4 ms·

I think we need to enable technology so people can do these checks themselves/at home. It seems we are holding back the tech because we are afraid of what peopl

I think we need to enable technology so people can do these checks themselves/at home. It seems we are holding back the tech because we are afraid of what people will do with the information.

nostromo 6y ago
Some companies are doing this, like Everywell. Testing is still a pain in the butt and gets pricey the more things you’re measuring.
DoreenMichele 6y ago
Tech is cool and all, but this can be done much more simply with just reading a lot and keeping a journal and that sort of the thing. The real sticking point is the minute you know "too much" about the impact things have on the body and try to engage in discussion, someone will have a cow about how you are "practicing medicine without a license" or something. The problem is that any exercise of real power will get someone's hackles up, even if that power is just a case of "knowledge is power" and medical/health stuff is a super touchy topic for a long list of reasons.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  To be fair, A) medicine is complicated, B) lots of people like to talk out of their asses about stuff they don't really know too much about. I'm very leery of medical advice coming from a non-medical professional. Heck, I even double check medical advice coming from doctors since I've gotten conflicting diagnoses and been prescribed drugs to take for months only to find out from the manufacture website (not the doctor of pharmacists) that a follow up exam is required after five consecutive days of medication to prevent a potentially disabling side-effect. This is why I enjoy articles such as this one. It's the closest thing to peer-reviewed advice I'm likely to get. Getting to read multiple physicians discuss this topic in detail provides me with a more complete understanding of the topic at hand.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    The reason why it happens is somewhat irrelevant to my point. You feeling the need to justify why people do this actually just reinforces my point. Tech is a means to an end, but whatever means you use, this issue right here is your single largest speed bump for this end goal and wrapping your goal up in shiny tech will not move that needle one tiny iota. That's just not how this works.
- jgilias 6y ago
  Respectfully, there is a reason why one must have a license to practice medicine. It's simply too easy to kill people inadvertently. I guess that's fine if the unlicensed doctor is the only patient. But then, I do agree that a license doesn't necessarily guarantee competence. A GP being interested in and keeping track of the latest research on nutrition, longevity, etc, would be worth their weight in platinum.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    You have completely and totally missed my point while simultaneously sort of making it for me, which I imagine you will fail to see.
- electriclove 6y ago
  Yes, how do we get beyond that sticking point? There are so many things that need to be loosened up IMO: - Be able to buy contact lenses without a prescription - Be able to buy CPAPs without a prescription - Be able to buy portable ultrasound without a prescription (https://www.butterflynetwork.com/ https://www.butterflynetwork.com/) - Be able to buy an EKG (yay, this is available: https://store.alivecor.com/ https://store.alivecor.com/) - Be able to buy a Continuous Glucose Monitor
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    We need some Best Practices. When I was homeless and on Metafilter, there was a doctor running around cramming her opinions down everyone's throats and everyone let her get away with it because of the way Metafilter works and one of her hobbies was harassing me, a homeless woman, cuz Reasons. (Edit: I was homeless at the time. I'm not anymore, though I'm still dirt poor and yadda.) And when I posted the best answer one day using internet best practices of backing it up with citations, this did absolutely nothing to get my reputation out of the toilet, even though it probably saved some guy's life. But I remained chopped liver and I was eventually banned from Metafilter for reasons I think are really not how you run a healthy forum. Metafilter does not have the man power to vet who there is a doctor or not and if they start vetting people, then you start getting into this weird territory of more or less pseudo practicing medicine on the internet. She was posting under an anonymous handle but also wanting to lean on "I need to win every medical question because I am a doctor with a huge ego and personal issues." It was just all kinds of messed up and the mods were not policing it. If you want to discuss medical stuff on the internet, you can't lean on "I'm a doctor" and also be anonymous. Anyone who is anonymous can claim to be a doctor and we can't verify that. So if you are a doctor, you should have no problem backing up your claims with citations. And if you aren't a doctor, but can back up your statements with citations, then no one should be harassing you and claiming you are "practicing medicine without a license" for leaving comments in a discussion on the internet. It's different if the doctor is putting their name and face to it and staking their professional reputation on it, so this is absolutely not some kind of attack of this blog posts. But the internet does a lot of weird social stuff where we haven't yet figured out that the internet works different from meat space and it doesn't work to borrow rubrics from meat space and so forth. It needs its own rubrics. Another thing I would like to see is that we should be allowed to err on the side of self determination for purposes of doing things to our own bodies without having to justify it. A lot of people with serious conditions are dying, doctors cannot fix them and then the medical system gatekeeps them away from trying experimental stuff and if you are part of such a community and you have such a condition and you are late stage, it's incredibly horrifying and makes zero logical sense. So those are two things I have thought a lot about. I don't know what else to suggest. I'm too busy just trying to muddle through my pathetic life in the face of my condition and the poverty it helps foster and yadda.
collyw 6y ago
Wasn't that the promise of Theanos? I am interested in diet and nutrition and what is healthy in general, but there are few things you can measure easily by yourself, blood pressure and heart rate being the ones that I can check myself.
jgilias 6y ago
Better tech would be nice to have, but the most important part in my opinion is the paradigm shift itself. Medical institutions do offer comprehensive check-ups for healthy individuals already. It's just that not many healthy individuals actually bother to do this. Better tech would just make it easier to increase the data resolution. Which is important, especially as one ages, but not absolutely necessary for enacting the principle itself. Currently it seems that preventive care is widely accepted and practiced only in a handful of medicine subfields. Gynecology and dentistry come to mind. But this should apply to health care in general.
spfzero 6y ago
People can do vitamin D monitoring at home. See above link to www.grassrootshealth.net. They will sell you 2 test kits for serum D3 for $50 (I think). You take the tests 6 months apart, and they send you the results each time, so you can test the efficacy of whatever you are changing (i.e. sun exposure). I was 39ng at my first test, near mid-range and not deficient, and decided to bump up my sun exposure a bit just in case, and never bothered with the second test. I live in a sunny area, fortunately.
- electriclove 6y ago
  This is great, thank you for sharing!

I think we need to enable technology so people can do these checks themselves/at home. It seems we are holding back the tech because we are afraid of what people will do with the information.

nostromo 6y ago

Some companies are doing this, like Everywell. Testing is still a pain in the butt and gets pricey the more things you’re measuring.

DoreenMichele 6y ago

Tech is cool and all, but this can be done much more simply with just reading a lot and keeping a journal and that sort of the thing. The real sticking point is the minute you know "too much" about the impact things have on the body and try to engage in discussion, someone will have a cow about how you are "practicing medicine without a license" or something. The problem is that any exercise of real power will get someone's hackles up, even if that power is just a case of "knowledge is power" and medical/health stuff is a super touchy topic for a long list of reasons.

mywittyname 6y ago
To be fair, A) medicine is complicated, B) lots of people like to talk out of their asses about stuff they don't really know too much about. I'm very leery of medical advice coming from a non-medical professional. Heck, I even double check medical advice coming from doctors since I've gotten conflicting diagnoses and been prescribed drugs to take for months only to find out from the manufacture website (not the doctor of pharmacists) that a follow up exam is required after five consecutive days of medication to prevent a potentially disabling side-effect. This is why I enjoy articles such as this one. It's the closest thing to peer-reviewed advice I'm likely to get. Getting to read multiple physicians discuss this topic in detail provides me with a more complete understanding of the topic at hand.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  The reason why it happens is somewhat irrelevant to my point. You feeling the need to justify why people do this actually just reinforces my point. Tech is a means to an end, but whatever means you use, this issue right here is your single largest speed bump for this end goal and wrapping your goal up in shiny tech will not move that needle one tiny iota. That's just not how this works.
jgilias 6y ago
Respectfully, there is a reason why one must have a license to practice medicine. It's simply too easy to kill people inadvertently. I guess that's fine if the unlicensed doctor is the only patient. But then, I do agree that a license doesn't necessarily guarantee competence. A GP being interested in and keeping track of the latest research on nutrition, longevity, etc, would be worth their weight in platinum.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  You have completely and totally missed my point while simultaneously sort of making it for me, which I imagine you will fail to see.
electriclove 6y ago
Yes, how do we get beyond that sticking point? There are so many things that need to be loosened up IMO: - Be able to buy contact lenses without a prescription - Be able to buy CPAPs without a prescription - Be able to buy portable ultrasound without a prescription (https://www.butterflynetwork.com/ https://www.butterflynetwork.com/) - Be able to buy an EKG (yay, this is available: https://store.alivecor.com/ https://store.alivecor.com/) - Be able to buy a Continuous Glucose Monitor
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  We need some Best Practices. When I was homeless and on Metafilter, there was a doctor running around cramming her opinions down everyone's throats and everyone let her get away with it because of the way Metafilter works and one of her hobbies was harassing me, a homeless woman, cuz Reasons. (Edit: I was homeless at the time. I'm not anymore, though I'm still dirt poor and yadda.) And when I posted the best answer one day using internet best practices of backing it up with citations, this did absolutely nothing to get my reputation out of the toilet, even though it probably saved some guy's life. But I remained chopped liver and I was eventually banned from Metafilter for reasons I think are really not how you run a healthy forum. Metafilter does not have the man power to vet who there is a doctor or not and if they start vetting people, then you start getting into this weird territory of more or less pseudo practicing medicine on the internet. She was posting under an anonymous handle but also wanting to lean on "I need to win every medical question because I am a doctor with a huge ego and personal issues." It was just all kinds of messed up and the mods were not policing it. If you want to discuss medical stuff on the internet, you can't lean on "I'm a doctor" and also be anonymous. Anyone who is anonymous can claim to be a doctor and we can't verify that. So if you are a doctor, you should have no problem backing up your claims with citations. And if you aren't a doctor, but can back up your statements with citations, then no one should be harassing you and claiming you are "practicing medicine without a license" for leaving comments in a discussion on the internet. It's different if the doctor is putting their name and face to it and staking their professional reputation on it, so this is absolutely not some kind of attack of this blog posts. But the internet does a lot of weird social stuff where we haven't yet figured out that the internet works different from meat space and it doesn't work to borrow rubrics from meat space and so forth. It needs its own rubrics. Another thing I would like to see is that we should be allowed to err on the side of self determination for purposes of doing things to our own bodies without having to justify it. A lot of people with serious conditions are dying, doctors cannot fix them and then the medical system gatekeeps them away from trying experimental stuff and if you are part of such a community and you have such a condition and you are late stage, it's incredibly horrifying and makes zero logical sense. So those are two things I have thought a lot about. I don't know what else to suggest. I'm too busy just trying to muddle through my pathetic life in the face of my condition and the poverty it helps foster and yadda.

collyw 6y ago

Wasn't that the promise of Theanos? I am interested in diet and nutrition and what is healthy in general, but there are few things you can measure easily by yourself, blood pressure and heart rate being the ones that I can check myself.

jgilias 6y ago

Better tech would be nice to have, but the most important part in my opinion is the paradigm shift itself. Medical institutions do offer comprehensive check-ups for healthy individuals already. It's just that not many healthy individuals actually bother to do this. Better tech would just make it easier to increase the data resolution. Which is important, especially as one ages, but not absolutely necessary for enacting the principle itself. Currently it seems that preventive care is widely accepted and practiced only in a handful of medicine subfields. Gynecology and dentistry come to mind. But this should apply to health care in general.

spfzero 6y ago

People can do vitamin D monitoring at home. See above link to www.grassrootshealth.net. They will sell you 2 test kits for serum D3 for $50 (I think). You take the tests 6 months apart, and they send you the results each time, so you can test the efficacy of whatever you are changing (i.e. sun exposure). I was 39ng at my first test, near mid-range and not deficient, and decided to bump up my sun exposure a bit just in case, and never bothered with the second test. I live in a sunny area, fortunately.

electriclove 6y ago
This is great, thank you for sharing!