A Forum For 'Em

As both a doctor and a small business owner, I love Google. It's great. It promotes my practice for free, provides me with maps, abilities to create coupons, hosts blogs, hosts my calendar page and a lot more. Best of all, it's fast. When I need to look up the potential side effects and cross reactions of an obscure medication, I can do so more quickly through Google than I can flipping through the Physicians Desk Reference.

So what's not to like about it? Sure, I occasionally have to convince a patient that their self diagnosis via Google was incorrect. But sometimes it is correct. And my guess is that 30 years ago those same patients would have walked into my office with their Encyclopedia Britannica or Readers Digest in hand.

But Google really just indexes a lot of information. It's your job to read through it. Even blogs dispense info and advice (hopefully you find this one useful?), but they, too, simply put their info "out there" for you to process.

Forums. Now this is where health care advice becomes interesting. I have a guilty pleasure. I am willing to admit it. About once per week I read through the injury sections of a few of my favorite endurance sports forums (letsrun.com, slowtwitch.com, beginnertriathlete.com, paddleboard.com, standuppaddlezone.com, etc.).

As I peruse these sites, I get to read the sort of advice that some of my current and future patients receive. About 10% of it is good and useful, 40% is relatively harmless and 50% is awful and potentially harmful.

As an example, last autumn I examined a new patient, a runner with calf pain. He'd been dealing with pain and tightness for a while. His coach told him to stretch more, his wife told him to see a doctor, and the people on the other end of his web forums told him to stretch, buy a hot tub, join a Crossfit gym, don't see a physical therapist, don't see a chiropractor, don't see a medical doctor, soak in epsom salts, run barefoot, take Advil, blah, blah, blah.

He should have listened to his wife. By the time he got to me, nerve damage from two ruptured/herniated lumbar discs had caused significant (and probably irreparable) motor nerve damage to his lower leg. He was in surgery 2 days after I examined him, and last I heard, is progressing at a moderate pace.

I don't like to post on those forums. It's not helpful for me nor the "patient". But sometimes I'll see a person similar to that previous patient getting some terrible advice, and I have to jump in and say "Hello? You're soliciting advice from people with no training whatsoever?" Hopefully they get the message.

No, you do not have to spend an arm and a leg to get a diagnosis for your leg or your arm, but this is the only body you'll ever have. Take care of it, please.