The way people online constantly say ‘talk to your doctor’ like it’s a panacea is a lot like how medieval peasants weren’t able to read scripture and they just had to trust their clergy’s interpretations
Sick of it. Usually it’s not even like if I’m trying to find out if I have fucking cancer, I’m saying oh i feel sad in the evenings. why in the NAME of GOD would i want to then, for that, find the guy’s number, call, leave a message cause it’s midnight, wait for them to call back, schedule something 2 weeks later, worry the whole time, and try to remember and rephrase in formal clinical terminology exactly what’s happening and get formal cold clinical advice for it from a guy I see twice a year. Just tell me! Give me colloquial advice and home remedies! good god!
There could be so many miracle tips or tricks online that really work but nooo people constantly shout ‘talk to your doctor! call your doctor!’ i don’t want to fucking call the doctor, medical environments give me anxiety and all the bureaucracy and insurance and bills don’t help matters either.
some zoomers on tiktok seem to get this and happily share ‘oh this worked for me!’ and usually it’s somewhat helpful and a very nice, casual interaction that doesn’t involve interaction with an authority figure and potential bills. it’s that easy.
‘ooh what about liability’ don’t care. liability has destroyed modern america, gatekeeping knowledge behind a culture of fear. if you’re so scared about liability over a reddit comment, simply don’t say anything! rather than leaving a pointless piece of advice that every single person on the planet knows is the default ‘ideal’ answer, that isn’t necessarily actionable for many who don’t have easy or trivial access to healthcare.
It’s a generic answer because it’s the only responsible answer. To give someone medical advice when you have no medical expertise is highly irresponsible because not only are you potentially misleading the person asking, but countless others who read the discussion.
It should only ever be “talk to your doctor” because medical advice is one thing the Internet cannot provide and no one should be enlisting others in helping them treat their health as some kind of horoscope.
The amount of times I’ve been online and misdiagnosed myself, man I don’t even know. Worst case was I convinced myself I had afib. Knew it, from all of my reading and everything I had all the symptoms.
Except I didn’t have them, because since I’ve never experienced the symptoms I thought I had the symptoms, but I did not.
The knowledge isn’t “gatekept”, it’s not something they hide away in a chest. It takes 10 years of medical school and several more after that of on the job training just to be a junior doctor. Talk about minimizing how complex the human body and all possible ailments are. We go to doctors not for the 15 minutes in the exam room with them, but because of the decades of knowledge they learned so we didn’t have to.