened and promoted by the extreme free-market competition of individuals. Whereby, this did not create it, it…

You write that? Nice. Yeah everything is for survival, construction of ego and neuroticism. Depression too.

No, not everything is for survival. There is no teleology. Some things survive, others not. Some things stay for a long time, some barely blink in existence before they're gone.

The ego construct did survive so far for a few million years, depending on which organisms you concede the development of an ego before humanity.

Neuroticism is a pointed variant of the ego. It may or may not survive in greater numbers for the next 50 years. For now it is a profitable market.

Depression is another variant of consciousness, based on a variant brain metabolism. Often associated with a shorter life expectancy and, since it can be lethal in younger years, probably at disadvantage to procreate. Which probably was not the case in times humans procreated at a much younger age than today and had less time to indulge in its quirks.

On the other side, if you survive depression, it may give you a much deeper insight in the human condition. Which for sure is nothing for faint-hearted happy fools.

... Oh, just in case some HN kitchen psychology rears its head. I'm not depressed, I'm just outright evil.

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