The way people online constantly say ‘talk to your doctor’ like it’s a panacea is a lot like how medieval peasants weren’t able to read scripture and they just had to trust their clergy’s interpretations
Sick of it. Usually it’s not even like if I’m trying to find out if I have fucking cancer, I’m saying oh i feel sad in the evenings. why in the NAME of GOD would i want to then, for that, find the guy’s number, call, leave a message cause it’s midnight, wait for them to call back, schedule something 2 weeks later, worry the whole time, and try to remember and rephrase in formal clinical terminology exactly what’s happening and get formal cold clinical advice for it from a guy I see twice a year. Just tell me! Give me colloquial advice and home remedies! good god!
There could be so many miracle tips or tricks online that really work but nooo people constantly shout ‘talk to your doctor! call your doctor!’ i don’t want to fucking call the doctor, medical environments give me anxiety and all the bureaucracy and insurance and bills don’t help matters either.
some zoomers on tiktok seem to get this and happily share ‘oh this worked for me!’ and usually it’s somewhat helpful and a very nice, casual interaction that doesn’t involve interaction with an authority figure and potential bills. it’s that easy.
‘ooh what about liability’ don’t care. liability has destroyed modern america, gatekeeping knowledge behind a culture of fear. if you’re so scared about liability over a reddit comment, simply don’t say anything! rather than leaving a pointless piece of advice that every single person on the planet knows is the default ‘ideal’ answer, that isn’t necessarily actionable for many who don’t have easy or trivial access to healthcare.
Man, this occur really an opinion, it’s a rant.
Which is fine, I guess, but it means you won’t get useful responses for the most part.
Here’s the thing though. You can’t crowd source medical advice. Well, you can, but doing so is an idiot’s bet. You might get lucky and get good advice, but chances are it’ll range from useless to possibly risky/dangerous.
It’s hard enough to diagnose when you have a solid patient history and a good intake interview. Going from there to prescribing is another set of evaluations to get the most results with the least side effects.
And you sure as fuck need to give plenty of disclaimers if you do give advice so that some idiot doesn’t follow it without thinking it through.
Me? Idgaf about liability because I won’t give advice without a shit ton of disclaimers, and outright telling the person they shouldn’t take the advice.
But I agree with you. If you aren’t going to do something useful, just scroll on. No need to waste anyone’s time with the bullshit.
Agreed, my experience supports what you’re saying. I’ve had dangerous advice and prescriptions from doctors, and great advice from online that’s produced long-term resolutions to health problems.
Yeah there’s a lot of nonsense out there, you have to be savvy, so yes, some people should just stick with visiting professionals.
Long term, I’ve had better results for a lot of issues when I’ve gone online and learned vs when I’ve gone through the process of visiting multiple highly rated providers, including specialists. I’ve also been able to develop a good understanding of how my body works which has allowed me to develop a better wellness-oriented approach to my health.
Sad to see so many people in this thread ignoring what you actually said and attacking you with straw man arguments and extreme edge case scenarios.
exactly, yes, thank you. it drives me insane when people act like they’re so infallible that it automatically makes everyone else wrong, immoral even, for even giving advice. if they’re typing from canada or the UK or europe that’s one thing, cause it is more trivial to talk to a doctor, but in the US it’s extremely obnoxious and presumptuous when you damn well know the way this country works yet still constantly badger people about it, with this attitude that of course i don’t know what’s best for me, nor should i even attempt to find out myself or double check or find other opinions, of course not, how dare i. the only corroboration allowed is making another appointment with another doctor. it’s my body and life. when i was 15 i diagnosed myself with an extremely rare speech disorder two weeks before the expensive ENT did the same thing except with far more bluntness and insensitivity. haven’t cared much for the outright worship of them since.
maybe the reason most medical advice online is so ‘untrustworthy’ is because everyone’s been yelling this for 20 years so the only people bothering to try are the real kooks.
Yeah. I trust medical professionals but they’re far from perfect. They might prescribe you expensive pills for digestive problems before teaching you about the importance of fiber, or give you powerful psychoactive medication before introducing you to cognitive behavioral therapy.
Everyone’s worried about liability, which is fine if you’re giving paid medical advice, but stomping on people trying to learn about health issues isn’t the way to handle it.
Abdication to authority, with a hint of hivemind mass-formation.
Talk to your doctor - is a general statement for people to not get involved, or to avoid liability, or to say they don’t know.
Especially in media, or para-social settings, anything that isn’t a 1:1 direct conversation - content creators have to be careful to not give ‘medical advice’ and take on liabilities, which is why you often hear ‘this isn’t medical advice, consult your doctor before doing X’
In 1:1 conversations, talk to your doctor is less frequent, but comes up when the issue is serious.
i.e. I got a cut, it stings a little - oh man, sucks, want to go bowling?
vs
I have this wound that wont heal after a few weeks and I keep fainting… Dude, go to the hospital!
My favorite is when the question starts out with “I don’t have insurance and can’t afford to see a doctor, but I have dandruff and it just won’t go away”, and the first response is “I know you said you can’t afford it, but you should really just see a doctor”.
Like, sure, homeopathy is slightly better than snake oil because it doesn’t generally have random poison in it, so getting recommendations for that is worthless. But that doesn’t mean asking people who have been through similar things for advice is also worthless.
Homeopathy is literally just water. Drinking a bottle of sparkling water has literally more active ingredients than homeopathy.
Err, homeopathy often does have poison in it, one of the more famous “treatments” is watered down belladonna as a “teething gel”.
There are also lots of home remedies that doctors actually recommend. I had a doctor teach me a technique for using a shower a bit like a netty pot, to keep my sinuses clean, and it’s great. I’ve shared it with a few people when it made sense. Sorting out the useful home remedies from the useless or harmful pseudoscience is harder than it should be, though.
There could be so many miracle tips or tricks online that really work
“You know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work? - Medicine.” ― Tim Minchin
I’m not really sure you understand just how complicated being a doctor is and making the correct diagnosis is. Sure, it might be something small if you feel sad in the evenings. It might also be a brain tumor. Home remedies might work in both cases, and they might not.
But you know what will probably work more often that not? A doctor’s prescription.
Talk to you doctor.
yeah, this is exactly what i mean.
“Talk to you doctor.” i love that, like a mic drop. i don’t understand people’s burning desire to be so ostentatious about this point. yes yes yes obviously that is the best case scenario. congratulations, you posted the most generic answer to any question, take 40 points, awesome. it’s just this arbitrary blind faith in authority – can you imagine how many billions of dollars are spent by health insurance companies in the US to cultivate this exact line of thought in the populace? 100 years ago they only recently discovered you needed to wash your hands, and people act like they’re infallible deities.
“You know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work? - Medicine.”
great, and now it’s gatekept to doctors only rather than being accessible to the common populace. W.
You would trust random idiots on the internet to give you medical advice? How fucking stupid. People have died because of bad advice given on the internet, and you want to encourage this?
For every “miracle tip” there’s at least 10 fuckwits giving potentially dangerous advice.
Anyone can become a doctor and learn the same knowledge, it’s just a lot of effort. No one is stopping you.
And amazingly it’s not a question of intelligence, but rather tenacity. It’s really a lot of time and work but most people could do it if they had the willingness and opportunity.
It’s a generic answer because it’s the only responsible answer. To give someone medical advice when ypu have no medical expertise is highly irresponsible because not only are you potentially misleading the person asking, but countless others who read the discussion.
It should only ever be “talk to your doctor” because medical advice is one thing the Internet cannot provide and no one should be enlisting others in helping them treat their health as some kind of horoscope.
The amount of times I’ve been online and misdiagnosed myself, man I don’t even know. Worst case was I convinced myself I had afib. Knew it, from all of my reading and everything I had all the symptoms.
Except I didn’t have them, because since I’ve never experienced the symptoms I thought I had the symptoms, but I did not.
The knowledge isn’t “gatekept”, it’s not something they hide away in a chest. It takes 10 years of medical school and several more after that of on the job training just to be a junior doctor. Talk about minimizing how complex the human body and all possible ailments are. We go to doctors not for the 15 minutes in the exam room with them, but because of the decades of knowledge they learned so we didn’t have to.
So if you get in a horrible accident and lose a limb, make sure to ask the internet for advice as you bleed out. Don’t be a sucker for “big surgeon” and bow to authority.
It if your house burns down, ask a bunch of randos to help rebuild it. You don’t want to support that multi-billion-dollar construction industry.
Consider for a moment that most doctors actually know what they’re doing and the beef you have is with a dystopian society that’s figured out how to commodify basic needs to a point where we all need to “earn” our very existence.
This is without a doubt the worst take I have ever read ever. All that knowledge is on the internet in ebooks by the way. Don’t want to go to the doctor? Learn.
I might just be people want to be helpful but they don’t have any way of helping you, so they default to that statement.
You’re describing a problem with the health care system, not the problem with doctors.
That being said, actually an unpopular and dangerous and stupid opinion. Upvoted.
Just like with “proof” of aliens or ghosts being presented on UFO and ghost hunting shows: if there really was a miracle cure to be found by talking to randos online, it would be major fucking news that wouldn’t be limited to hearing it first from JimboXX42069 on Facebook.
It’s because most people realize that a doctors advise about your medical issue is probably going to be a lot more helpful than the baseless uneducated opinions of “some guy I talked to on Lemmy”
there are a great deal of people who don’t go to the doctor even if they should until it’s too late. i have people like that in my family. repeating to them they should go can actually prevent disability or death.
therefore i think you should both, give advice, if you have any, and remind them to go to the doctor.
I gave myself the 2 week rule with my own hypochondria and anxiety. If something lasts for more than 2 weeks, it’s officially time to get over myself and go talk to someone. If I get a random ache I can never tell is this me getting older, or is this something serious. Very unlikely 2 weeks will be enough to kill me, so I make a mental note of when I started feeling a certain way. If it’s happening after 2 weeks, it’s usually time to see a doctor. Most things go away and I completely forget about. The other ones the doctor usually agrees in it was time for me to come in. Last one was simple heart burn, but it lasted so long, they told me it was good to come in, put me on some simple stuff, it was gone relatively quickly.
A therapist might be able to help you with your anxiety. You should consider making an appointment to talk to one.
As my favorite doctor sang, “It’s best to know the truth, for that I have no doubt”
Going to the internet is great for the best over the counter itch ointment, or all natural throat lozenges, but a persistent cough? That’s for sure 100% doctor territory. That’s not looking for cures or advice, that requires a diagnosis, which is scary, but what is more scary is not knowing. The saying is true, knowing is half the battle. Plus the longer it goes undiagnosed the worse it gets.
@OP, call your doctor, if you don’t have one just call a nearby clinic and tell them you’re a new patient. (You can either ask them or check with your insurance to see if they’re in-network). I deal with a lot of anxiety too, but part of life is learning how to live with it. Either by facing your fears or by talking to a professional, of which I’ve done both. A year ago I barely could get out of bed due to crippling anxiety and depression. I got up, I got help, and now I’m much much better. A disease won’t care how anxious you are, go see a doctor.
The things is, the stakes can be really high, even for something that seems benign. The people who give you medical advice based on a text post really are being irresponsible. Doctors are trained to ask the right questions and do the right tests. Sure, we might like it if we could just crowd source our diagnosis, but it’s a really, really bad idea for most things.
I’m onboard with this statement purely because nobody is posting asking for advice while sitting around just fucking oblivious to the idea that doctors exist. Like we arent aware that the best advice will come from a trained medical professional who has my complete medical history and access to all manner of tests to confirm their diagnosis.
Saying “Speak to your doctor” is useless, its just you involving yourself in the conversation for the sake of it. Its the advice equivalent of “Thoughts and Prayers”. Do you also go on a automotive community and reply to every car repair advice question with “take it to a mechanic”?
For me, "Speak to “your doctor” means getting an appointment for 10 weeks from now OR taking the first available appointment (11am next tuesday, so… take a day off work) at the revolving door medical clinic staffed by doctors who legit have a “patients per hour” quota to keep and you never see the same one twice. Who skimreads 40 years of medical history, pays no heed to what I actually want and pushes me out the door.
Even if you think “talk to a doctor” is useless, misinformation is still actively harmful. So giving advice is worse than useless. It’s not a “something is better than nothing” scenario.
it’s not automatically misinformation because it’s advice
There’s no way to know without a medical expert, and the liklihood of it being misinformation is high given people’s penchant for offering advice they know nothing about.
Don’t ask strangers on the internet for medical advice.
Actually a great many people honestly believe they know better than doctors, that their snake oil will fix them. Look at the entire antivax movement. Look at the pandemic deniers.
So, uh, we can’t take it for granted that people actually know that they should talk to a trained professional. Because many don’t.
And that’s important. If we find out that we’re talking to a certain kind of fundie or antivaxxer or COVID denier, depending on the context of course, often there’s no point wasting time. Get the good advice on paper in hopes that other readers see it, and move along with life.
What people DO with advice they asked for is on them.
I was having issues with positional hypertension, I posted about it in a bodybuilding forum. Someone said “I bet your caffeine intake is too high. I had the same issue after my morning coffees and whenever I had preworkout. Dial back the caf and see what happens” That advice was safe, free and easy to test. It worked too. The thread has a bunch of people saying “Go see a doctor” and a bunch of people recommending supplements to help. I looked at what I asked rationally and thought about it.
I think the type of people who will.apply internet quackery as fact are probably the same people who put “doctors” in inverted commas and shop for the opinion they want anyway.
thank you, this is exactly what i mean. the problem shouldn’t be, as the comments are saying, ‘stupid people will do the horse injections’ – it’s pretty obvious when the tips are common sense and benign yet clever and helpful – like taking a bath if you’re stressed. it’s just such a preachy, syrupy empty message to shut off everyone else from saying anything because you need to repeat the boring disclaimer we’ve heard 1000 times. it’s so smug, i’ve never seen such smugness resonate off of plain text before.
it’s not “dangerous” to read people’s advice online, my god, you can get all sorts of horrible advice about relationships or sex or professional life or tech support or anything else you can think of, but medical advice – something that could be the most crucial thing you need in an emergency, if you have one of the many, many situations it’s not trivial to talk to a doctor – that’s where we draw the line and leave it to the esteemed doctor class, only they may know the secrets. why can’t people talk to fellow people about their health without getting yelled at that they should, nay, they MUST speak to a medical professional. we are not allowed to discuss the hippocratic realm
I replied this to someone else but…
I was having issues with positional hypertension, I posted about it in a bodybuilding forum. Someone said “I bet your caffeine intake is too high. I had the same issue after my morning coffees and whenever I had preworkout. Dial back the caf and see what happens” That advice was safe, free and easy to test. It worked too. The thread has a bunch of people saying “Go see a doctor” and a bunch of people recommending supplements to help. I looked at all the advice rationally and thought about it. Id never had issues with caffeine before, but Id also never been working out as hard as I was and in a caloric deficit at the same time.
I’m onboard with this statement purely because nobody is posting asking for advice while sitting around just fucking oblivious to the idea that doctors exist.
That doesn’t mean this is the right course of action. A doctor will actually examine you rather than just listening to your explanation of things that may or may not be relevant. The point isn’t that people don’t know doctors exist, it’s that they want to find the cheapest route rather than spend the money to see one in addition to the fact that you have zero idea who the person you’re talking to is.
Asking for medical advice online is no different than asking a magic 8-ball.
what if they can’t spend the money?? just suffer? someone who’s suffering from the same thing as me is frankly someone i respect more than a normal successful guy who went to school for 20 years
You’re angry at the (I’m guessing) US healthcare system. I get it. It sucks. But that anger is woefully misplaced going against doctors or random people on the internet. The doctor that treats your ailment is not responsible for how much the clinic, the hospital or insurance charges you. But they will always be on your side and give you advice that they are sure will work and will help you get better.
People on the internet however, a few of them will give you advice that kills you or cause permanent harm without even an inch of remorse. They’ll frame it as medical advice as well. Often without even recognizing that what they’re doing is harmful. The internet has told little kids to chew on detergent pods, drink bleach, people with COVID to do bleach enemas and horse dewormer, told psychiatric patients to stop taking their medications (leading to accidents and suicides), caused ear infections with recipes for extraneous concoctions for tinnitus, and the list goes on.
The vast majority of the people on the internet do not want to be responsible for stuff like the ones above, so we tell people asking for advice to go see a doctor. If it’s so much trouble, there are alternatives, asks for a friend to help you call and set up the appointment, they can come with you into consultation if you feel unsafe. You rely so much on the internet, make a gofundme or some similar donations page and get people to help you pay for the doctor. Hell I would rather help you with that, than give you potentially bad advice. The point is, “go to the doctor” doesn’t come from a place of malice, quite the contrary, it comes from a place of care.
And finally, yes, the guy who went to school for 20 years knows more than the one guy who is suffering the same thing as you. Because, the one guy who suffers the same symptoms as you has very intimate experience with one body and one expression of the disease. Without even considering the fact that you have to find that one guy in the sea of million of users who have no idea what they’re talking about. However, the guy who went to school has direct experience with thousands of bodies who have had the same disease, and indirect experience with millions of bodies that have been documented with the same disease in scientific and practice journals. He has seen your symptoms not once, but expressing in a million different ways, in a million lifestyles, treated with thousand different ways with control for hundreds of possible variables. He knows what works and what doesn’t and can adapt his advice to your specific body, lifestyle and circumstances in ways that a random on the internet simply cannot.
If asking online cures your illness then you probably didn’t need to go to the doctor in the first place and you never know if someone is truly suffering from the same thing as you since so many illnesses have overlapping symptoms. Remember it wasn’t too long ago that people online were recommending bleach and horse dewormer to cure COVID. Is that the type of advice you’re looking for?
If people want to blindly apply the advice, do no followup or apply any kind of common sense to the answers thats on them.
Theres no folk remedy OR prescription for fucking stupid.
Your last sentence explains perfectly why people say “see your doctor”.
Nobody wants to participate in some idiot hurting themselves because they don’t have the ability to apply common sense in the first place.
People that ask for “tips and tricks” regarding healthcare also can’t fathom how incredibly complex modern medicine can be.
See a doctor? In this economy? Yeah fuckin right
