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Comment by kqr | Hacker News Reader

> After four hours, I should have had 10% or less in my stomach but in December 2023, I had 41% remaining, which indicated gastroparesis. [...] The second study I had in September 2024 showed 8% remaining, at which point my gastroparesis was considered resolved but my symptoms persisted.

I have a pet hypothesis that a non-trivial chunk of the "problems" discovered with medical testing are not actually problems but just expressions of the surprisingly wide variation in how humans work. Maybe this was just a thing that happened and not a condition that auto-resolved?

> In August 2024, I learned of a clinical trial [...] Ultimately, the medication didn’t have any positive impact on my nausea but also didn’t cause negative side effects.

Did you end up in the placebo arm, perchance?

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> I have a pet hypothesis that a non-trivial chunk of the "problems" discovered with medical testing are not actually problems but just expressions of the surprisingly wide variation in how humans work. Maybe this was just a thing that happened and not a condition that auto-resolved?

The reason this is a real condition is that it can cause extreme pain and nausea. Food sticking around in your body much longer than it should can cause it to begin fermenting, creating gas and other unhappy products, making you extremely uncomfortable and unhappy.

It is a rare side effect of GLP-1 meds as well, and happened to me, I’m pretty sure (the symptoms fit, and it subsided 3 months later when I lowered the dose).

To say it was debilitating would be the understatement of the year. I sat on the couch for 3 months, physically lacking the energy to do anything, and unable to intake the fuel (food) to fix that very problem due to pain and nausea. A miserable cycle.

I'm not saying real problems can't present with these test results! Clearly they can. I'm saying maybe these test results can happen even if an underlying problem is not there.

Maybe 5 % of days in a normal person's life would show slow food movement with no further adverse effect. That does not invalidate the pain and suffering in those who do suffer from it!

Sure, in the same sense that an EKG can be abnormal on an otherwise perfectly healthy patient. This is why we treat patients, not test results.

Yes, that’s why in the medical field we often discuss the sensitivity/specificity/PPV/NPV of these types of tests, and how to interpret them

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