5 ms·

I am not a doctor and this is not advice. This is a standard medical test I have completely given up on any doctor to perform accurately. I do it myself at home

I am not a doctor and this is not advice. This is a standard medical test I have completely given up on any doctor to perform accurately. I do it myself at home once or twice a month. I do it with the same device, in the same chair, at the same desk, the same time of day, after I’ve ate and drank the same thing. Yes, I still let everyone take it because it’s typically a precondition of receiving care but my readings at home are completely different and give me a more accurate data point that actually makes me feel good about the progress I’ve been making on my health. I’m actively looking for more healthcare I can do this way. I trust my data and it all coming together on the safety of my personal device. We don’t need doctors with extremely limited datasets to do this and try to find obscure correlations for us.

AStonesThrow 2y ago
> typically a precondition of receiving care I've achieved exciting results by flatly refusing vitals checks at each and every medical appointment. Especially psychiatrists. The PCPs always gamely admire my self-reported histories and graphs, commenting how nicely the trend line goes down, and then completely dismiss the results in their clinical notes. However, I did lock horns with a particular chiropractor. I filled out the "pre-existing conditions" form with candor and honesty. I permitted a BP check. (His method was 100% manual sphygmomanometer.) Then he informed me that he wouldn't touch me until my BP was controlled and normal. Yes, a chiropractor, not a cardiac surgeon. Geez. In the past, I've tried to avoid submitting to blood draws and labs, because those are 100% fishing expeditions, and not actually attempting to diagnose a complaint or symptoms. (They love to misdiagnose hypothyroid or diabetes so they can begin destroying your endocrines.) Unfortunately, clinics do these orders on a schedule, so if you avoid labs for a while, the orders simply pile up until they contrive to get them all done. I couldn't win. Still putting off colonoscopy: 2.5 years late, and counting!
- rscho 2y ago
  But why go to these practitioners if you don't trust them ? Nobody should be forcing you. Is it because you want access to treatment solely on your own terms ?
  - AStonesThrow 2y ago
    Nobody is "forced" to get health care in the United States, [except once you're unconscious, insane, or incarcerated, and the ambulance arrives] but what are the penalties if we don't? A PCP is the only one who can route me to a specialist if I really needed one. If I broke my leg again, or had some other emergency, it'd be nice to have a followup with someone who already has us on file, rather than trying to get past all the gatekeepers for an initial visit. Every insurance company will urge their customers to establish and visit the PCP on the regular. Every social services agency simply assumes... demands... that citizens have a relationship with medicine and that we dutifully visit the doctor to keep up on health issues. It's outright heresy and treason to say that you won't participate at all. A physician is the only one who can keep records relating to disability cases. A physician is the only one who can write me a note if I'm unable to work. Eventually you'll need to release medical records to a third party in order to access benefits or qualify for something, so those records had better pre-exist! A physician is the only one who can diagnose or treat any disease, so what else would we do if we got truly sick? John 6:68
    - rscho 2y ago
      I understand what you say, and there is some truth to it. However it's also justified that society asks something in return for societal benefits. That's pretty much the foundings of insurance. The extent to which that should go is debatable, of course.
- atahanacar 2y ago
  >Still putting off colonoscopy I hope you won't regret putting it off. >They love to misdiagnose hypothyroid or diabetes so they can begin destroying your endocrines Yes, my favorite pastime when I'm bored of treating "actual" diseases. I fail to understand how a well-educated group of people (aka. HN) can be this against the scientific method.
  - bongodongobob 2y ago
    Every single health related thread is like this. Dude thinks because he's been programming JavaScript for 10 years he's a literal genius. It's pathetic.
    - declan_roberts 2y ago
      He's intentionally refusing care and just living his life. I don't agree with that, but I do understand it. We all shuffle off someday. What's the worst that can happen? He dies?
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - Zenzero 2y ago
        Modern civilized countries pay for healthcare with taxes. That costs everyone more with his decisions.
        bongodongobob 2y ago
        Super preventable stuff too. "Itchy mole, prob nothing." Ope, it's a melanoma and has spread everywhere. You have 6 months to live.
        adrianN 2y ago
        Dying young six months after diagnosis might be cheaper for society than a long malaise during old age.
- Spooky23 2y ago
  Lol. Hopefully you get lucky. Why address cancer, insulin resistance or stroke risks early?
- flextheruler 2y ago
  Amazing it’s like you’ve figured out the optimal strategy of still spending the same amount of time going to the doctors but getting as few benefits as possible. I’m pretty sure you can decline care and get second opinions no matter what. I don’t know your family background, but I have quite a few older male relatives who died from cancers that if caught early have high survivability. They were all suspicious of the profit incentives of the medical system and felt they knew better or were tough enough to not care. My grandfather had a heart murmur, so he used that as an excuse to never go to the doctors. “They just want my money I already know my heart will kill me soon so why bother”. He died of colon cancer. I’m sure they all regretted it.
- Zenzero 2y ago
  > They love to misdiagnose hypothyroid or diabetes so they can begin destroying your endocrines Im sorry but as a doctor this made me crack up. I don't know what it is about HN that makes people jump into every medical thread and say really absurd things. Skipping screening tests isn't one-upping your PCP. You just get to play harder with specialty when stuff starts to break. Good luck buddy.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - mh- 2y ago
    It's not just medical threads, it's tech too. You (probably, I'm assuming) just don't know the tech as well as you do the medicine, so it doesn't stand out as absurd to you.
    - Zenzero 2y ago
      I have expertise in both. I think the difference is that when moving from the highly rigid world of medicine into tech, I expected the varied level of skill and knowledge that exists. It just throws you off seeing people in tech with no background in medicine talk about medicine like they know it. Most of my closest friends are docs. A couple of times at a brewery I've had them read some braindead takes from here for laughs. The people here making wild comments on the architecture of o1 or whatever don't get the same reaction from the crowd.
      - mh- 2y ago
        Fair (and very cool!), sorry for the assumption. I see people speaking complete falsehoods about things I have material knowledge of here, and either don't have the energy or the latitude to correct them. And those reactions to (e.g.) o1 speculation are happening in (e.g.) OpenAI, I'm sure, haha.
kaycebasques 2y ago
> after I’ve ate and drank the same thing My doctor recommended doing it first thing in the morning, before eating or drinking anything. That's probably an easier way for the general population to establish a consistent baseline
- atahanacar 2y ago
  It's not only easier, but the actual correct way of doing it. That's why your doctor recommended it.
atahanacar 2y ago
>This is a standard medical test I have completely given up on any doctor to perform accurately. I do it myself at home once or twice a month. I do it with the same device, in the same chair, at the same desk, the same time of day, after I’ve ate and drank the same thing. You are assuming the average patient is this careful about measuring their BP, or anything about their health. You are also assuming the average patient measures their BP correctly, which is obviously untrue as evidenced by some other comments on this post. You are also assuming patients always tell the truth about their own measurements. >We don’t need doctors with extremely limited datasets to do this and try to find obscure correlations for us. I don't understand what you mean by this. None of us finds obscure correlations with limited datasets. We don't diagnose someone over a single BP measurement.
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  > We don't diagnose someone over a single BP measurement. Yeah I feel like no doctor of mine has ever been the type to do that. My current PCP wouldn't prescribe meds for hypertension until after I took my own BP at home for a month (it was not catastrophically high when measured at his office, he might have taken a different approach in that situation).
  - atahanacar 2y ago
    Even with a catastrophically high measurement, no doctor would diagnose with a single data point. At worst, they would ask the patient to measure at home multiple times a day, after teaching the correct method of measurement. At best, they would do an ambulatory monitoring.
    - TexanFeller 2y ago
      False. I went into a first visit at a doctor office one time and after spending about five minutes total with me he sent me home with a BP Rx. No mention of verifying it with home readings to make sure I really need it and he didn't even bother giving me standard advice like lose weight. Most other doctors did only slightly better. Insurance only reimburses for like 10 minutes of their time, half of which is spent updating records, so it's unsurprising they don't have time to properly handle your problem.

AStonesThrow 2y ago

> typically a precondition of receiving care I've achieved exciting results by flatly refusing vitals checks at each and every medical appointment. Especially psychiatrists. The PCPs always gamely admire my self-reported histories and graphs, commenting how nicely the trend line goes down, and then completely dismiss the results in their clinical notes. However, I did lock horns with a particular chiropractor. I filled out the "pre-existing conditions" form with candor and honesty. I permitted a BP check. (His method was 100% manual sphygmomanometer.) Then he informed me that he wouldn't touch me until my BP was controlled and normal. Yes, a chiropractor, not a cardiac surgeon. Geez. In the past, I've tried to avoid submitting to blood draws and labs, because those are 100% fishing expeditions, and not actually attempting to diagnose a complaint or symptoms. (They love to misdiagnose hypothyroid or diabetes so they can begin destroying your endocrines.) Unfortunately, clinics do these orders on a schedule, so if you avoid labs for a while, the orders simply pile up until they contrive to get them all done. I couldn't win. Still putting off colonoscopy: 2.5 years late, and counting!

rscho 2y ago
But why go to these practitioners if you don't trust them ? Nobody should be forcing you. Is it because you want access to treatment solely on your own terms ?
- AStonesThrow 2y ago
  Nobody is "forced" to get health care in the United States, [except once you're unconscious, insane, or incarcerated, and the ambulance arrives] but what are the penalties if we don't? A PCP is the only one who can route me to a specialist if I really needed one. If I broke my leg again, or had some other emergency, it'd be nice to have a followup with someone who already has us on file, rather than trying to get past all the gatekeepers for an initial visit. Every insurance company will urge their customers to establish and visit the PCP on the regular. Every social services agency simply assumes... demands... that citizens have a relationship with medicine and that we dutifully visit the doctor to keep up on health issues. It's outright heresy and treason to say that you won't participate at all. A physician is the only one who can keep records relating to disability cases. A physician is the only one who can write me a note if I'm unable to work. Eventually you'll need to release medical records to a third party in order to access benefits or qualify for something, so those records had better pre-exist! A physician is the only one who can diagnose or treat any disease, so what else would we do if we got truly sick? John 6:68
  - rscho 2y ago
    I understand what you say, and there is some truth to it. However it's also justified that society asks something in return for societal benefits. That's pretty much the foundings of insurance. The extent to which that should go is debatable, of course.
atahanacar 2y ago
>Still putting off colonoscopy I hope you won't regret putting it off. >They love to misdiagnose hypothyroid or diabetes so they can begin destroying your endocrines Yes, my favorite pastime when I'm bored of treating "actual" diseases. I fail to understand how a well-educated group of people (aka. HN) can be this against the scientific method.
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  Every single health related thread is like this. Dude thinks because he's been programming JavaScript for 10 years he's a literal genius. It's pathetic.
  - declan_roberts 2y ago
    He's intentionally refusing care and just living his life. I don't agree with that, but I do understand it. We all shuffle off someday. What's the worst that can happen? He dies?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Zenzero 2y ago
      Modern civilized countries pay for healthcare with taxes. That costs everyone more with his decisions.
      - bongodongobob 2y ago
        Super preventable stuff too. "Itchy mole, prob nothing." Ope, it's a melanoma and has spread everywhere. You have 6 months to live.
        adrianN 2y ago
        Dying young six months after diagnosis might be cheaper for society than a long malaise during old age.
Spooky23 2y ago
Lol. Hopefully you get lucky. Why address cancer, insulin resistance or stroke risks early?
flextheruler 2y ago
Amazing it’s like you’ve figured out the optimal strategy of still spending the same amount of time going to the doctors but getting as few benefits as possible. I’m pretty sure you can decline care and get second opinions no matter what. I don’t know your family background, but I have quite a few older male relatives who died from cancers that if caught early have high survivability. They were all suspicious of the profit incentives of the medical system and felt they knew better or were tough enough to not care. My grandfather had a heart murmur, so he used that as an excuse to never go to the doctors. “They just want my money I already know my heart will kill me soon so why bother”. He died of colon cancer. I’m sure they all regretted it.
Zenzero 2y ago
> They love to misdiagnose hypothyroid or diabetes so they can begin destroying your endocrines Im sorry but as a doctor this made me crack up. I don't know what it is about HN that makes people jump into every medical thread and say really absurd things. Skipping screening tests isn't one-upping your PCP. You just get to play harder with specialty when stuff starts to break. Good luck buddy.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- mh- 2y ago
  It's not just medical threads, it's tech too. You (probably, I'm assuming) just don't know the tech as well as you do the medicine, so it doesn't stand out as absurd to you.
  - Zenzero 2y ago
    I have expertise in both. I think the difference is that when moving from the highly rigid world of medicine into tech, I expected the varied level of skill and knowledge that exists. It just throws you off seeing people in tech with no background in medicine talk about medicine like they know it. Most of my closest friends are docs. A couple of times at a brewery I've had them read some braindead takes from here for laughs. The people here making wild comments on the architecture of o1 or whatever don't get the same reaction from the crowd.
    - mh- 2y ago
      Fair (and very cool!), sorry for the assumption. I see people speaking complete falsehoods about things I have material knowledge of here, and either don't have the energy or the latitude to correct them. And those reactions to (e.g.) o1 speculation are happening in (e.g.) OpenAI, I'm sure, haha.

kaycebasques 2y ago

> after I’ve ate and drank the same thing My doctor recommended doing it first thing in the morning, before eating or drinking anything. That's probably an easier way for the general population to establish a consistent baseline

atahanacar 2y ago
It's not only easier, but the actual correct way of doing it. That's why your doctor recommended it.

atahanacar 2y ago

>This is a standard medical test I have completely given up on any doctor to perform accurately. I do it myself at home once or twice a month. I do it with the same device, in the same chair, at the same desk, the same time of day, after I’ve ate and drank the same thing. You are assuming the average patient is this careful about measuring their BP, or anything about their health. You are also assuming the average patient measures their BP correctly, which is obviously untrue as evidenced by some other comments on this post. You are also assuming patients always tell the truth about their own measurements. >We don’t need doctors with extremely limited datasets to do this and try to find obscure correlations for us. I don't understand what you mean by this. None of us finds obscure correlations with limited datasets. We don't diagnose someone over a single BP measurement.

rootusrootus 2y ago
> We don't diagnose someone over a single BP measurement. Yeah I feel like no doctor of mine has ever been the type to do that. My current PCP wouldn't prescribe meds for hypertension until after I took my own BP at home for a month (it was not catastrophically high when measured at his office, he might have taken a different approach in that situation).
- atahanacar 2y ago
  Even with a catastrophically high measurement, no doctor would diagnose with a single data point. At worst, they would ask the patient to measure at home multiple times a day, after teaching the correct method of measurement. At best, they would do an ambulatory monitoring.
  - TexanFeller 2y ago
    False. I went into a first visit at a doctor office one time and after spending about five minutes total with me he sent me home with a BP Rx. No mention of verifying it with home readings to make sure I really need it and he didn't even bother giving me standard advice like lose weight. Most other doctors did only slightly better. Insurance only reimburses for like 10 minutes of their time, half of which is spent updating records, so it's unsurprising they don't have time to properly handle your problem.