While the internet and its vast array of resources has empowered a veritable army of those who can better care for their health and their family’s health, there lurks a risk in playing doctor for yourself. Even as a doctor myself, it has been very challenging caring for my own family as we navigated mold toxicity and other health issues. Having access to vast medical resources as well as a vast array of direct-to-consumer medical tests can both help and hinder your health journey. Let’s consider where ‘getting help’ (instead of another try at self-help) is worth it.
First, as the severity of the health issue or symptom grows, objectivity becomes more and more difficult. Reading online about self-care for a burn, for poison ivy, or for a headache should almost always be done before jumping to an emergency room visit. However, when the headache prevents work or school attendance for days or spreads to other weird symptoms such as vomiting and vision changes, it is no longer a good time to self-diagnose and self-treat. You should try to care for the simple and mild health issues, but seek out expert help with things get more severe. Making good decisions in the midst of anxiety and fear about symptoms can be trouble even if you are medically trained.
Second, some of the now available health panels which allow dozens if not hundreds of tests to be performed without a provider can lead to unnecessary alarm and fear. In these cases, you need help in knowing what to not do rather than what to do. Many are ordering such panels to know if they have a problem even when they feel fine to begin with. You get results back that are barely abnormal on 1 or 2 tests and now you are worried. You can search the internet for advice, but how can you be sure that your “mildly abnormal” is really okay and normal? You need a trusted medical provider who can reassure you or point you in the right direction for help. This trusted provider can also save you from spending money on tests that you don’t really need.
Third, unless you are medically trained, your experience in patient care is limited to you and your family, maybe some friends. You can read the science of medicine online, but having experiences with hundreds, even thousands of patients gives a better perspective on whether that headache will go away or lead to brain surgery (to be clear, the brain surgery option is very rarely needed). We as humans have to depend on each other for collective wisdom rather than going Lone Ranger, and that goes for handling medical issues as well as the rest of life.
Overall, I encourage you to equip yourself with as much health knowledge as you can but also not to neglect getting expert help when you realize you are beyond your ability level to care for something. If you can find a provider who works with you to educate and to empower you over time, you can then become more and more self-empowered over time. Before long, you can filter out or handle the vast majority of everyday health needs while still having someone to see when the need arises for expertise beyond your own. Helping our patients restore and maintain healthier, more abundant lives requires us at Sanctuary to be this type of you-empowering medical provider.
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Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
