Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a way to at least document random cures? Someone I know used to have problems doctors could not diagnose (lingua geographica was a symptom… one of those things nobody knows much about). Biopsies were made, blood levels were checked, a heroic efforts was put into trying to match the symptoms with something known. They disappeared all at once after a coloscopy, which requires, lo and behold, an intestinal cleansing that seriously disrupts the gut ecosystem. The moment the symptoms disappeared, doctors forgot about the issue. We learned that doctors are there to treat and have no time for research or curiosity. I feel an important bit of information is being left on the table, and it’s not their fault, it’s the system they are trapped in.
Case study reporting is a thing doctors occasionally do, if a documented severe issue significantly resolved after an unconventional, novel cure that still entails a plausible working mechanism.
But I think the issue here is often that doctors aren’t sure what it was in the first place, and if it resolved spontaneously, which does happen.
And I think a lot of patient solutions work indirectly. The patient will say “I quit gluten” or “I started yoga” or “I used a cream with x”, but this entails a long sequence of other changes as well, which the patient may not necessarily be aware of, and which may have made the actual difference.
And because a lot of these solutions are done by the patient, hence not blind, there are massive placebo effect distortions.
Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a way to at least document random cures? Someone I know used to have problems doctors could not diagnose (lingua geographica was a symptom… one of those things nobody knows much about). Biopsies were made, blood levels were checked, a heroic efforts was put into trying to match the symptoms with something known. They disappeared all at once after a coloscopy, which requires, lo and behold, an intestinal cleansing that seriously disrupts the gut ecosystem. The moment the symptoms disappeared, doctors forgot about the issue. We learned that doctors are there to treat and have no time for research or curiosity. I feel an important bit of information is being left on the table, and it’s not their fault, it’s the system they are trapped in.
Case study reporting is a thing doctors occasionally do, if a documented severe issue significantly resolved after an unconventional, novel cure that still entails a plausible working mechanism.
But I think the issue here is often that doctors aren’t sure what it was in the first place, and if it resolved spontaneously, which does happen.
And I think a lot of patient solutions work indirectly. The patient will say “I quit gluten” or “I started yoga” or “I used a cream with x”, but this entails a long sequence of other changes as well, which the patient may not necessarily be aware of, and which may have made the actual difference.
And because a lot of these solutions are done by the patient, hence not blind, there are massive placebo effect distortions.