It seems that our medical professionals cannot agree on anything. For every medical opinion that is given, you will be able to find a doctor that will give an opposite opinion. This can be very frustrating if you are trying to find a diagnosis. This can also be very frustrating if you have to change doctors due to insurance and find that they feel you were given miss information by your previous physician.
I recently went through a situation where I was looking for answers for the severe back pain I was in. I had been to general practitioners, as well as a group of specialists. My appointments included three different cities and five different doctor’s offices. I know ever inch of five different waiting rooms. As I spent time waiting for test results and appointments I read many health articles in the magazines in the waiting rooms. I was beginning to see a pattern in the health articles. If one health magazine had a topic that was featured another magazine would have a similar topic and or rebuttal article the next month. The doctors that write the health articles seem to enjoy proving each other wrong. At times it seems that their main objective is to disagree. This makes me suspicious of health articles. I start to wonder how much of the article is fact and how much is the opinion of the doctor.
As with all research, health articles can present statistics in such a way that they can claim a theory is proven or they can claim the opposite. I was talking to my nephew about this. He is a pharmaceutical researcher. He agreed that the health articles can be very misleading, especially if they are based on research that has not been verified. He explained that there are so many articles written because a researcher needs to have a certain number of publications each year to fulfill requirements for grants, fellowships and scholarships. Often times the researcher does not have the time to do an in depth article, so they read another person’s published work and create a rebuttal article. He pointed out that this is why you do not see many of the health magazines any place but in the doctor’s office. The health articles are not very interesting, factual or well written. He did tell me that the health articles that are written in more popular magazines are usually well researched and written better because they are written by professional writers rather than researchers.