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Comment by jasonvorhe | Hacker News Reader

Most western doctors I ever went to, especially those dependent on socialized healthcare, are nothing but pill pushers. They have a few minutes of time per patient so even if they wanted, they wouldn't be able to do more than some standard lab work.

My health has drastically improved since I stopped listening to doctors. Weird.

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Not sure I would be quite that cynical, but I believe there are structural problems at least in the US doctor configuration. Specifically, doctors "specialize". This is great if you have some issue that falls squarely into one of the specialties. Your leg is broken: there's a doctor just for that. But many health issues do not fit neatly into the specialty matrix. My experience has been that Doctor A will tell you whatever is going on is not something they deal with. Then Doctor B that supposedly does handle that issue says the same thing. Nobody seems to be willing to do any basic systemic thinking. It's as if a client asked me a question about their software and I said "oops, that's a front-end thing, I have no clue about that". I wouldn't -- I'd go dig into whatever their front end thing might be, and after some diagnosis perhaps seek out an expert in that field to take over.

human body is not HTML, much more complicated, need to specialize

Nah, you would not do any digging in code if you are not paid to do that and that is not your responsibility - not to mention if you have any access and rights to do so by the company you are employed. And sometimes that is exactly the solution, that digging in the code is not in the contract and they all know too well, that making different contract simply is too expensive. That is why sometimes it is better to just write a new software in place, than deal with something that has licence and contractual restrictions. The main difference here is that your organism is irreplaceable(at this stage) and the electrical flow that built it from DNA is not part of tools of any specialists.

It is the same as everywhere - if your issue is very specific and UNIQUE and not known to available specialist, you are becoming specialist of the issue with all your knowledge and need to navigate and that includes finding specialist that actually can deal with the issue, unless you consider to become also medical specialist, which would give you insight on the mentioned problems in system. Well, there was an idea that computer scientists should have become part of different fields to add their knowledge to boost those fields, so you are welcomed to do that, I guess. I think that idea about cross-linking fields with IT specialists is on a right track, but it requires actual effort as well.

I think it's gone corporate where the oath to support the oligarchs has gotten more levity than the Hippocratic oath. Megacorps want to buy up all the small outfits and move to pure profit driven medication. I've found that for day to day health care joining a doctor that doesn't take insurance and takes cash on monthly base. I hate subscription models for the most part but have had a much better experience with see a doctor who takes cash instead of insurance. They actually listen. For specialists I have had to stay in network though.

I found if you actually push back they will work with you. You own your health, not your doctors. That said they mostly do know better than you. I have seen too many of my friends move from skeptical to cynical on medicine, and that's a bad journey that will lead to worse health outcomes. Just ask Steve Jobs.

I assume this has nothing to do with dentistry, but mental and stress related where Western practices are failing, like it is mentioned in articles with African experiences for treating trauma after violence, where they choose to diss Western medical practices and returned to traditional practices of communal healing which worked better. Which is kinda my experience as well, as talking about trauma is not healing but causing trauma again, which took me a while to realize that myself, but I am giving specialists plenty of chances before I start digging and forcing myself to become specialist... So, yes, ignoring some specialists can actually improve your health in some cases, but if I was able to down vote you, I would also do that, as your comment is not about the topic but clearly you need some validation for what you have written. Take care.

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