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Robin Warren, pathologist who rewrote the science on ulcers, has died

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Re: Robin Warren, pathologist who rewrote the science on ulcers, has died

#42
post #22
post #13

I got an ulcer about ten years ago, well after Warren's research, I went to a doctor and he told me that the ulcer was caused by stress. I said something like "didn't someone get a Nobel prize proving that ulcers were bacterial?" and the doctor hadn't heard that and "prescribed" me to get more rest and try and be less concerned about work. I got a different doctor after that. Robin Warren is someone who I respected t…

Same thing happened to me about 6 years ago. Told me to relax and not eat spicy foods. Makes me wonder how long medical advancements like this take to really spread to most doctors.

This is a problem with alot of thirdwirld surgery. If some old doctor gets to operate your appendix, he might gut you like fish,like they did back in the 80s, scar from heart to hip.not even due to missing equipment but a lack of schooling and experience on newer techniques.

Re: Robin Warren, pathologist who rewrote the science on ulcers, has died

#43
post #13

I got an ulcer about ten years ago, well after Warren's research, I went to a doctor and he told me that the ulcer was caused by stress. I said something like "didn't someone get a Nobel prize proving that ulcers were bacterial?" and the doctor hadn't heard that and "prescribed" me to get more rest and try and be less concerned about work. I got a different doctor after that. Robin Warren is someone who I respected t…

I have IBS. During my last visit, my GI doctor apropos of nothing blurted out, "you've got to get your anxiety under control!" "What are you talking about?" I asked. "You said the stress of getting ready to leave for the office triggers your attacks," he said. "I work from home!!" I said. "_YOU_ posed a hypothetical and I answered with a hypothetical: that it would certainly be stressful if that happened. I also said…

did you find out what the cause was?

Re: Robin Warren, pathologist who rewrote the science on ulcers, has died

#44
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have IBS. During my last visit, my GI doctor apropos of nothing blurted out, "you've got to get your anxiety under control!" "What are you talking about?" I asked. "You said the stress of getting ready to leave for the office triggers your attacks," he said. "I work from home!!" I said. "_YOU_ posed a hypothetical and I answered with a hypothetical: that it would certainly be stressful if that happened. I also said…

Yeah, that's my issue; stress is a somewhat nebulous thing that's hard to directly quantify and therefore it can be a kind of "catch all" for nearly anything. I'm not saying that stress doesn't have effects, but I think a diagnosis based on "stress" can often be reductive; who doesn't feel some stress throughout the day?

> stress is a somewhat nebulous thing

So is IBS. I am not sure its fair to expect precise diagnosis for a nebulous "disease".

Re: Robin Warren, pathologist who rewrote the science on ulcers, has died

#45
post #38
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the poster example I use for how dramatically information can change within our lifetime. I still encounter people that are unaware that most of the "stress causes ulcers" was just wrong.

It certainly matters more in medicine, where you have very serious risk of causing people pain, but as I've gotten a bit older I've become a lot more sympathetic to people having trouble keeping up with the world sometimes. Like, it's not a good excuse, don't get me wrong, but as much as I try, I simply cannot keep up with the entire state of the art of computer science. I wish I could, and a younger me without a fam…

Oh, I absolutely do not use this to demean people that are wrong. The point is that well established and largely effective knowledge on how things work can be completely changed with most of us not realizing it. All the more reason not to get upset with someone for not being aware of some advances. This should include self.

Re: Robin Warren, pathologist who rewrote the science on ulcers, has died

#46
post #23

I'm still waiting for a similar discovery to treat GERD. Having the condition, I've become a bit of a couch expert on GERD literature and it seems that everyone and their dog have a completely different opinion on what, in the end, causes it.

Same. It has been bane of my existence for last 3 years.

Re: Robin Warren, pathologist who rewrote the science on ulcers, has died

#47
This is one of those situations where the narrative is fairly simple: people believed X, it was wrong, a few iconoclasts demonstrated in a fairly convincing way that Y was indeed the case, and then over time, the story got rewritten in the literature.

But in practice it turned out to be more complicated than the narrative; X is still somewhat true and ulcers and gastric disorders are both caused by, and affected by, multiple factors. Certainly, stress can exacerbate an existing latent ulcer or gastric disorder, making many people attribute the cause to stress, but this quickly gets into "proximal causes" and "ultimate causes".

As for working with doctors who didn't get the memo, I've learned that you sort of have to sneak up new information to them without making them feel challenged by a non-expert. It's a form of social engineering.

Re: Robin Warren, pathologist who rewrote the science on ulcers, has died

#48
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing happened to me about 6 years ago. Told me to relax and not eat spicy foods. Makes me wonder how long medical advancements like this take to really spread to most doctors.

Science advances one funeral at a time

sometimes i think even funerals can't help.

For example, several years ago significant cataract improvement was achieved by applying to eyes lanasterol (chemical in your body clearing cataract naturally) with DMSO (well known widely used solvent which is used in particular to deliver various medicine through the skin, etc., and some adventurous people are also using it to for example deliver dye into eyes to change the eye color). Several other scientific teams at different places tried to reproduce the result by applying lanasterol without DMSO, and no improvement happened. They concluded that the original study effect is non-reproducible and that the application of lanasterol is non-effective. I'm not kidding - you can google these articles yourselves.

Re: Robin Warren, pathologist who rewrote the science on ulcers, has died

#50
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing happened to me about 6 years ago. Told me to relax and not eat spicy foods. Makes me wonder how long medical advancements like this take to really spread to most doctors.

This is a problem with alot of thirdwirld surgery. If some old doctor gets to operate your appendix, he might gut you like fish,like they did back in the 80s, scar from heart to hip.not even due to missing equipment but a lack of schooling and experience on newer techniques.

Why limit it to third world surgery? Sounds like it's a problem with a lot of first world medicine as well.
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