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Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

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Re: Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

#191

Post by nradov »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #167
kornhole wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article gives people things to consider and does not dare give specific advice. Everybody is different. Some people are in touch with their bodies and can detect if something is going wrong, and others are not. Institutions and pharmaceutical companies can adversely affect our health if they are able to influence doctors to advise us wrongly in a for profit health care industry. If you look at the health of the…

>Some people are in touch with their bodies and can detect if something is going wrong and how does one come to know this? > If you look at the health of the US population with a declining life expectancy, rising obesity, immunological diseases, and cancer, some self learning seems like a good thing rather than to leave your health up to institutions, companies, and doctors Could you show your work? Some steps are cl…

This is an issue that is by nature difficult to study in a rigorous, controlled manner. I can tell you that it is a real phenomenon but probably can't prove it in a way you would consider satisfactory. We see the highest levels of this internal body awareness among people who have spent many years using their bodies at peak performance levels. They do their normal daily training and something feels a little "off" before any obvious signs or symptoms appear. But if you only associate with sedentary office workers then you might be skeptical. A lot of people feel like crap so often that to them it begins to feel normal.

Re: Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

#192

Post by rvcdbn »

hayst4ck wrote: post #166
user3939382 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can’t have faith in any of our society’s major institutions because they’re all corrupt https://youtu.be/z6IO2DZjOkY

Institutional corruption will not be solved by losing trust in the institutions. When the institution dies because nobody trusts it you don't all of a sudden get good health care. So if you believe that our medical institutions are corrupted, anger at the institution itself is misdirected. The corruptive force is billionaires and the measurement for the level of corruption is wealth disparity.

If an institution is a net negative and it dies then we are better off immediately. Even if it’s not a net-negative and it dies we might be better off in the long term because something better replaces it.

Re: Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

#193

Post by [deleted] »

juve1996 wrote: post #186
user3939382 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t have to trust him, he’s pointing out inconsistencies in publicly available sources that you can verify yourself.

He points out financial conflicts of interest yet he also sells books, often with click-baity titles. Seems rather hypocritical, no?

[deleted]

Re: Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

#194

Post by [deleted] »

juve1996 wrote: post #186
user3939382 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t have to trust him, he’s pointing out inconsistencies in publicly available sources that you can verify yourself.

He points out financial conflicts of interest yet he also sells books, often with click-baity titles. Seems rather hypocritical, no?

[deleted]

Re: Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

#195

Post by tick_tock_tick »

hayst4ck wrote: post #166
user3939382 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can’t have faith in any of our society’s major institutions because they’re all corrupt https://youtu.be/z6IO2DZjOkY

Institutional corruption will not be solved by losing trust in the institutions. When the institution dies because nobody trusts it you don't all of a sudden get good health care. So if you believe that our medical institutions are corrupted, anger at the institution itself is misdirected. The corruptive force is billionaires and the measurement for the level of corruption is wealth disparity.

> So if you believe that our medical institutions are corrupted, anger at the institution itself is misdirected. The corruptive force is billionaires and the measurement for the level of corruption is wealth disparity.

Don't you mean not enough billionaires? It seems like they are the only ones that can circumvent the political roadblocks to deliver things like cost plus drugs. There aren't that many of them nor are they involved in a lot of the industries plagued with these issues.

Most issue are from regulator capture from honestly not even that rich of people.

Re: Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

#196

Post by hotpathdev »

hayst4ck wrote: post #151

Half the posts in this thread bring back the old SlashDot adage: The plural of anecdote is not data. I am not sure what the point this article is trying to make is. I do not feel more informed for having read it. It seems a populist appeal to the idea that the medical institution has no idea what it is doing. Is it good, is it bad? It doesn't matter. The end result is damaged institutional trust. How many people woul…

> Half the posts in this thread bring back the old SlashDot adage: The plural of anecdote is not data.

I find the application of this logic to be entirely one-sided. Positive anecdotes are data, negative anecdotes are wives tales.

Simplifying medical information into data points is a dangerous practice which by now should be revealing itself as entirely fraudulent. Anecdotes provide context which doctors and science love to dismiss. I'll take a handful of anecdotes and appreciate all the context they provide, meanwhile the context-free "science" will go back and forth never getting anywhere nearer to better health outcomes.

Re: Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

#197

Post by o_____________o »

ramblenode wrote: post #174
kornhole wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article gives people things to consider and does not dare give specific advice. Everybody is different. Some people are in touch with their bodies and can detect if something is going wrong, and others are not. Institutions and pharmaceutical companies can adversely affect our health if they are able to influence doctors to advise us wrongly in a for profit health care industry. If you look at the health of the…

> Everybody is different. Some people are in touch with their bodies and can detect if something is going wrong, and others are not. Piggybacking off the parent, this is a major issue that medicine doesn't seem to have figured out how to deal with. Some people are so in touch with themselves they can tell they are getting sick before they have any measurable symptoms. Other people go months or years without knowing s…

> Some people are so in touch with themselves they can tell they are getting sick before they have any measurable symptoms. Other people go months or years without knowing something is seriously wrong.

And many people derive imagined diagnoses from their anxieties, then come up with confident narratives based on "researching" online. Most of us are terrible at self-diagnosis, doubly at determining the causality to wherever they've arrived. There's a reason the double blind standard was a critical innovation.

Re: Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

#198

Post by makeitdouble »

p_j_w wrote: post #187
makeitdouble wrote: post #178

This article is really aimed at the more dubious tests (e.g. cholesterol) than doing yearly checkups per se. I'd agree with the idea that some tests aren't as good as others, and we lump critical checkups (let's say cardiography) with more shakier ones, like waist circumference or cholesterol. Finding issue with the later falls a lot more into pop science than actual hard evidence based physical intervention. Removin…

>Finding issue with the later [cholesterol checks] falls a lot more into pop science than actual hard evidence based physical intervention. This statement is in opposition to the consensus of medical professionals. What reason is there for believing it?

cholesterol values are read as corrolated to deseases we want to prevent, but not as a issue themselves.

https://www.cdc.gov/cholesterol/index.htm

> Too much cholesterol puts you at risk for heart disease and stroke, two leading causes of death in the United States.

For instance if you have high cholesterol but clinically no artery or cardiac issues, lowering your cholesterol will essentially do nothing for you. Some doctors will follow the manuals and still have you lower your levels "just in case" (they'll want to lower a potential risk), but we're the entering the fuzzy part that has no consensus.

PS: what values are high is also actively debated, and ethnicity and other factors will affect what is "normal". That's another aspect where it's a lot more touchy/feely than a "your arteries are clogged" diagnostic.

Re: Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

#199

Post by balderdash »

In my humble opinion, this fails the deductive reasoning test, and therefore the analysis is missing key explanatory factors (some of which the authors seem to allude to).

Of course checkups carry the risk of false positives. And I have trouble believing that: early detection/intervention isn’t going to lead to better health outcomes, regular screenings won’t lead to early detection, and that adherence to a treatment regime (e.g. high cholesterol = improve diet, increase exercise, maybe take medication) won’t improve outcomes.

Re: Experts warn yearly checkups carry risks and do not reduce mortality

#200

Post by hotpathdev »

im3w1l wrote: post #11

I find this sentiment almost offensive. Like it goes against everything I believe to say that less data is better. But the root of it is pretty clear "even basic blood tests can lead to unnecessary interventions or treatments". It's the belief that a test leads to interventions. But it doesn't have to of course. An intervention is a decision, and if an intervention is likely to be unnecessary, then they shouldn't int…

The issue is that depending on the situation, and on the patient in question, the intervention will shift from decision, to persuasion to mandatory.

For example, if you have a positive test for cancer, they will persuade you to follow it up. They will apply very emotionally manipulative techniques.

Another example, if the patient does not have the ability to decide for themselves, the doctor's opinion will hold a very heavy weight and can lead into a legal issue.

If you believe that science and medicine in 2023 is offering complete understanding and solutions to all or even many problems, then you will naturally feel like these two examples should be handled that way. However, the daily "revelations" of "new medical research" which contradict past results and understandings should be enough to cause doubt in that high level of confidence.

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