I’d like to see cheap and easy chemical testing—for example, being able to track what’s in your tap water. I expect to see that before I see the sort of cheap and easy medical monitoring you describe. For that matter, tracking the current nutrient value in food would be interesting. Neither one seems to be on the immediate horizon, which makes me wonder if such medical monitoring as you describe is within 10-15 years.
What are the odds of more knowledge of amazingly simple methods for dealing with potentially medical problems? I recently cleared up a case of gastric reflux—I was waking up with a mouthful of acid fairly often—just by sleeping on my left side. I don’t think that sort of solution exists for every ailment, but I bet there’s more of them to be found.
Did a physician inform you about the sleeping-on-side hack?
I personally know of an instance where a person had gastric reflux, went to the doctor, was prescribed a proton pump inhibitor as the sole treatment (Nexum), didn’t get any better, went poking around the internet with google, and got non-medicine lifestyle adjustments (elevated bed head, fasting for five hours before bedtime) to fix their reflux problem. Then, later they told the doctor, who said nothing but “oh yeah”.
We had no google in 1988 although surely some futurist genius somewhere foresaw it.
I’d like to see cheap and easy chemical testing—for example, being able to track what’s in your tap water. I expect to see that before I see the sort of cheap and easy medical monitoring you describe. For that matter, tracking the current nutrient value in food would be interesting. Neither one seems to be on the immediate horizon, which makes me wonder if such medical monitoring as you describe is within 10-15 years.
What are the odds of more knowledge of amazingly simple methods for dealing with potentially medical problems? I recently cleared up a case of gastric reflux—I was waking up with a mouthful of acid fairly often—just by sleeping on my left side. I don’t think that sort of solution exists for every ailment, but I bet there’s more of them to be found.
Did a physician inform you about the sleeping-on-side hack?
I personally know of an instance where a person had gastric reflux, went to the doctor, was prescribed a proton pump inhibitor as the sole treatment (Nexum), didn’t get any better, went poking around the internet with google, and got non-medicine lifestyle adjustments (elevated bed head, fasting for five hours before bedtime) to fix their reflux problem. Then, later they told the doctor, who said nothing but “oh yeah”.
We had no google in 1988 although surely some futurist genius somewhere foresaw it.
I got the sleeping on the left side hack from the wikipedia article.
Seth Roberts posts articles now and then about physicians not being interested in patients who find (cheap/simple) cures for themselves.