I would be shocked by this, but I just finished reading "Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment" by Daniel Kahneman (the author of Thinking fast and slow") and therefore I'm not at all surprised. In the book they show many well-documented examples where experts (including doctors) are giving wildly different judgements on the same case. In this specific article there's another factor that compounds the problem; bias towards more expensive treatments.
I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
501–510 of 585 posts
Re: I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
#502A couple years ago my dentist sold her practice to a new dentist. Before I had an appointment with the new dentist, my wife had an appointment, and he told her she had gum disease with bone loss and needed a deep cleaning and to go on a "periodontal schedule" where she would have to come in every three months instead of six. (Note: My wife and I have different last names and separate insurance, so he wouldn't have kn…
I had the same exact thing happen to me and my wife. We’ve learned since then that this is a common scam by dental clinics. Did they try to sign you up for a “care” credit card too?
FWIW: the Care Credit Card is legit. Having one has been a boon to me a few times by helping me cover unexpected medical expenses with reasonable interest rates.
Re: I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
#503Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is very true. I had a SO with severe chronic gastric pain and they got passed around by doctors for years. One jerk wrote "drug seeking behavior" into her file and that made things even worse. Finally someone took her seriously, got imagery done, and discovered surgery was necessary. In US healthcare you have to be your own advocate and be willing to push. The system breaks down if you don't have a routine and o…
I moved from the U.K. to the US and the situation is even worse in the UK. Unless you’re bleeding or have cancer it’s basically “please go away”.
As of recently, doctors refuse to see you in person even when you tell them you're chronically having abdominal pains. They're doing this telephone medicine now. They kept prescribing PPIs and insisting its indigestion (it wasn't).
Not sure if this practice is just shit or if all of them are. They then have the audacity to strike too. I've had absolutely zero sympathy for them since the months long ordeal of being in pain and taking pills that made me feel worse rather than better. Fucking disgraceful is what it has become.
Re: I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
#504My son when 3 had a fall and a few teeth were bent. Went to our local dentist who mostly had a wait and see opinion. But then calls a day later and says they’ve decided they should just come out. Two top front teeth. Would have no top front teeth for years. I went into engineer mode and while I acknowledged I didn’t have domain expertise, I asked questions and probed the whole situation. Very unsatisfactory, meanderi…
> I’m not a conspiracy nut where would be the conspiracy in your experience anyway? > But that experience shook me and forever changed my trust in the dental industry. don't trust any industry. industry is always about making money and keeping a comfortable status quo. sometimes this is achieved through conspiracies.
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Re: I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
#505I've been told I'd have to have my wisdom teeth extracted by every dentist I've seen. Over 10 of them as I've moved around. Oral surgeons saying the same thing. The first one to recommend this was 35 years ago . I still have them, and the last dentist I saw says they are in good shape. The first one ever to tell me this. I've never had an issue with them. Go figure.
This one rings hard for me. My grandmother had a perfectly good wisdom tooth removed a few months ago, and it got horribly infected. Makes me angry thinking about it. I've also had dentists want to pull my wisdom teeth as well, which seems to just be a form of superstition for them.
Re: I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
#506Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is this problem specific to the US? I live in Germany and hear exactly the same problem of needing to be your own advocate in northern Europe.
Also in Europe and most doctors just want to get you out of the office. I've met only a few doctors who actually care and will work with you to figure out the issue. The equivalent in software engineering would be waiting for my client to tell me what line to change in what file. To be fair, doctors are usually overworked and on a human level I understand that the system is a bit broken, but it's still infuriating wh…
I had this when I got shingles on my neck. I hadn’t even got through the door when the doctor had made the diagnosis based on eyeballing my obvious visual symptoms. She was right as it happened but it was my fastest ever doctors visit
Re: I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I read a book by psychiatrist, can't remember it's name now... he was saying, I explained the serotonin reuptake process to one of my patients, then the patient said... great, but how do you know that this applies to me personally?... he said I couldn't respond. Also, there are many antidepressants... I don't think there is a solid ground for why they describe a specific one for certain patients. Check these too: htt…
On the topic of antidepressants, there is some mileage in starting at the beginning, namely with manganese.
https://www.nature.com/articles/193377a0
What makes it difficult for some experts, is that they perhaps dont know there can be 1000-2000 mitochondria per liver cell, and Mn Super Oxide Dismutase increases with manganese intake and beta alanine, which is required for MnSOD.
Point being are symptoms of depression caused by not enough manganese and beta alanine, when looking at how its missing from so much food and water.
When looking at aging, at end of life, feeling the cold is also a symptom of not enough manganese as the iron based reactive oxygen species generates the most heat in the body, ergo increase MnSod, more of the iron based ROS in the mitochondria can take place, like unblocking a drain.
Even the WHO have just rolled back on its manganese in drinking water guidelines.[1]
High fat diets also increase the faecal excretion of manganese, and alcohol contributes to manganese deficiency.
The risk with it, is with kids getting too much as it triggers puberty early as it increases luteinising hormone, and in adults, this would suggest an increase in sexual activity, which from a law enforcement point of view, is undesirable, but also probably explains why Weed makes people horny besides it phytoestrogens, namely because leaves, including tobacco will have the most amount of manganese in.
So it would seem there is a lot of meta data pointing to not enough manganese. Water regulations also require manganese to be removed from the potable water in the UK, so there will only be a few micrograms of the stuff in water.
Obviously pre-internet and personal mobile surveillance phones, trying to find and identify a chemical change to control the population would have been order of the day, but when seeing the rise in depression, have we reached a point where its becoming obvious there isnt enough manganese in our diet?
It also alludes to the possibility that cell sensing contributes to immunity as a 1st line of defence using ROS, something that is hindered by not enough manganese.
And obviously, less than optimal health contributes to the preservation of society, law and order.
I could put lots of links up, but cant be bothered at this stage.
Re: I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being a doctor is like debugging a unique humongous software application with thousands of years of organic patchwork added by a godlike AI which just generates random code and watches the failed experiments die, no source code to any of it just the final binary, no debugger that lets you kill the process and dump its memory or trace its execution, just a bunch of test cases that cost lots of money to run and may yie…
Not only that but you need to provide expertise more on the timelines of a customer support agent rather than a software developer or researcher.
And if you make a mistake that other people feel you really shouldn't have and it damages the thing, you get sued into oblivion.
Re: I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being a doctor is like debugging a unique humongous software application with thousands of years of organic patchwork added by a godlike AI which just generates random code and watches the failed experiments die, no source code to any of it just the final binary, no debugger that lets you kill the process and dump its memory or trace its execution, just a bunch of test cases that cost lots of money to run and may yie…
And much like software development, it will all soon be done by ChatGPT.
ChatGPT correctly identified my wife's condition in a couple seconds when a dozen doctors failed to for over a decade. Less than half a percent of people suffer from this condition, but enough do that doctors should have thought about it. All I did was write down the symptoms and poof. It was actually really frustrating that doctors were mystified but this tech gave us a new (and ultimately correct) path of inquiry. I felt robbed of all that time. My trust in doctors is at an all-time low, but her medication is effective, so something in the system works.
Re: I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
#510My son when 3 had a fall and a few teeth were bent. Went to our local dentist who mostly had a wait and see opinion. But then calls a day later and says they’ve decided they should just come out. Two top front teeth. Would have no top front teeth for years. I went into engineer mode and while I acknowledged I didn’t have domain expertise, I asked questions and probed the whole situation. Very unsatisfactory, meanderi…
> My feeling is that the nature of dentistry leaves a lot of room for subjectivity and COVID left a lot of dental chairs empty.
It’s stated at the bottom that the original article is from 1997. COVID doesn’t factor into it.