That does work for a lot of things doctors commonly see. I ran into it. I was sick, and after I mostly got better I was having chronic chest pain that hung on for a month. I finally decided to go see a doctor. I didn’t have a doctor in the area yet, so I went to the one at the office, who was out, so I saw the nurse practitioner filling in. She did an EKG on some 50 year old machine and told me I had a heart attack. I refused the ambulance she tried to call (I had been driving for a month; I could take myself to the hospital), but went to the ER as instructed. They said I was fine, but told me to do some follow ups with my doctor. I found a real doctor who ordered some blood test to start. One metric on that scared me straight, before even going to review the results. I did a complete 180 on my diet. Within 3 days the chest pain was gone. When I went in to review the results, I told the doctor. She said something like, “I guess I don’t need to convince you that you might feel better if you eat better.” I went on to lose 50lbs and pretty much every issue I had went away… stuff other doctors told me to take pills for, even when I asked if it could be weight related and if losing it would help… then dismissed that and told me to take the pills. The pills didn’t help (I took them for 2 years), it was just the weight.
I just meant it’s a very common tactic doctors use to avoid taking the effort to properly diagnose women. There’s so many stories women tell of having years or decades of that dismissal, and finally finding out they had a treatable condition (or combination of conditions) all along.
Figuring out what’s wrong with someone is like troubleshooting a computer. You do the obvious and common stuff to rule it out, then if that’s not it, the more obscure problems can be chased down. The difference is that the obvious and common thing with most people these days is weight/diet, and the doctor can’t do that for a person.
Everyone complains about doctors just giving out pills and not finding the root problem, but this is a big reason why. To figure out the root issue, all the normal stuff needs to be ruled out and most people aren’t going to do it.
My dad had a bunch of health issues that I told him were likely weight related. He assured me they weren’t and said his doctor told him so as well. After a decade of dealing with stuff he finally got on some program that led to him losing weight. All those things he’s been dealing with for 10 years went away. He cries when talking about it. When he was in the middle of it he acted like the treatment was no big deal and would tell everyone about it, telling them to get checked out, because the treatment was so good… turns out losing weight and not having it at all was a lot better. He also found the allergies he thought he had for 50+ years were a mild allergy to wheat or gluten (thanks to what was essentially an elimination diet)… when he eats bread his nose runs, Benadryl stops it. When I suggested if he ate better he might feed better, he claimed he didn’t feel bad, but he didn’t know what the alternative was, because he dealt with it his whole life and never attributed it to the food he was eating.
That does work for a lot of things doctors commonly see. I ran into it. I was sick, and after I mostly got better I was having chronic chest pain that hung on for a month. I finally decided to go see a doctor. I didn’t have a doctor in the area yet, so I went to the one at the office, who was out, so I saw the nurse practitioner filling in. She did an EKG on some 50 year old machine and told me I had a heart attack. I refused the ambulance she tried to call (I had been driving for a month; I could take myself to the hospital), but went to the ER as instructed. They said I was fine, but told me to do some follow ups with my doctor. I found a real doctor who ordered some blood test to start. One metric on that scared me straight, before even going to review the results. I did a complete 180 on my diet. Within 3 days the chest pain was gone. When I went in to review the results, I told the doctor. She said something like, “I guess I don’t need to convince you that you might feel better if you eat better.” I went on to lose 50lbs and pretty much every issue I had went away… stuff other doctors told me to take pills for, even when I asked if it could be weight related and if losing it would help… then dismissed that and told me to take the pills. The pills didn’t help (I took them for 2 years), it was just the weight.
I just meant it’s a very common tactic doctors use to avoid taking the effort to properly diagnose women. There’s so many stories women tell of having years or decades of that dismissal, and finally finding out they had a treatable condition (or combination of conditions) all along.
Figuring out what’s wrong with someone is like troubleshooting a computer. You do the obvious and common stuff to rule it out, then if that’s not it, the more obscure problems can be chased down. The difference is that the obvious and common thing with most people these days is weight/diet, and the doctor can’t do that for a person.
Everyone complains about doctors just giving out pills and not finding the root problem, but this is a big reason why. To figure out the root issue, all the normal stuff needs to be ruled out and most people aren’t going to do it.
My dad had a bunch of health issues that I told him were likely weight related. He assured me they weren’t and said his doctor told him so as well. After a decade of dealing with stuff he finally got on some program that led to him losing weight. All those things he’s been dealing with for 10 years went away. He cries when talking about it. When he was in the middle of it he acted like the treatment was no big deal and would tell everyone about it, telling them to get checked out, because the treatment was so good… turns out losing weight and not having it at all was a lot better. He also found the allergies he thought he had for 50+ years were a mild allergy to wheat or gluten (thanks to what was essentially an elimination diet)… when he eats bread his nose runs, Benadryl stops it. When I suggested if he ate better he might feed better, he claimed he didn’t feel bad, but he didn’t know what the alternative was, because he dealt with it his whole life and never attributed it to the food he was eating.