There may be nothing scarier than not knowing what is going on with your health. Though the human body is remarkably self-reliant, there are many times when something may go wrong. If you have health questions, your first obvious step is to visit your doctor. However, if you must wait for an appointment, you may find that you become increasingly agitated wondering what is going on. You can get some of your health questions answered online, but you do have to be careful what you believe.
I have written a lot of articles about health questions in the past. I am very careful when I do so however, because I would never want to be responsible for passing around bad information. I do very careful research, and I make sure it is clear that the information I am providing is to be used as a reference only. Many times, people find answers to health questions online, and they do not bother to discuss their findings with their doctors. This is where many problems may begin. If you go about believing that you have solved your own problems, you may end up making things worse. If you do not visit with your doctor, a more serious condition may go undiagnosed.
Though a lot of the health questions you may have are simple, there may be times when the doctors cannot figure out what is wrong with you. The Internet is a great source for information about where health disorders, and you may find something your doctor has missed. However you should make sure that you discuss what you find with your doctor, before deciding that is exactly what is wrong with you. Your health questions are important, and if your doctor doesn’t have time to answer them for you, you should go to see someone else.
When you seek answers to your health questions online, consider the source. If you go to a web site like Web M.D., you know you are probably getting good information. That doesn’t mean that the information you’re getting will pertain to you. If you find answers to health questions that you think may have something to do with what you are going through, print out everything you find and present it to your doctor for further discussion. I’m not saying there’s not a lot of great information out there, I’m just saying that you never really know what you’re getting.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Health Articles
It seems that our medical professionals cannot agree on anything. For every medical opinion that is given, you will be able to find a doctor that will give an opposite opinion. This can be very frustrating if you are trying to find a diagnosis. This can also be very frustrating if you have to change doctors due to insurance and find that they feel you were given miss information by your previous physician.
I recently went through a situation where I was looking for answers for the severe back pain I was in. I had been to general practitioners, as well as a group of specialists. My appointments included three different cities and five different doctor’s offices. I know ever inch of five different waiting rooms. As I spent time waiting for test results and appointments I read many health articles in the magazines in the waiting rooms. I was beginning to see a pattern in the health articles. If one health magazine had a topic that was featured another magazine would have a similar topic and or rebuttal article the next month. The doctors that write the health articles seem to enjoy proving each other wrong. At times it seems that their main objective is to disagree. This makes me suspicious of health articles. I start to wonder how much of the article is fact and how much is the opinion of the doctor.
As with all research, health articles can present statistics in such a way that they can claim a theory is proven or they can claim the opposite. I was talking to my nephew about this. He is a pharmaceutical researcher. He agreed that the health articles can be very misleading, especially if they are based on research that has not been verified. He explained that there are so many articles written because a researcher needs to have a certain number of publications each year to fulfill requirements for grants, fellowships and scholarships. Often times the researcher does not have the time to do an in depth article, so they read another person’s published work and create a rebuttal article. He pointed out that this is why you do not see many of the health magazines any place but in the doctor’s office. The health articles are not very interesting, factual or well written. He did tell me that the health articles that are written in more popular magazines are usually well researched and written better because they are written by professional writers rather than researchers.
I recently went through a situation where I was looking for answers for the severe back pain I was in. I had been to general practitioners, as well as a group of specialists. My appointments included three different cities and five different doctor’s offices. I know ever inch of five different waiting rooms. As I spent time waiting for test results and appointments I read many health articles in the magazines in the waiting rooms. I was beginning to see a pattern in the health articles. If one health magazine had a topic that was featured another magazine would have a similar topic and or rebuttal article the next month. The doctors that write the health articles seem to enjoy proving each other wrong. At times it seems that their main objective is to disagree. This makes me suspicious of health articles. I start to wonder how much of the article is fact and how much is the opinion of the doctor.
As with all research, health articles can present statistics in such a way that they can claim a theory is proven or they can claim the opposite. I was talking to my nephew about this. He is a pharmaceutical researcher. He agreed that the health articles can be very misleading, especially if they are based on research that has not been verified. He explained that there are so many articles written because a researcher needs to have a certain number of publications each year to fulfill requirements for grants, fellowships and scholarships. Often times the researcher does not have the time to do an in depth article, so they read another person’s published work and create a rebuttal article. He pointed out that this is why you do not see many of the health magazines any place but in the doctor’s office. The health articles are not very interesting, factual or well written. He did tell me that the health articles that are written in more popular magazines are usually well researched and written better because they are written by professional writers rather than researchers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)