How doctors keep young: Their biggest secret? They will do anything to steer clear of other doctors! Learn from them by avoiding medicines and ops you don't need
Sir Muir Gray's guide to a healthy body in old age continues
Reveals how to choose and use healthcare wisely
Explains what doctors do to keep themselves young
Doctors are cautious users of the health service
doctors are cautious users of the health service. There are several reasons for this:
There's usually more scientific evidence available about the benefit of a new treatment than its risks and limitations. Trials of a new treatment that have produced a positive result are more likely to be published than reports about trials of the same drug that didn't have a positive result.
Laboratory, screening or radiological investigations often produce what are called false positive results, suggesting that disease is present when it is not. This can lead to unnecessary follow-up tests and treatments, which could be risky and harmful.
CT scanning raises the risk of cancer because of radiation.
Any medical intervention - a test, operation or drug - will have harmful side-effects for some people, even when carried out by the best doctor in the country
For a variety of reasons, the information given to patients is sometimes overly optimistic regarding the risks and limitations of treatment. This is changing, but over-optimism is a deep-seated tendency. Perhaps the main obstacle is the use of percentages.
We know that if people are told a treatment will reduce the risk of a disease by 50 per cent, they make different decisions than if they are told the risk will be reduced from one in 2,000 to one in 3,000.
You need absolute numbers, so here are two questions for your doctor:
If 100 people have this test or treatment, how many of them will have a good result?
If 100 people have this test or treatment, how many will suffer some harmful consequence?
Full article in the link below
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2917238/How-doctors-young-biggest-secret-steer-clear-doctors-Learn-avoiding-medicines-ops-don-t-need.html#ixzz3PKh9jlgo
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