FEATURE – I have found that I spend as much time in the clinic dispelling incorrect beliefs as I do educating my patients about their specific condition. There are so many myths and legends surrounding health care, and if you try to look for answers on the internet, it is very difficult to know where to look.
The web is absolutely overflowing with untrue, partially true and outdated information. Simply doing a Google search of a medical subject you want to learn about can leave you more confused than when you started.
There are an enormous number of suggestions and remedies on social media or YouTube video blogs that range from the completely unstudied and unproven to the outright absurd or dangerous.
If something seems too good to be true, too easy or just simply too strange, the odds are that it probably isn’t true.
So where do we find accurate, unbiased information? These are the sources I suggest using:
These should all give you very similar, up-to-date evidence-based information and are in general very user-friendly. They offer consensus opinions, which help eliminate outliers and extreme positions. You will find, as you study these, that many things publicly perceived as fact are actually much less clear than we thought.
There are brilliant minds in academic medicine that approach every problem from every conceivable angle. I won’t say that modern medicine gets it right every time, because they don’t. But through the use of the scientific method to validate or refute practices and beliefs, medicine does work to improve and modify all the time.
Knowledge is power. Take the time to research and educate yourself, and take an active role in your health care. You’ll be glad you did.
Resources
- Dr. Sean Lynn practices at St. George Women’s Health Center in St. George | Telephone: 435-218-7770.
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @STGnews
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