15 ms·

What I've learned that, as an adult in 2024 in the United States, you cannot take for granted: - That your medical professionals are acting in your best intere

What I've learned that, as an adult in 2024 in the United States, you cannot take for granted: - That your medical professionals are acting in your best interest - That your insurance company is acting in your best interest - That your medical professional knows what they are talking about - That things that are legal to put in your body will not cause irreparable harm to you - That the legal level of pollutants in the water, air, ground, walls, floors, etc are actually safe or even being measured properly - That you aren't being subjected to something that later will be found to be unhealthy, even if it is currently known, until it is litigated in retrospect - That you can afford the treatment that would be necessary to make yourself healthy - That anyone in the industries that would normally protect you (healthcare, insurance, public health, government, etc) even care to do so I understand that some people would look at that list and say I should have never expected some of those, but pardon me for being propagandized at a very young age that we lived in a country that was good and just. That's my bad. So I am not surprised to see this, and expect to see more of it.

stonethrowaway 2y ago
At the same time I would emphasize that people who offer any kind of advice online around life-threatening ailments do put down if they have a related degree, are currently practicing and are licensed in that or a very related field, or if they are conducting self experiments and sharing their results (with YMMV caveat to go along with it). Reasons why should be obvious, but listening to podcasts, or reading pop-science books, connecting the dots and thinking you’re qualified to give, again, life-threatening advice, does not mean you’re actually qualified or you have an idea of how deep the rabbit hole goes (as we are learning, nobody really does). Unfortunately, in my experience I encounter a lot of people who haven’t opened up an intro to biology book since their teenager days let alone an undergraduate biochem book, but they listen to podcasts and think they have it figured out and have the audacity to speak with confidence. I’ve been in situations where the practitioners are wincing but are too polite to call people out - it’s easier to let them just yap out what the podcast said and then change the topic. Don’t be one of these people.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 2y ago
  > with YMMV caveat to go along with it Isn't it suspicious to offer YMMV caveats in a situation that is obviously dripping with caveats?
  - reaperman 2y ago
    I find communities that constantly add gratuitous "YMMV may vary - everyone's body is different and no one really knows anything" tend to have less groupthink and are generally more adaptable both to new research and old research. The "YMMV" should be obvious in any discussion about individual humans, but when communities don't emphasize it constantly, people start thinking that "90% of patients benefit from $INTERVENTION" somehow means that they should just shut down discussion around the other 10%.
s1artibartfast 2y ago
>I understand that some people would look at that list and say I should have never expected some of those, but pardon me for being propagandized at a very young age that we lived in a country that was good and just. That's my bad I think the problem is that you were raised to think that a "good and just" world is one where there is no risk, no variability, and limited self-reliance. This is a fiction and has never existed. The default state is for none of these services and protections to exist whatsoever. Everything beyond nothing is an imperfect and unstable solution held together with duct-tape.
- xeromal 2y ago
  Every day is a good day to be alive whether the sun is shining or not. I'm with you. One quick look at history shows nothing is set in stone and it can always get worse.
- jklinger410 2y ago
  > I think the problem is that you were raised to think that a "good and just" world is one where there is no risk, no variability, and limited self-reliance. I think that children are generally raised to not believe there is "risk" associated with listening to experts. This means specialists like Doctors but also politicians and military officials. The idea that there could be a grift set up to take advantage of people in the medical space, for instance, which is highly regulated and supposed to be for the benefit of people first and for generating capital second, is not intuitive to children. In fact a wide array of industries and services in the United States, and the world (to not be political, as some commenter said) are set up to take advantage of children or naive young adults. Secondary education and student loans is a glaring example of this. > The default state is for none of these services and protections to exist whatsoever In all of human history this is mostly untrue. Humans have always formed societies, and those societies have always provided services for their people. In fact, before capitalism, most of these services were provided in-kind as a right of being a part of the tribe. This idea that every person is born as an individual and nothing is granted to them belongs to a certain political ideology that is designed to make sure people feel entitled to nothing, and keep things in the private industry, and keep government small. But I digress. Of course someone has to provide the service, and collect the materials for the service. And that person deserves to be compensated for that work. But the idea that the default state of a human is to be alone with nature and subject to pure individualism is simply not true, and never has been the norm, until that idea was used to justify not providing people with anything. > Everything beyond nothing is an imperfect and unstable solution held together with duct-tape This idea is also untrue. We've had a lot of time to perfect these things. If we can build skyscrapers and infrastructure to maintain them, we can provide these services. You are conflating political ideology and economic motivation with literal ability. The ability is absolutely there, and was in the past as well. There is something different going on that causes these systems to be "held together with duct-tape" and it's actually other humans actively trying to destroy these systems, not that they are impossible.
xeromal 2y ago
There's a time in every human's life where the rose tinted glasses wear off and the reality of human living hits you.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  agreed. I think we are at a unique time in history where the rose tinted glass can even exists. Where children can live sheltered in a low risk reality well into their 20's and then whiplash and disappointment and cynicism hits them like a ton of bricks. I think that low baseline expectations is very important for mental health and general resilience.
kinleyd 2y ago
It took me a long time to get there, but I eventually did - I agree with every one of things that you listed. Fortunately, I have also learned that there are a whole lot of things that you can do to overcome each of those challenges. It does require a good bit of time to research, understand and apply them - as well as some luck.
throw10920 2y ago
This is naked political activism that clearly breaks the HN guidelines and offers zero informational content, intellectual gratification, or other value to me or anyone else here. Please don't put stuff like this on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jklinger410 2y ago
  There is nothing political about what I said.
  - throw10920 2y ago
    > I understand that some people would look at that list and say I should have never expected some of those, but pardon me for being propagandized at a very young age that we lived in a country that was good and just. That's my bad. > So I am not surprised to see this, and expect to see more of it. This is political. You are extremely clearly dog-whistling to the "government needs to reform healthcare" and "America bad" groups. Precisely zero people use this kind of hyper-charged, content-less language without a political agenda.
    - potamic 2y ago
      I think that's a fair bit of stretch
      - throw10920 2y ago
        You are wrong. People do not say things like > but pardon me for being propagandized at a very young age that we lived in a country that was good and just. That's my bad. on HN without a political agenda.
- Fauntleroy 2y ago
  Can you please elaborate on what the political activism in the above comment is?
moffkalast 2y ago
You can always trust people to act in their own self interest, everything else (including your list) can be proven from that first principle.
- jklinger410 2y ago
  And this makes for a pretty lonely and downright harmful society, when viewed through that lens. And I'm not going to feel stupid or naive for feeling like children are tricked into believing the opposite is true. I want to also say, this state that everyone is acting in their self interest is not something we should promote, or be proud of, or assume is the natural state of things. It is a state that we are being forced into, and we are being convinced to accept. People as individuals are actually very good. And if we were to get over a few little logical fallacies, we could extend that goodness onto our whole society. But there are many reasons why that is considered harmful by some in power, and then many more who are propagandized into agreeing with them.
  - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
    Children aren't tricked into believing it because it's actually true. As you point out, people are inherently good, and they act against their self-interest all the time. It's always a mistake though. ;D
    - moffkalast 2y ago
      It's important to separate objective self interest (knowing all the facts combined with perfect reasoning) and subjective self interest (based on limited and likely misleading data, with possibly faulty reasoning). The first one will obviously not be true for the most part and is usually only knowable in retrospect, but aside from some amount of purely random decisions, the rest will largely fall in the second group, if only subconsciously. But I'd argue it's still the same exact principle :P
  - moffkalast 2y ago
    Being good and working in your own self interest aren't mutually exclusive though. In fact most of good things are genuinely done out of complete self interest, and practically all good things on the corporate or bureaucratic level. There's always someone involved in the decision who directly benefits, luckily sometimes it's all/most of us too. Society gets better when the self interested goals of an individual are aligned best with the majority of people (e.g. why presidents are on average better than kings). To give a very active example, Zuckerberg isn't throwing billions into making ML models and then giving them out for free out of some sense of cosmic right, he's doing so to eliminate competition and further Meta's goals of making more money. But since his actions align with what most of us want, i.e. open source models, it's all seen as a relatively good thing. There is no such thing as "objective good" in nature, there's just how actions influence the person doing the moralizing. Every living being on earth is hardwired to do two things first and foremost: survive, and make sure its species survives. The ones that weren't are simply no longer around. Helping others is ultimately something you do out of self interest, since you benefit from it indirectly. It is absolutely the natural state of things.
Jun8 2y ago
Having experienced healthcare in multiple countries I can say most of the items on your list are pretty much universal, unfortunately. Skipping over the capitalistic and legal issues, which people more or less expect, I'd like to zoom in on your item #3. The fact that doctors are (often) clueless for complex diagnostics (not talking about a broken arm, etc.) is shocking to many people. I think the two main factors driving this outcome are: 1. Due to the complexity of the problems they face and the quick diagnosis expected from them, medical professionals are taught to think in an expert system-like if-then statements. Some of these are rules of thumb, some may no longer apply due to latest research, and some may not be applicable to you. 2. Metabolisms may differ in important ways. A new doctor is trying to make a decision in a highly complicated high dimensional space with the few data points that you provide. This is OK, but they get too confident with their diagnosis.
- jklinger410 2y ago
  I don't mind point one, and it can be improved in many ways. AI being a huge one. Point two, though, is just an example of how preventive medicine is forgone due to its cost. The system doctor's use to share data could also stand massive improvements.
  - reaperman 2y ago
    If you think doctors can be overly stubborn to change once they've made an initial diagnosis .... you're going to be very unhappy with an AI diagnosis model. As one of many tools, I can see some value. But I'd hate if there was no way to at least try to convince an actual doctor that my issue might be something less expected.
    - Auracle 2y ago
      One of the first things I did when GPT 3.5 came out was to give it some medical symptoms I had when I was a teenager that was wildly diagnosed by my primary care doctor that I finally (at least partially) figured out by doing my own research 10 years later. It nailed what tests I should have done one the first try, one of which I still need to get done because my current primary care doctor doesn’t know how to run it and an endocrinologist straight up refused in the past. However, one of the other two tests suggested would have led to my quality of life improving to such a great extent I would be living a completely different life right now. I had really, really bad fatigue and we had noticed my shoe size was shrinking as well. The doctor, who is now president of the clinic itself, diagnosed it as depression. The shoe size thing was explained as my arches maybe getting taller. As it turned out, I also lost 2 inches of height as well but I don’t know if we had noticed that at that point yet, but I’m willing to bet it was being charted.
xkcd-sucks 2y ago
Like, it behooves one to know enough about one's car or house or computer in order to not get scammed/idiot-screwed by mechanics and contractors and tech support It would be surprising if one's body were different. The general level of faith there seems inconsistent with reality
sizzle 2y ago
Any idea how to remove the most common pollutants we run into everyday? I try to avoid high VOC materials and use charcoal filters for water. Kinda lazy to set up reverse osmosis system right now.
- reaperman 2y ago
  1) You're pretty much just screwed unless you're both very wealthy and make this topic your primary hobby/past-time. To really answer this you'd need to do an incredible amount of testing. Like buy 10 of everything you're considering and send off to labs for $100,000 of tests. Or install a million dollars of chemical air quality monitors in and around your home. 2) Large activated carbon air scrubbers. For air filtration you really need not just HEPA particulate filters, but robust VOC capture. The tiny bit of activated carbon in things like a Winix C535 or Coway Mega/AirMega really don't clean much. Instead, consider something like buying two 10"-12" carbon scrubbers from https://terra-bloom.com https://terra-bloom.com and get a matching size of their in-line "Silenced Ultra Quiet EC Fan". You can just stack these three items together and it forms a tall but not horribly ugly appliance that doesn't take up much floor space. You'd probably need to replace the filters once a year, and have quite a few around a normal-sized house, just like standalone HEPA filters (which you'd also probably still want as well). 3) Wash everything often - bedding, clothes, carpets, floors, walls, appliances, etc. Obviously, attempt to use a soap that won't add additional pollutants. Wash them twice, once with soap then again without soap. 4) Time. Assuming similar materials, something that is 5 years old should have already leeched out a lot of the chemicals which are going to off-gas/transfer/leech from it. So the polluting rate of something 5 years old that's been washed 50 times and already worn and broken in should be assumed to be lower than an identical, new, version of the same thing.
- itchyouch 2y ago
  Outside of switching things up like using glass containers, enabling the body to detoxify itself and repair itself by ensuring that it gets adequate nutrition (daily) and exercise is the key. But for a simple pill solution, consume sulfur. For as important as it is, it's not widely front of mind in the health space. So much focus on Vit D, Magnesium, Omega 3s, etc, which are all absolutely necessary. Some great sources of pill based sulfur are Taurine, NAC, and MSM (methylsulfonylmethionine). My preference to recommend blindly as a general pill is MSM. But sulfur is key for the liver's detoxification functions to work ideally. There's quotes flying around that say something like: 80% of the population (US or world) is deficient in X. Usually X is omega 3's, Magnesium, Vit D, and also to add to the list, Sulfur is a huge one. Outside of being in a culture like Koreans that consume cruciferous veggies 3x/day (via kimchi), most americans only get it from meat, garlic, onions and broccoli. If one has brittle nails or hair doesn't grow as quickly, that would be the sign that something like MSM in pill form would be helpful. Otherwise, folks are probably fine if they are consuming daily amounts of anything containing sulfur.
cbsmith 2y ago
While all that is true... the other part is that it's not like non-medical professionals are particularly good at knowing what they are talking about or acting in their own best interest either. In many cases, the institutional care is both horrible and better than what you'd get without it.
Nathanba 2y ago
It took me a long time to get to grips with the fact that you can't even take for granted that your own parents act in your best interest. We were all propagandized with love and kumbaya songs. In reality life is a lot more.. erm let's say self benefit driven with a lot of sprinkles of ego in it. People optimize their language output for their self benefit while actions don't really need to be aligned to get most of those self benefits.
- BeFlatXIII 2y ago
  > you can't even take for granted that your own parents act in your best interest Or they're delusional and legitimately believe the nonsense they're up to (insert your personal childhood gripe here) is in your best interest.
vjust 2y ago
You're likely as old as my kid, so I am sad to see this. Yes, take your health into your own hands. Medicate as little as possible - but this won't work for many people - in fact it could be dangerous. I am lucky to not have chronic conditions so I could afford not to believe my medical professional. In my case - just to get the facts on Blood pressure took quite a bit of digging - thanks to some independent doctors who went against the grain and had a conscience and courage to dissent. Cholesterol is an even murkier pool. Its amazing how muddled the picture is.
itchyouch 2y ago
I've realized similarly and by being "blessed" with very low-grade chronic conditions (family of diabetics, fatigue), I've created my own low grade insurance policy by creating lifestyle interventions in nutrition and exercise to maintain my health. If I were to summarize the thousands of hours of what the Phd/MD health podcaster space has promoted, the jist of it comes down to: - Get about 1 cup of 5 colors a day. Usually a smoothie is the way to achieve this. I make them in batches and they are conveniently available as grab and go. - Prioritize sleep - Exercise to improve v02 max as high as possible I think _most_ of the population on hackernews has the financial privilege to implement the above 3 in various ways. But those will provide such a quality of life improvement to anyone dealing with chronic illness that it reduces the need for medicine a ton. And much of the damage from the environment can be mitigated by providing the body with the nutrition necessary to detoxify and deal with the various stresses they bring. The way to look at modern medicine is that, modern medicine is very good at fast death scenarios. Heart attacks, randomly acute conditions, but they are terrible when it comes to slow death conditions like diabetes and dementia. We need to look to rely on modern medicine for quick death, while creating interventions on the slow-death side ourselves, unfortunately.
- polishdude20 2y ago
  What types of things do you put into your 5 color smoothie?
freddealmeida 2y ago
Sadly very true. Makes you wonder why we have big government.
kcplate 2y ago
When I was first diagnosed with T2 diabetes I was sent to a dietitian who handed me all kinds of pretty literature from the ADA about how great grains and pasta is for diabetics and food pyramids and “eat want you want in moderation and use insulin.” After 5 years I decided that method was bullshit designed just to sell insulin. Went keto and was off insulin withn 2 months and haven’t had a drop of extraneous insulin since (7 years). My doctors advised against me going keto because the ADA recommends their diet. When I explained I was going to try it anyway because it made sense that if my body was having trouble processing glucose, that eating a diet that minimized glucose would probably have a beneficial effect. It was at that point that I realized that many doctors are simply following a treatment formula. Ultimately the ADA had to recognize that keto can be affective at managing diabetes. Yet, they still publish the pretty literature that advises type 2 diabetics to eat a diet that for them is significantly worse than a low carb diet.

stonethrowaway 2y ago

At the same time I would emphasize that people who offer any kind of advice online around life-threatening ailments do put down if they have a related degree, are currently practicing and are licensed in that or a very related field, or if they are conducting self experiments and sharing their results (with YMMV caveat to go along with it). Reasons why should be obvious, but listening to podcasts, or reading pop-science books, connecting the dots and thinking you’re qualified to give, again, life-threatening advice, does not mean you’re actually qualified or you have an idea of how deep the rabbit hole goes (as we are learning, nobody really does). Unfortunately, in my experience I encounter a lot of people who haven’t opened up an intro to biology book since their teenager days let alone an undergraduate biochem book, but they listen to podcasts and think they have it figured out and have the audacity to speak with confidence. I’ve been in situations where the practitioners are wincing but are too polite to call people out - it’s easier to let them just yap out what the podcast said and then change the topic. Don’t be one of these people.

0xdeadbeefbabe 2y ago
> with YMMV caveat to go along with it Isn't it suspicious to offer YMMV caveats in a situation that is obviously dripping with caveats?
- reaperman 2y ago
  I find communities that constantly add gratuitous "YMMV may vary - everyone's body is different and no one really knows anything" tend to have less groupthink and are generally more adaptable both to new research and old research. The "YMMV" should be obvious in any discussion about individual humans, but when communities don't emphasize it constantly, people start thinking that "90% of patients benefit from $INTERVENTION" somehow means that they should just shut down discussion around the other 10%.

s1artibartfast 2y ago

>I understand that some people would look at that list and say I should have never expected some of those, but pardon me for being propagandized at a very young age that we lived in a country that was good and just. That's my bad I think the problem is that you were raised to think that a "good and just" world is one where there is no risk, no variability, and limited self-reliance. This is a fiction and has never existed. The default state is for none of these services and protections to exist whatsoever. Everything beyond nothing is an imperfect and unstable solution held together with duct-tape.

xeromal 2y ago
Every day is a good day to be alive whether the sun is shining or not. I'm with you. One quick look at history shows nothing is set in stone and it can always get worse.
jklinger410 2y ago
> I think the problem is that you were raised to think that a "good and just" world is one where there is no risk, no variability, and limited self-reliance. I think that children are generally raised to not believe there is "risk" associated with listening to experts. This means specialists like Doctors but also politicians and military officials. The idea that there could be a grift set up to take advantage of people in the medical space, for instance, which is highly regulated and supposed to be for the benefit of people first and for generating capital second, is not intuitive to children. In fact a wide array of industries and services in the United States, and the world (to not be political, as some commenter said) are set up to take advantage of children or naive young adults. Secondary education and student loans is a glaring example of this. > The default state is for none of these services and protections to exist whatsoever In all of human history this is mostly untrue. Humans have always formed societies, and those societies have always provided services for their people. In fact, before capitalism, most of these services were provided in-kind as a right of being a part of the tribe. This idea that every person is born as an individual and nothing is granted to them belongs to a certain political ideology that is designed to make sure people feel entitled to nothing, and keep things in the private industry, and keep government small. But I digress. Of course someone has to provide the service, and collect the materials for the service. And that person deserves to be compensated for that work. But the idea that the default state of a human is to be alone with nature and subject to pure individualism is simply not true, and never has been the norm, until that idea was used to justify not providing people with anything. > Everything beyond nothing is an imperfect and unstable solution held together with duct-tape This idea is also untrue. We've had a lot of time to perfect these things. If we can build skyscrapers and infrastructure to maintain them, we can provide these services. You are conflating political ideology and economic motivation with literal ability. The ability is absolutely there, and was in the past as well. There is something different going on that causes these systems to be "held together with duct-tape" and it's actually other humans actively trying to destroy these systems, not that they are impossible.

xeromal 2y ago

There's a time in every human's life where the rose tinted glasses wear off and the reality of human living hits you.

s1artibartfast 2y ago
agreed. I think we are at a unique time in history where the rose tinted glass can even exists. Where children can live sheltered in a low risk reality well into their 20's and then whiplash and disappointment and cynicism hits them like a ton of bricks. I think that low baseline expectations is very important for mental health and general resilience.

kinleyd 2y ago

It took me a long time to get there, but I eventually did - I agree with every one of things that you listed. Fortunately, I have also learned that there are a whole lot of things that you can do to overcome each of those challenges. It does require a good bit of time to research, understand and apply them - as well as some luck.

throw10920 2y ago

This is naked political activism that clearly breaks the HN guidelines and offers zero informational content, intellectual gratification, or other value to me or anyone else here. Please don't put stuff like this on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

jklinger410 2y ago
There is nothing political about what I said.
- throw10920 2y ago
  > I understand that some people would look at that list and say I should have never expected some of those, but pardon me for being propagandized at a very young age that we lived in a country that was good and just. That's my bad. > So I am not surprised to see this, and expect to see more of it. This is political. You are extremely clearly dog-whistling to the "government needs to reform healthcare" and "America bad" groups. Precisely zero people use this kind of hyper-charged, content-less language without a political agenda.
  - potamic 2y ago
    I think that's a fair bit of stretch
    - throw10920 2y ago
      You are wrong. People do not say things like > but pardon me for being propagandized at a very young age that we lived in a country that was good and just. That's my bad. on HN without a political agenda.
Fauntleroy 2y ago
Can you please elaborate on what the political activism in the above comment is?

moffkalast 2y ago

You can always trust people to act in their own self interest, everything else (including your list) can be proven from that first principle.

jklinger410 2y ago
And this makes for a pretty lonely and downright harmful society, when viewed through that lens. And I'm not going to feel stupid or naive for feeling like children are tricked into believing the opposite is true. I want to also say, this state that everyone is acting in their self interest is not something we should promote, or be proud of, or assume is the natural state of things. It is a state that we are being forced into, and we are being convinced to accept. People as individuals are actually very good. And if we were to get over a few little logical fallacies, we could extend that goodness onto our whole society. But there are many reasons why that is considered harmful by some in power, and then many more who are propagandized into agreeing with them.
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  Children aren't tricked into believing it because it's actually true. As you point out, people are inherently good, and they act against their self-interest all the time. It's always a mistake though. ;D
  - moffkalast 2y ago
    It's important to separate objective self interest (knowing all the facts combined with perfect reasoning) and subjective self interest (based on limited and likely misleading data, with possibly faulty reasoning). The first one will obviously not be true for the most part and is usually only knowable in retrospect, but aside from some amount of purely random decisions, the rest will largely fall in the second group, if only subconsciously. But I'd argue it's still the same exact principle :P
- moffkalast 2y ago
  Being good and working in your own self interest aren't mutually exclusive though. In fact most of good things are genuinely done out of complete self interest, and practically all good things on the corporate or bureaucratic level. There's always someone involved in the decision who directly benefits, luckily sometimes it's all/most of us too. Society gets better when the self interested goals of an individual are aligned best with the majority of people (e.g. why presidents are on average better than kings). To give a very active example, Zuckerberg isn't throwing billions into making ML models and then giving them out for free out of some sense of cosmic right, he's doing so to eliminate competition and further Meta's goals of making more money. But since his actions align with what most of us want, i.e. open source models, it's all seen as a relatively good thing. There is no such thing as "objective good" in nature, there's just how actions influence the person doing the moralizing. Every living being on earth is hardwired to do two things first and foremost: survive, and make sure its species survives. The ones that weren't are simply no longer around. Helping others is ultimately something you do out of self interest, since you benefit from it indirectly. It is absolutely the natural state of things.

Jun8 2y ago

Having experienced healthcare in multiple countries I can say most of the items on your list are pretty much universal, unfortunately. Skipping over the capitalistic and legal issues, which people more or less expect, I'd like to zoom in on your item #3. The fact that doctors are (often) clueless for complex diagnostics (not talking about a broken arm, etc.) is shocking to many people. I think the two main factors driving this outcome are: 1. Due to the complexity of the problems they face and the quick diagnosis expected from them, medical professionals are taught to think in an expert system-like if-then statements. Some of these are rules of thumb, some may no longer apply due to latest research, and some may not be applicable to you. 2. Metabolisms may differ in important ways. A new doctor is trying to make a decision in a highly complicated high dimensional space with the few data points that you provide. This is OK, but they get too confident with their diagnosis.

jklinger410 2y ago
I don't mind point one, and it can be improved in many ways. AI being a huge one. Point two, though, is just an example of how preventive medicine is forgone due to its cost. The system doctor's use to share data could also stand massive improvements.
- reaperman 2y ago
  If you think doctors can be overly stubborn to change once they've made an initial diagnosis .... you're going to be very unhappy with an AI diagnosis model. As one of many tools, I can see some value. But I'd hate if there was no way to at least try to convince an actual doctor that my issue might be something less expected.
  - Auracle 2y ago
    One of the first things I did when GPT 3.5 came out was to give it some medical symptoms I had when I was a teenager that was wildly diagnosed by my primary care doctor that I finally (at least partially) figured out by doing my own research 10 years later. It nailed what tests I should have done one the first try, one of which I still need to get done because my current primary care doctor doesn’t know how to run it and an endocrinologist straight up refused in the past. However, one of the other two tests suggested would have led to my quality of life improving to such a great extent I would be living a completely different life right now. I had really, really bad fatigue and we had noticed my shoe size was shrinking as well. The doctor, who is now president of the clinic itself, diagnosed it as depression. The shoe size thing was explained as my arches maybe getting taller. As it turned out, I also lost 2 inches of height as well but I don’t know if we had noticed that at that point yet, but I’m willing to bet it was being charted.

xkcd-sucks 2y ago

Like, it behooves one to know enough about one's car or house or computer in order to not get scammed/idiot-screwed by mechanics and contractors and tech support It would be surprising if one's body were different. The general level of faith there seems inconsistent with reality

sizzle 2y ago

Any idea how to remove the most common pollutants we run into everyday? I try to avoid high VOC materials and use charcoal filters for water. Kinda lazy to set up reverse osmosis system right now.

reaperman 2y ago
1) You're pretty much just screwed unless you're both very wealthy and make this topic your primary hobby/past-time. To really answer this you'd need to do an incredible amount of testing. Like buy 10 of everything you're considering and send off to labs for $100,000 of tests. Or install a million dollars of chemical air quality monitors in and around your home. 2) Large activated carbon air scrubbers. For air filtration you really need not just HEPA particulate filters, but robust VOC capture. The tiny bit of activated carbon in things like a Winix C535 or Coway Mega/AirMega really don't clean much. Instead, consider something like buying two 10"-12" carbon scrubbers from https://terra-bloom.com https://terra-bloom.com and get a matching size of their in-line "Silenced Ultra Quiet EC Fan". You can just stack these three items together and it forms a tall but not horribly ugly appliance that doesn't take up much floor space. You'd probably need to replace the filters once a year, and have quite a few around a normal-sized house, just like standalone HEPA filters (which you'd also probably still want as well). 3) Wash everything often - bedding, clothes, carpets, floors, walls, appliances, etc. Obviously, attempt to use a soap that won't add additional pollutants. Wash them twice, once with soap then again without soap. 4) Time. Assuming similar materials, something that is 5 years old should have already leeched out a lot of the chemicals which are going to off-gas/transfer/leech from it. So the polluting rate of something 5 years old that's been washed 50 times and already worn and broken in should be assumed to be lower than an identical, new, version of the same thing.
itchyouch 2y ago
Outside of switching things up like using glass containers, enabling the body to detoxify itself and repair itself by ensuring that it gets adequate nutrition (daily) and exercise is the key. But for a simple pill solution, consume sulfur. For as important as it is, it's not widely front of mind in the health space. So much focus on Vit D, Magnesium, Omega 3s, etc, which are all absolutely necessary. Some great sources of pill based sulfur are Taurine, NAC, and MSM (methylsulfonylmethionine). My preference to recommend blindly as a general pill is MSM. But sulfur is key for the liver's detoxification functions to work ideally. There's quotes flying around that say something like: 80% of the population (US or world) is deficient in X. Usually X is omega 3's, Magnesium, Vit D, and also to add to the list, Sulfur is a huge one. Outside of being in a culture like Koreans that consume cruciferous veggies 3x/day (via kimchi), most americans only get it from meat, garlic, onions and broccoli. If one has brittle nails or hair doesn't grow as quickly, that would be the sign that something like MSM in pill form would be helpful. Otherwise, folks are probably fine if they are consuming daily amounts of anything containing sulfur.

cbsmith 2y ago

While all that is true... the other part is that it's not like non-medical professionals are particularly good at knowing what they are talking about or acting in their own best interest either. In many cases, the institutional care is both horrible and better than what you'd get without it.

Nathanba 2y ago

It took me a long time to get to grips with the fact that you can't even take for granted that your own parents act in your best interest. We were all propagandized with love and kumbaya songs. In reality life is a lot more.. erm let's say self benefit driven with a lot of sprinkles of ego in it. People optimize their language output for their self benefit while actions don't really need to be aligned to get most of those self benefits.

BeFlatXIII 2y ago
> you can't even take for granted that your own parents act in your best interest Or they're delusional and legitimately believe the nonsense they're up to (insert your personal childhood gripe here) is in your best interest.

vjust 2y ago

You're likely as old as my kid, so I am sad to see this. Yes, take your health into your own hands. Medicate as little as possible - but this won't work for many people - in fact it could be dangerous. I am lucky to not have chronic conditions so I could afford not to believe my medical professional. In my case - just to get the facts on Blood pressure took quite a bit of digging - thanks to some independent doctors who went against the grain and had a conscience and courage to dissent. Cholesterol is an even murkier pool. Its amazing how muddled the picture is.

itchyouch 2y ago

I've realized similarly and by being "blessed" with very low-grade chronic conditions (family of diabetics, fatigue), I've created my own low grade insurance policy by creating lifestyle interventions in nutrition and exercise to maintain my health. If I were to summarize the thousands of hours of what the Phd/MD health podcaster space has promoted, the jist of it comes down to: - Get about 1 cup of 5 colors a day. Usually a smoothie is the way to achieve this. I make them in batches and they are conveniently available as grab and go. - Prioritize sleep - Exercise to improve v02 max as high as possible I think _most_ of the population on hackernews has the financial privilege to implement the above 3 in various ways. But those will provide such a quality of life improvement to anyone dealing with chronic illness that it reduces the need for medicine a ton. And much of the damage from the environment can be mitigated by providing the body with the nutrition necessary to detoxify and deal with the various stresses they bring. The way to look at modern medicine is that, modern medicine is very good at fast death scenarios. Heart attacks, randomly acute conditions, but they are terrible when it comes to slow death conditions like diabetes and dementia. We need to look to rely on modern medicine for quick death, while creating interventions on the slow-death side ourselves, unfortunately.

polishdude20 2y ago
What types of things do you put into your 5 color smoothie?

freddealmeida 2y ago

Sadly very true. Makes you wonder why we have big government.

kcplate 2y ago

When I was first diagnosed with T2 diabetes I was sent to a dietitian who handed me all kinds of pretty literature from the ADA about how great grains and pasta is for diabetics and food pyramids and “eat want you want in moderation and use insulin.” After 5 years I decided that method was bullshit designed just to sell insulin. Went keto and was off insulin withn 2 months and haven’t had a drop of extraneous insulin since (7 years). My doctors advised against me going keto because the ADA recommends their diet. When I explained I was going to try it anyway because it made sense that if my body was having trouble processing glucose, that eating a diet that minimized glucose would probably have a beneficial effect. It was at that point that I realized that many doctors are simply following a treatment formula. Ultimately the ADA had to recognize that keto can be affective at managing diabetes. Yet, they still publish the pretty literature that advises type 2 diabetics to eat a diet that for them is significantly worse than a low carb diet.