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Normal people just get a second opinion from a different medical professional, if they disagree with the first one's diagnoses -- something we've been doing for decades at this point.
But what do I know.
I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week
111–120 of 150 posts
Re: I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week
#112lol and the post is gone. I had to stop reading after this
> I have this rash on my body, but it's not itchy or painful, so I don't think it's an emergency?
If you cannot use punctuation correctly, of course you cannot diagnose yourself.
Re: I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week
#113[flagged]
> Not using ChatGPT in 2026 for medical issues and arming yourself with information [...] would be foolish in my opinion. Using ChatGPT for medical issues is the single dumbest thing you can do with ChatGPT
True story. A friend was having abdominal pain. They were avoiding seeking medical help, thinking it would pass. The health service is overstretched in our country, and GP appointments can take time. I couldn’t help wondering if it was something more serious, like appendicitis. I discussed their symptoms with a LLM which said it sounds very much like appendicitis, that they should go to the ER immediately, and that they should bring a bag because they would likely be admitted and surgery would follow ASAP.
Guess what happened.
Re: I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week
#114[flagged]
I think it's morally wrong to trust a child's well-being to an LLM over a trained medical professional, and I feel strongly enough about this to express that here.
This is misguided, the moral imperative is to get to the correct diagnosis and treatment by any means possible, usually an "all of the above" strategy. In my experience many doctors are not ideal, and this "always consult a doctor" is legal boilerplate to avoid being sued.
Usually you've got less than a 50-50 chance of getting useful help from a doctor on any one visit.
In my case multiple doctor's treatment of my hypertension was largely useless because it followed the "typical" treatment. I only found what worked for me by accident.
In other cases my own research was far superior to a regular doctor's visit.
I can also quote the experience of a family member whose research into a major surgery paid huge dividends and if they had followed the advice of the first 2 doctors the surgery would very likely have failed.
The chances of getting correctly diagnosed and treated for a problem that is not obvious is surprisingly close to zero unless you have a very good doctor who has plenty of time for you.
Re: I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not using ChatGPT in 2026 for medical issues and arming yourself with information [...] would be foolish in my opinion. Using ChatGPT for medical issues is the single dumbest thing you can do with ChatGPT
True story. A friend was having abdominal pain. They were avoiding seeking medical help, thinking it would pass. The health service is overstretched in our country, and GP appointments can take time. I couldn’t help wondering if it was something more serious, like appendicitis. I discussed their symptoms with a LLM which said it sounds very much like appendicitis, that they should go to the ER immediately, and that t…
You can diagnose appendicitis using boring old internet searches. As I remember, loss of appetite and the pain moving over time are key.
Re: I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week
#116More generally don't try to be your own doctor. Whether you're using LLMs or just searching the web for symptoms, it's way too easy for an untrained person to get way off track. If you want to be a doctor, go to medical school. Otherwise talk to someone who did.
I am eight months into Gastritis.
I have seen several doctors at my local practice. They have examined me, sent me for blood tests, even an endoscopy. That’s all great, but the advice remains to just keep taking PPIs and wait it out. Nothing beyond the basics when it comes to dietary advice.
My flareups and their accompanying setbacks have been greatly reduced because I keep a megathread chat going with Gemini. I have pasted in a symptom diary, all my medications, and I check any alterations to my food or drink with it before they go anywhere near my mouth. I have thus avoided foods that are high FODMAP, slow digesting, or surprisingly high in fat or acidity.
This has really helped. I am trying to maintain my calories, so advice like “don’t risk X, increase Y instead” is immediate and actionable.
The presumption that asking a LLM is never a good choice assumes a health service where you can always get a doctor or dietician on the other end of the phone. In the UK, consultations with either for something non-urgent can take weeks, which is why people are usually pushed towards either asking a Pharmacist or going to the local Emergency department (which is often not so local these days).
So the _real_ choice is between the LLM and my best guess. And I haven’t ingested the open web, plus countless medical studies and journals.
Re: I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
True story. A friend was having abdominal pain. They were avoiding seeking medical help, thinking it would pass. The health service is overstretched in our country, and GP appointments can take time. I couldn’t help wondering if it was something more serious, like appendicitis. I discussed their symptoms with a LLM which said it sounds very much like appendicitis, that they should go to the ER immediately, and that t…
You can diagnose appendicitis using boring old internet searches. As I remember, loss of appetite and the pain moving over time are key.
Boring old internet searches wouldn’t have taken in the specifics I supplied.
And they mostly just come to a conclusion, rather than actionable advice I was able to pass on, like take a bag and avoid eating because they might want to operate soon.
Re: I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week
#118[flagged]
> But at least ChatGPT doesn't try to rush you through and ignore your worries just because they want to make their next appoint. But it is a sycophant and will confirm your suspicions, whatever they are and regardless if they're true.
I use a variety of LLMs.
In my experience to date, ChatGPT really is a sycophant. Claude can be moderately stubborn. Gemini is usually very stubborn, practically unmovable, unless you present new facts or make a rock solid counter-argument.
Re: I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week
#119As a kid, I had a bulls-eye rash which is the tell-tale sign of Lyme disease. My dad snapped a Polaroid since we were on a trip and couldn’t get to my pediatrician for a week. The rash cleared up before I went in. My doctor didn’t want to diagnose it as anything or write an antibiotics prescription…until my dad pulled out the photo. She then immediately wrote the antibiotics for it. The danger of under diagnosis for…
These days I hike a lot, I've had bullseye rashes before and the treatment is so much less worrisome than the rare possibility of developing lyme. Last time I was in for getting hundreds of tick bites in one hike (that was fun), I was also told to avoid eating red meat until labs came back. That Alpha-gal is getting more common in my area, and the first immune response is anaphylactic in 40% of the cases, best not to…
>These days I hike a lot, I've had bullseye rashes before and the treatment is so much less worrisome than the rare possibility of developing lyme.
Yeah, if you develop a rash from a tick bite that even remotely looks like it could be lyme, just go to a pet store to buy amoxicillin (you can get exactly the same stuff they give to humans) if you can't quickly find a doctor who'll take it seriously enough to immediately write you a prescription (unless, of course, they have a very well reasoned explanation for not doing so).
The potential consequences of not getting fast treatment are indeed so so much worse than the practically non-existent consequences of taking amoxicillin when you don't need it, unless you're a crazy hypochondriac who constantly thinks they might have lyme.
But hey, also don't blindly trust medical advice from HN commenters telling you to go buy pet store antibiotics :)
Re: I misused LLMs to diagnose myself and ended up bedridden for a week
#120Another poorly written article that doesn't even specify the LLM being used. Both ChatGPT o3 and 5.1 Pro models helped me a lot diagnosing illnesses with the right queries. I am using lots of queries with different context / context length for medical queries as they are very serious. Also they have better answer if I am using medical language as they retrieve answers from higher quality articles. I still went to doc…
The lack of awareness to advocate using LLMs for medical advice on an article about how bad of an idea that is... It's astounding.
There are people receiving life-saving medical advice from LLMs every single day.
The problem isn't getting medical advice from LLMs, it's blindly trusting the medical advice a LLM gives you.
You do not need to trust the LLM for it to be able to save your life, you do need to trust the LLM for it to be able to harm you.