Unpopular Opinion

It's mostly a boiler plate response to avoid being sued in case they suggest something that ends up leaving you worse than if they had said nothing at all

Taking internet medical advice can help you, do nothing, or leave you with permanent damage.

Talking to a doctor is unlikely to cause additional harm.

I agree with you. However, in part this is often done because giving or receiving medical advice online is generally ill advised. There can, in theory, even be legal concerns (potentially). Say someone gives bad advice and the person is harmed from it. I also think that all the misinformation that got disseminated during the pandemic left people gun-shy on these topics.

But I still agree with you in spirit. The "talk to your doctor" thing can be a too cold and reflexive with some folks. And there are a few home remedies that do work. And maybe the person asking just wants some emotional support and not the usual soulless canned advice.

This topic reminds me of people who automatically throw an 800 number out there whenever certain key words get mentioned. There's almost always good intentions behind that. But in the USA at least, calling such a number can make a person's life much worse. Loss of agency followed by a huge medical bill. Because it's not really about helping the person. It's about optics and collecting money.

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.

Abdication to authority, with a hint of hivemind mass-formation.

Sorry that you're going through something OP. Everything I say after this is probably something you don't want to hear, so read on at your peril.

The reason people tell you to go to your doctor when you ask for medical advice online is because the question itself implies you want good or useful advice and nobody besides you're medical team can give you that. You can find some general stuff online or ask to speak to a different doctor if there's trust issues with your current provider, but nobody without access to your personal medical history is able to advise you accurately. It takes at least 8 years of constant study to be a newbie doctor. Human bodies are extremely complex, and we still don't know how everything works. Even if we did, not all bodies work the same way. On top of that, humans are shit at statistics, and we heavily bias anecdotal evidence, especially when it is our own anecdote or from someone we know.

Here's a simple example.

Say I get an upset stomach after eating meals and I complain about it to a friend. Trying to be helpful, they told me they used to get that too, so they tried switching to a vegetarian diet, and they got better. Sounds innocent enough, right? I know what vegetarian means (it's "common sense", right?) so I stop eating meat and start getting salads or fruit for lunch instead. After about a week, I fell asleep while driving home. Turns out, I'm anemic. I was getting just enough iron on my old diet to keep the worst symptoms that would have scared me enough to see a doctor at bay, but when I cut out meat I went from iron deficient to anemic. Had I gone to the doctor, they'd have easily seen my iron deficiency and put me on a supplement or advised me how to change my diet, and the nausea would have gone away. Instead, I end up imaking my condition worse and landing in the ER after an auto crash.

That didn't actually happen, but I think it's a good example for several reasons. It's a common side effect (nausea) of a common problem (iron deficiency) that you're likely to think doesn't warrant a doctor, but you'd still mention to a friend. It's a super common symptom associated with lots of conditions. The friend even gave good advice (for most people, changing their diet wouldn't have been an issue, but because of an underlying medical condition specific to our protagonist, it was bad advice FOR THEM). The friend had no way of knowing or even suspecting it could be dangerous advice because most people don't spend a decade learning about the body and disease more generally and they didn't know about the specific issues related to the specific case. It's the same reason you shouldn't get legal advice online... It's a super complex system, and every case is literally different.

I was initially going to upvote this but the fact is that if someone cannot go to a doctor and get something resolved they will look elsewhere. Whether its a failure of the medical system or limitations of our medical technology there are many reasons someone cannot get treatment or even advice. That being said if one has access to speak to a doctor that should always be their first action.

If you know your diagnosis, you can certainly look up standard of care treatments, prognosis, stats about the disease, and other really good information. The CDC has a really good website for looking up a lot of that stuff, as does the NIH, StatPearls, and a few others. If you have access to a university health library then you now have access to things like ClinicalKey, Ovid, Taylor and Francis, etc. that provide even more information, and if you're working for part of a hospital system you likely have access to UpToDate which residents, fellows, and attending doctors will pull up if they're unfamiliar with a treatment/disease. Heck even Wikipedia has some really good articles and the source list if you know what you're looking for.

But you don't know what you're looking for, you have a set of symptoms that need an MD, DO, PA, NP to diagnose and treat.

Yes, the doctor went to school and rigorously studied medicine for years. They are not a "wizard" they are simply an expert with expert knowledge.

Random people on the Internet are not, which is why they tell eachother to drink horse dewormer and other stupid shit. It doesn't matter how much some random layman thinks they know what's wrong with you, they have no expertise to support that belief.

The idea that people should stop telling others to check with a doctor if they need medical advice is absurd.

If you feel sick talk to your doctor. Internet "knowledge" doesn't work in case on medical issues. So called tips and tricks may work for a person who posted it but it could be dangerous for you. If calling a stranger (in this case a doctor's office) invokes anxiety, talk to a therapist.

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.