12 ms·

The perils of being your own doctor

148 points by Hooke 10y ago

bllguo 10y ago
It's funny, I can see how being a doctor amplifies paranoia, since you now know of all kinds of horrible afflictions that could strike. I can also see how it reduces worrying since you are a trained medical professional.
- tgokh 10y ago
  The former is extremely common in medical students: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_students%27_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_students%27_disease
- seesomesense 10y ago
  Being a doctor gives you an understanding of some general medical principles. However, an individual doctor, no matter how talented, only has specific expertise in her/his domain. Even worse it is very hard to be objective about your own illness, especially if it involves pain, the possibility of significant disability or the possibility of death. Over diagnosis, denial and mismanagement all can result from subjectivity. Thus an orthopaedic surgeon would be foolish to self-manage his hypertension. He needs a general practitioner or a cardiologist to look after that domain. A cardiologist would be foolish to look after his diabetes. He needs a general practitioner or an endocrinologist to look after that domain. A general practitioner would be foolish to self manage anything significant. He would need another general practitioner who could look at his problem objectively or an appropriate sub-specialist.
- kirrent 10y ago
  A quote from an interview between two doctors discussing hypochondriac patients: "For anyone who thinks we're denigrating hypochondriacs or lack sympathy, I had cancer 5 times as a medical student."
smnplk 10y ago
I just diagnosed myself with diabetes/pre-diabetes. I'm going to invest into that sugar monitor thingy to check myself.
- BigChiefSmokem 10y ago
  Could you explain how you were able to self-diagnose?
  - tathougies 10y ago
    Can't respond for OP, but I documented a similar 'self-diagnosis' on reddit [1]. I verified the diagnosis by taking the treatment and seeing if it worked (it did!). [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/CompulsiveSkinPicking/comments/4wssyz/skin_picking_insulin_and_inositol_success_story/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CompulsiveSkinPicking/comments/4wss...
  - smnplk 10y ago
    There were this tell tell signs, like urinating every 2-3 hours, it was even worse during the night. I have to go pee, like 4-5 times a night. I did buy a monitor and my fasting glucose level is 6 mmol/L, which is a bit higher than the norm, which is 5.6 mmol/L, but my glucose 2 hours after eating went to 6.7 mmol/L which is fine. So I am not sure, I'll do some more measurements and then see a doctor. I was a bit worried, because I have autoimmune (hashimoto) disease, which can give me good predisposition for autoimmune type diabetes.
    - smnplk 10y ago
      I need to add that my eating habits were not ideal. Although I am fairly active, doing different sports, even was a pro athlete for 14 years, but being active and eating too much sugar is still a bad lifestyle, so i need to find a balance. I am also trying different things to get the levels of my thyroid antibodies down...
- mindcrime 10y ago
  One nice thing about diabetes (if such a thing can be said) is exactly that the blood sugar monitors are available OTC and are fairly cheap. Test strips are kinda pricey, but if you just need one batch for a few initial tests, it's not too big a deal. So yeah, if you're worried, you can test yourself and get a reasonably idea of whether you have an issue or not. That doesn't mean you shouldn't still go to a doctor, especially if the readings are high. But if you test yourself 10 times and never get a reading over 100 (just to make up an example) it's pretty safe to assume you're not diabetic (note: this is not medical advice). It's a little bit harder to confirm diabetes though, as even a non-diabetic person can see brief spikes in their blood glucose - in particular after eating a meal with a high glycemic load. Generally speaking, it's probably best to test yourself when you've been fasting for a while, perhaps when you first awaken in the morning. OTOH, if you get any reading over, say, 200 or so, it's very, very, very likely that you're diabetic. A non-diabetic person will almost never see a reading that high, even after chugging a bottle of Coke or something. The other good thing about diabetes, IF it's type two, is that it is often treatable without insulin injections and may even be treated with nothing but diet changes and exercise (eg, weight loss). Source: am diabetic.
xlayn 10y ago
I do always corroborate what my doctor say. -with another doctor -as a conclusion from information on the internet. For example I had a kidney stone, I were recommended to get surgery immediately, I was going to get Shock Wave Lithotripsy... after long weeks of checking the conclusion was that due to offerings in my country I had to wait to have the kidney stone lower in order to have it extracted via Ureteroscopic. I got this knowledge after at least 10 different appointments. Luckily for me I found a document by an USA Kidney organization depicting procedures and satisfaction outcome. Edit: Here is the study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2991578/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2991578/
mahyarm 10y ago
There are also the perils of not being your own doctor: http://journals.lww.com/neurologynow/Fulltext/2016/12040/Having_His_Say__Spasmodic_dysphonia_rendered.17.aspx http://journals.lww.com/neurologynow/Fulltext/2016/12040/Hav...
asdfologist 10y ago
TLDR: a doctor thought he had ALS though he actually had a harmless (and poorly understood) condition called benign fasciculation disorder. His extensive medical knowledge made him very paranoid & depressed about actually having ALS, and it took many medical tests to finally convince himself that he's perfectly fine.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  >His extensive medical knowledge made him very paranoid & depressed< I'm going to say that it was the sleep deprivation brought on by having a small child in the house, the effects of which care be pretty terrible.
tominous 10y ago
This could just as easily be about the perils of knowing how to look up symptoms on the web. If you're reading Hacker News you're probably used to reading fast, integrating new knowledge into a mental model and applying it all to solve the problem at hand. You often have to be an "instant expert" in everything. So the temptation is to be an instant expert in your own (self-diagnosed) condition. Here's my advice after spending way too much time with doctors over the last year (since my wife was diagnosed with cancer). 1. Knowledge: A doctor will have far more general medical knowledge and experience than you. Your GP or specialist should be the bedrock of any diagnosis or treatment. However, it is absolutely possible to read the literature and get a more current or targeted understanding of some of the nuances of your particular disease. Don't be afraid to discuss them with your doctor, even seek second and third opinions, but don't just rely on your own judgement instead of theirs. 2. Motivation: Doctors are conservative: they need to avoid liability and maintain good relationships with their peers. As a patient you will have a different risk/benefit calculation. In some cases you will need to push your doctor to perform that specialised test instead of just offering reassurance, or to try that experimental treatment instead of the "reasonable futility" of standard care. 3. Symptoms: You know best your own symptoms, but you may not have the objectivity or experience to understand them and compare them to other people. You should document them as much as possible, maybe even graph them or make charts, to make this information accessible to your doctor. I've found that a simple timeline containing symptoms, measurements and interventions can be incredibly useful in tracking a condition.
- James001 10y ago
  I'm from Canada, and all I can say is I wish the doctors up here actually listened to your opinion on your own medical condition. While it is important to consult and listen to doctors, I do think people trust their doctors too much. People should always field second opinions, especially before major interventions. Also, people shouldn't discount their own understandings of their condition. But seriously, up in Canada I feel like we have a 3rd world medical system for dealing with chronic health conditions. For acute medical conditions, we're amongst the best in the world. But if it's chronic? Or if we cannot diagnose it? Good f'n luck, my friend.
known 10y ago
I usually verify the types of treatment http://effectivehealthcare.ahrq.gov/index.cfm http://effectivehealthcare.ahrq.gov/index.cfm
wineisfine 10y ago
The strange thing is, many doctors dont take good care of themselves. They smoke, they drink, etc.
- kirrent 10y ago
  You mean they're people? In any case, doctors are healthier than the general population on average across a lot of measures. http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/08/is-your-doctor-healthier-than-you/260706/ http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/08/is-your-do...
  - V-2 10y ago
    However is it - and to what extent - because they're doctors? Was this statistics controlled for other factors like level of income? (AFAIK, very high in the US - medical doctor is one of the most common professions among 1-percenters...)
  - philjohn 10y ago
    Always amused me when my father regailed us with tales of seeing his cardiologist, who told him in no uncertain terms that smoking is the one thing he shouldn't slip back into, it's awful for cardiovascular health. After the appointment he spots said cardiologist in the car park smoking. As you said, they're just people too.
  - wineisfine 10y ago
    I meant that although they should know best, and get confronted with the results of smoking and drinking, they actually do it a lot. One would expect them not to. Your study does not comply with the average perception here in Europe though
junto 10y ago
I think this kind of thing should be called "paternal shock fatigue syndrome". Our western culture has a thing about getting babies and toddlers to sleep in their own beds and rooms from a young age. There are a wealth of self help books out there that new parents treat like a Bible for getting your babies to sleep. "Every child can sleep", "no cry sleep solution", "solve your child's sleep problems"; the list goes on and on. It's an entire micro industry inside the parenting industry. After having two children, I've come to the conclusion that it's unnatural to get babies and toddlers to sleep apart from their parents. They don't like being alone. Getting out of bed and wandering down the cold hallway in the middle of the night to try and comfort a crying child, over and over again, should be telling you that something is wrong. Instead you think, "well John and Maggie's baby stay sleeps through, so ours should be able to as well. Let's try and keep them in their bed". Before you know it, months sleepless nights has you physically and mentally exhausted. You're still trying to get up every morning to go to work and put in a full days work. When your child has a nap in the day, your wife gets the chance to catch up on a bit of sleep too. You accidentally nod off for three minutes at your desk after lunch, completely and utterly shattered. You come home, your wife still looks exhausted too, especially if she's breastfeeding, so you try and help out, changing diapers and helping to feed the baby. Finally it's bed time for your baby. You stay up until 11 since it's the only opportunity you and your wife have to doesn't some time together alone. The cycle repeats. Finally you start to get ill, and often. Colds and minor ailments. If you're unlucky you develop worse. In my case I developed Ulcerative Colitis. A debilitating gastric psychosomatic illness. The first sign was a slight bleeding when going to the toilet. Within months I was bleeding so badly, I thought I had bowel cancer. I finally dragged myself to go to the doctor, petrified of what I might have. An unpleasant experience of a camera being shoved up my ass confirmed that I had UC. "What's the cause, and how do we fix it?" I asked the doctor? "Nobody knows the cause and here's a bunch of medication that will calm everything down" was the answer. Come back in 4 weeks. The symptoms did reduce and I'm still dependent on the daily medication, even now years later. I've tried to change my diet, reduce my stress, but nothing send to improve it. It seems I'm a lifer. But I start to think about the "why" question. The timeline was interesting. It started about a year after my first child was born. Her sleeping was a nightmare. We insisted on trying to get her to sleep in her own bed, in a room right next to ours. I was utterly shattered and run down at this point. I'd had one cold after another. My sinuses were completely blocked and my GP was convinced I had a bacterial infection in the sinuses that needed antibiotics. Two weeks after I'd finished the antibiotics, I had my first bleed. You can read into that what you will. I believe that my psychosomatic illness was primarily caused by stress and exhaustion. As a result it was not able to correctly recover from the course of antibiotics, and the gut got itself out of balance. That was my experience. I'm sure if we looked we'd find many examples of parents, especially fathers, who have developed various psychosomatic illnesses and other ailments after becoming fathers. My advice to anyone becoming a parent is quite simple. Let the child sleep next to you, ideally in a co-sleeping bed. Getting up in the middle of the night and walking anywhere is fatal. Try to make sure that your wife doesn't have to work (or the father if the wife is working full time). At night decamp into a different bedroom. It makes absolutely no sense for both parents to be awake in the middle of the night dealing with the child. One of you needs to maintain a normal sleep routine if you're working a normal work routine. Otherwise i can almost guarantee that you're going to get ill. If like to clarify that I think this can happen to mother or father. But I think it is often the father's in our western culture that are trying to be the modern father and work a full days work. In conclusion, this applies to anyone having a lack of sleep over a long period of time. We forget how important good sleep hygiene is. For the people here working extremely long hours on their startups and burning the candle at both ends, this also applies. Just look at Margaret Thatcher and what years of 4 hours of sleep a night did to her.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
pokemongoaway 10y ago
This seems like marketing for pharmaceuticals when the fact is that we have more people being doctored by those with traditional medical credentials than ever before in history. Anyone with experience in this area knows that medical processes are designed to avoid litigation more than they are to adhere to the Hippocratic Oath. Is it really to the point that we're even discouraging people from even thinking and researching about their own health? Not only outsourcing their health, but even outsourcing how to think about their health! This naturally skews the analysis of "health" from one's experience of it to its adherence to the parameters to a Merck Manual, for example.
nixy 10y ago
I was half expecting this to be about Dr. Leonid Rogozov, the Soviet doctor who performed an appendectomy on himself[1] while stationed in Antarctica in the early 60's. [1] http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/leonid-rogozov-appendix-1961/
kqr 10y ago
Hoo-ee. I'm not a doctor but I had a bout of serious hypochondria (in my case, heart related) and I recognise all of this. After many, many tests and doctor visits they managed to convince me I'm in good health. But that didn't stop my worries, and my odd behaviour/obsessions that followed. They referred me to a therapist, which eventually helped a lot. That said, I still sometimes feel it, but these days I can forget entirely about it after a minute or two.
- Sander_Marechal 10y ago
  Yes, I have the exact same thing! Four years ago I started out with panic attacks brought on by stress and sleep deprivation. I was convinced I was having a heart attack and would drop dead on the spot. It took some time to fix the root causes, but even after that I didn't quite recover. Anxiety about possible panic attacks were stressing me out, causing me to lie awake in bed. Talk about a vicious circle. Therapy and the book "Hope and help for your nerves" by Claire Weekes helped a lot. Occasionally it will pop back up but not nearly as bad as it once was.
  - stuxnet79 10y ago
    Similar experience but my first panic attack was around 8 years ago. Have recovered somewhat as of ~2 years ago, but this is due to extensive CBT and medication. I don't think I will ever completely eliminate the attacks - it's just a matter of managing them at this point and minimizing the negative effects they have on my life. "Hope and help for your nerves" by Claire Weekes is a classic. That being said I believe mental health is still not diagnosed and treated well enough by modern health care systems. Took me more than 4 years of bouncing around from doctor to doctor before I found one who could help me.
damla 10y ago
I'm a highly interested person in medical subjects, and for some reason, I easily memorize and relate information regarding human body. For example, if my mother in law complains about her anemia, and her tinnitus 2 years apart, when I read somewhere that some type of anemia can cause tinnitus 4 years later, I remember her instantly. This phenomenon of me helped a lot of family members in different situations, so I don't want to give up searching on medical issues completely. I developed some rules in years: 1 - Make a quick search if something too common regarding symptoms, or something seems urgent to see a doctor. 2 - Don't diagnose, if you suspect something specific, I don't tell it to doctor, nor anyone. 3 - After search if this seems something really small, try some safe home therapies, otherwise, go to doctor 4 - Following the diagnosis, check it through the internet. 5 - Always check the medications, to understand the doctor's approach, aggressive or safer, or if medication is just placebo or pain-killers. 6 - Take the madications as prescribed, but combining the information on internet and impression on doctor, consult a second doctor if you feel necessary. 7 - If you see the doctor - just in case - not for serious complain, and the medication seems just for the symptoms not the reason don't use the treatment and see if something gets worse or better without them. 8- If something serious in hand, always search the internet for further treatment, whether lifestyle changes, and to see what might we expect. Resist reading forums, even though you may find really useful information in them, most of the time people who cannot heal, or had serious side affects on medications write. So this affects brain statistics on in a wrong way. 9 - If you have a specific disease, foundation-like sites on the specific disease do provide useful, organized, advanced, and most updated information.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  > or if medication is just placebo or pain-killers Doesn't checking that basically immediately defeat the therapy itself? I.e. placebos work as long as you don't know they're just placebos.
  - donutz 10y ago
    > Doesn't checking that basically immediately defeat the therapy itself? I.e. placebos work as long as you don't know they're just placebos. Not necessarily: http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/placebos-work-even-when-you-know-10-12-23/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/placebos-w...

148 points by Hooke 10y ago

It's funny, I can see how being a doctor amplifies paranoia, since you now know of all kinds of horrible afflictions that could strike. I can also see how it reduces worrying since you are a trained medical professional.

tgokh 10y ago
The former is extremely common in medical students: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_students%27_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_students%27_disease
seesomesense 10y ago
Being a doctor gives you an understanding of some general medical principles. However, an individual doctor, no matter how talented, only has specific expertise in her/his domain. Even worse it is very hard to be objective about your own illness, especially if it involves pain, the possibility of significant disability or the possibility of death. Over diagnosis, denial and mismanagement all can result from subjectivity. Thus an orthopaedic surgeon would be foolish to self-manage his hypertension. He needs a general practitioner or a cardiologist to look after that domain. A cardiologist would be foolish to look after his diabetes. He needs a general practitioner or an endocrinologist to look after that domain. A general practitioner would be foolish to self manage anything significant. He would need another general practitioner who could look at his problem objectively or an appropriate sub-specialist.
kirrent 10y ago
A quote from an interview between two doctors discussing hypochondriac patients: "For anyone who thinks we're denigrating hypochondriacs or lack sympathy, I had cancer 5 times as a medical student."

smnplk 10y ago

I just diagnosed myself with diabetes/pre-diabetes. I'm going to invest into that sugar monitor thingy to check myself.

BigChiefSmokem 10y ago
Could you explain how you were able to self-diagnose?
- tathougies 10y ago
  Can't respond for OP, but I documented a similar 'self-diagnosis' on reddit [1]. I verified the diagnosis by taking the treatment and seeing if it worked (it did!). [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/CompulsiveSkinPicking/comments/4wssyz/skin_picking_insulin_and_inositol_success_story/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CompulsiveSkinPicking/comments/4wss...
- smnplk 10y ago
  There were this tell tell signs, like urinating every 2-3 hours, it was even worse during the night. I have to go pee, like 4-5 times a night. I did buy a monitor and my fasting glucose level is 6 mmol/L, which is a bit higher than the norm, which is 5.6 mmol/L, but my glucose 2 hours after eating went to 6.7 mmol/L which is fine. So I am not sure, I'll do some more measurements and then see a doctor. I was a bit worried, because I have autoimmune (hashimoto) disease, which can give me good predisposition for autoimmune type diabetes.
  - smnplk 10y ago
    I need to add that my eating habits were not ideal. Although I am fairly active, doing different sports, even was a pro athlete for 14 years, but being active and eating too much sugar is still a bad lifestyle, so i need to find a balance. I am also trying different things to get the levels of my thyroid antibodies down...
mindcrime 10y ago
One nice thing about diabetes (if such a thing can be said) is exactly that the blood sugar monitors are available OTC and are fairly cheap. Test strips are kinda pricey, but if you just need one batch for a few initial tests, it's not too big a deal. So yeah, if you're worried, you can test yourself and get a reasonably idea of whether you have an issue or not. That doesn't mean you shouldn't still go to a doctor, especially if the readings are high. But if you test yourself 10 times and never get a reading over 100 (just to make up an example) it's pretty safe to assume you're not diabetic (note: this is not medical advice). It's a little bit harder to confirm diabetes though, as even a non-diabetic person can see brief spikes in their blood glucose - in particular after eating a meal with a high glycemic load. Generally speaking, it's probably best to test yourself when you've been fasting for a while, perhaps when you first awaken in the morning. OTOH, if you get any reading over, say, 200 or so, it's very, very, very likely that you're diabetic. A non-diabetic person will almost never see a reading that high, even after chugging a bottle of Coke or something. The other good thing about diabetes, IF it's type two, is that it is often treatable without insulin injections and may even be treated with nothing but diet changes and exercise (eg, weight loss). Source: am diabetic.

xlayn 10y ago

I do always corroborate what my doctor say. -with another doctor -as a conclusion from information on the internet. For example I had a kidney stone, I were recommended to get surgery immediately, I was going to get Shock Wave Lithotripsy... after long weeks of checking the conclusion was that due to offerings in my country I had to wait to have the kidney stone lower in order to have it extracted via Ureteroscopic. I got this knowledge after at least 10 different appointments. Luckily for me I found a document by an USA Kidney organization depicting procedures and satisfaction outcome. Edit: Here is the study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2991578/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2991578/

mahyarm 10y ago

There are also the perils of not being your own doctor: http://journals.lww.com/neurologynow/Fulltext/2016/12040/Having_His_Say__Spasmodic_dysphonia_rendered.17.aspx http://journals.lww.com/neurologynow/Fulltext/2016/12040/Hav...

asdfologist 10y ago

TLDR: a doctor thought he had ALS though he actually had a harmless (and poorly understood) condition called benign fasciculation disorder. His extensive medical knowledge made him very paranoid & depressed about actually having ALS, and it took many medical tests to finally convince himself that he's perfectly fine.

lostlogin 10y ago
>His extensive medical knowledge made him very paranoid & depressed< I'm going to say that it was the sleep deprivation brought on by having a small child in the house, the effects of which care be pretty terrible.

tominous 10y ago

This could just as easily be about the perils of knowing how to look up symptoms on the web. If you're reading Hacker News you're probably used to reading fast, integrating new knowledge into a mental model and applying it all to solve the problem at hand. You often have to be an "instant expert" in everything. So the temptation is to be an instant expert in your own (self-diagnosed) condition. Here's my advice after spending way too much time with doctors over the last year (since my wife was diagnosed with cancer). 1. Knowledge: A doctor will have far more general medical knowledge and experience than you. Your GP or specialist should be the bedrock of any diagnosis or treatment. However, it is absolutely possible to read the literature and get a more current or targeted understanding of some of the nuances of your particular disease. Don't be afraid to discuss them with your doctor, even seek second and third opinions, but don't just rely on your own judgement instead of theirs. 2. Motivation: Doctors are conservative: they need to avoid liability and maintain good relationships with their peers. As a patient you will have a different risk/benefit calculation. In some cases you will need to push your doctor to perform that specialised test instead of just offering reassurance, or to try that experimental treatment instead of the "reasonable futility" of standard care. 3. Symptoms: You know best your own symptoms, but you may not have the objectivity or experience to understand them and compare them to other people. You should document them as much as possible, maybe even graph them or make charts, to make this information accessible to your doctor. I've found that a simple timeline containing symptoms, measurements and interventions can be incredibly useful in tracking a condition.

James001 10y ago
I'm from Canada, and all I can say is I wish the doctors up here actually listened to your opinion on your own medical condition. While it is important to consult and listen to doctors, I do think people trust their doctors too much. People should always field second opinions, especially before major interventions. Also, people shouldn't discount their own understandings of their condition. But seriously, up in Canada I feel like we have a 3rd world medical system for dealing with chronic health conditions. For acute medical conditions, we're amongst the best in the world. But if it's chronic? Or if we cannot diagnose it? Good f'n luck, my friend.

known 10y ago

I usually verify the types of treatment http://effectivehealthcare.ahrq.gov/index.cfm http://effectivehealthcare.ahrq.gov/index.cfm

wineisfine 10y ago

The strange thing is, many doctors dont take good care of themselves. They smoke, they drink, etc.

kirrent 10y ago
You mean they're people? In any case, doctors are healthier than the general population on average across a lot of measures. http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/08/is-your-doctor-healthier-than-you/260706/ http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/08/is-your-do...
- V-2 10y ago
  However is it - and to what extent - because they're doctors? Was this statistics controlled for other factors like level of income? (AFAIK, very high in the US - medical doctor is one of the most common professions among 1-percenters...)
- philjohn 10y ago
  Always amused me when my father regailed us with tales of seeing his cardiologist, who told him in no uncertain terms that smoking is the one thing he shouldn't slip back into, it's awful for cardiovascular health. After the appointment he spots said cardiologist in the car park smoking. As you said, they're just people too.
- wineisfine 10y ago
  I meant that although they should know best, and get confronted with the results of smoking and drinking, they actually do it a lot. One would expect them not to. Your study does not comply with the average perception here in Europe though

junto 10y ago

I think this kind of thing should be called "paternal shock fatigue syndrome". Our western culture has a thing about getting babies and toddlers to sleep in their own beds and rooms from a young age. There are a wealth of self help books out there that new parents treat like a Bible for getting your babies to sleep. "Every child can sleep", "no cry sleep solution", "solve your child's sleep problems"; the list goes on and on. It's an entire micro industry inside the parenting industry. After having two children, I've come to the conclusion that it's unnatural to get babies and toddlers to sleep apart from their parents. They don't like being alone. Getting out of bed and wandering down the cold hallway in the middle of the night to try and comfort a crying child, over and over again, should be telling you that something is wrong. Instead you think, "well John and Maggie's baby stay sleeps through, so ours should be able to as well. Let's try and keep them in their bed". Before you know it, months sleepless nights has you physically and mentally exhausted. You're still trying to get up every morning to go to work and put in a full days work. When your child has a nap in the day, your wife gets the chance to catch up on a bit of sleep too. You accidentally nod off for three minutes at your desk after lunch, completely and utterly shattered. You come home, your wife still looks exhausted too, especially if she's breastfeeding, so you try and help out, changing diapers and helping to feed the baby. Finally it's bed time for your baby. You stay up until 11 since it's the only opportunity you and your wife have to doesn't some time together alone. The cycle repeats. Finally you start to get ill, and often. Colds and minor ailments. If you're unlucky you develop worse. In my case I developed Ulcerative Colitis. A debilitating gastric psychosomatic illness. The first sign was a slight bleeding when going to the toilet. Within months I was bleeding so badly, I thought I had bowel cancer. I finally dragged myself to go to the doctor, petrified of what I might have. An unpleasant experience of a camera being shoved up my ass confirmed that I had UC. "What's the cause, and how do we fix it?" I asked the doctor? "Nobody knows the cause and here's a bunch of medication that will calm everything down" was the answer. Come back in 4 weeks. The symptoms did reduce and I'm still dependent on the daily medication, even now years later. I've tried to change my diet, reduce my stress, but nothing send to improve it. It seems I'm a lifer. But I start to think about the "why" question. The timeline was interesting. It started about a year after my first child was born. Her sleeping was a nightmare. We insisted on trying to get her to sleep in her own bed, in a room right next to ours. I was utterly shattered and run down at this point. I'd had one cold after another. My sinuses were completely blocked and my GP was convinced I had a bacterial infection in the sinuses that needed antibiotics. Two weeks after I'd finished the antibiotics, I had my first bleed. You can read into that what you will. I believe that my psychosomatic illness was primarily caused by stress and exhaustion. As a result it was not able to correctly recover from the course of antibiotics, and the gut got itself out of balance. That was my experience. I'm sure if we looked we'd find many examples of parents, especially fathers, who have developed various psychosomatic illnesses and other ailments after becoming fathers. My advice to anyone becoming a parent is quite simple. Let the child sleep next to you, ideally in a co-sleeping bed. Getting up in the middle of the night and walking anywhere is fatal. Try to make sure that your wife doesn't have to work (or the father if the wife is working full time). At night decamp into a different bedroom. It makes absolutely no sense for both parents to be awake in the middle of the night dealing with the child. One of you needs to maintain a normal sleep routine if you're working a normal work routine. Otherwise i can almost guarantee that you're going to get ill. If like to clarify that I think this can happen to mother or father. But I think it is often the father's in our western culture that are trying to be the modern father and work a full days work. In conclusion, this applies to anyone having a lack of sleep over a long period of time. We forget how important good sleep hygiene is. For the people here working extremely long hours on their startups and burning the candle at both ends, this also applies. Just look at Margaret Thatcher and what years of 4 hours of sleep a night did to her.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

pokemongoaway 10y ago

This seems like marketing for pharmaceuticals when the fact is that we have more people being doctored by those with traditional medical credentials than ever before in history. Anyone with experience in this area knows that medical processes are designed to avoid litigation more than they are to adhere to the Hippocratic Oath. Is it really to the point that we're even discouraging people from even thinking and researching about their own health? Not only outsourcing their health, but even outsourcing how to think about their health! This naturally skews the analysis of "health" from one's experience of it to its adherence to the parameters to a Merck Manual, for example.

nixy 10y ago

I was half expecting this to be about Dr. Leonid Rogozov, the Soviet doctor who performed an appendectomy on himself[1] while stationed in Antarctica in the early 60's. [1] http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/leonid-rogozov-appendix-1961/

kqr 10y ago

Hoo-ee. I'm not a doctor but I had a bout of serious hypochondria (in my case, heart related) and I recognise all of this. After many, many tests and doctor visits they managed to convince me I'm in good health. But that didn't stop my worries, and my odd behaviour/obsessions that followed. They referred me to a therapist, which eventually helped a lot. That said, I still sometimes feel it, but these days I can forget entirely about it after a minute or two.

Sander_Marechal 10y ago
Yes, I have the exact same thing! Four years ago I started out with panic attacks brought on by stress and sleep deprivation. I was convinced I was having a heart attack and would drop dead on the spot. It took some time to fix the root causes, but even after that I didn't quite recover. Anxiety about possible panic attacks were stressing me out, causing me to lie awake in bed. Talk about a vicious circle. Therapy and the book "Hope and help for your nerves" by Claire Weekes helped a lot. Occasionally it will pop back up but not nearly as bad as it once was.
- stuxnet79 10y ago
  Similar experience but my first panic attack was around 8 years ago. Have recovered somewhat as of ~2 years ago, but this is due to extensive CBT and medication. I don't think I will ever completely eliminate the attacks - it's just a matter of managing them at this point and minimizing the negative effects they have on my life. "Hope and help for your nerves" by Claire Weekes is a classic. That being said I believe mental health is still not diagnosed and treated well enough by modern health care systems. Took me more than 4 years of bouncing around from doctor to doctor before I found one who could help me.

damla 10y ago

I'm a highly interested person in medical subjects, and for some reason, I easily memorize and relate information regarding human body. For example, if my mother in law complains about her anemia, and her tinnitus 2 years apart, when I read somewhere that some type of anemia can cause tinnitus 4 years later, I remember her instantly. This phenomenon of me helped a lot of family members in different situations, so I don't want to give up searching on medical issues completely. I developed some rules in years: 1 - Make a quick search if something too common regarding symptoms, or something seems urgent to see a doctor. 2 - Don't diagnose, if you suspect something specific, I don't tell it to doctor, nor anyone. 3 - After search if this seems something really small, try some safe home therapies, otherwise, go to doctor 4 - Following the diagnosis, check it through the internet. 5 - Always check the medications, to understand the doctor's approach, aggressive or safer, or if medication is just placebo or pain-killers. 6 - Take the madications as prescribed, but combining the information on internet and impression on doctor, consult a second doctor if you feel necessary. 7 - If you see the doctor - just in case - not for serious complain, and the medication seems just for the symptoms not the reason don't use the treatment and see if something gets worse or better without them. 8- If something serious in hand, always search the internet for further treatment, whether lifestyle changes, and to see what might we expect. Resist reading forums, even though you may find really useful information in them, most of the time people who cannot heal, or had serious side affects on medications write. So this affects brain statistics on in a wrong way. 9 - If you have a specific disease, foundation-like sites on the specific disease do provide useful, organized, advanced, and most updated information.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
> or if medication is just placebo or pain-killers Doesn't checking that basically immediately defeat the therapy itself? I.e. placebos work as long as you don't know they're just placebos.
- donutz 10y ago
  > Doesn't checking that basically immediately defeat the therapy itself? I.e. placebos work as long as you don't know they're just placebos. Not necessarily: http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/placebos-work-even-when-you-know-10-12-23/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/placebos-w...