thehonestdoctor.com

So says the media.

In this blog I plan to address mainstream medical news articles you might hear about or find interesting.  I’ll give you my own opinion and interpretation of the info, with an obvious interest in figuring out whether there’s relevant info in the article relating to what this site is all about:  trying to improve your odds of living a long, healthy life. 

It turns out the media is not very good at accurately presenting medical information for the most part.  What they generally are good at is using a bit of medical information, or even misinformation, to generate a compelling or sensationalistic story.  Now I’m not saying it’s always intentional; often I’m sure the media simply misunderstands or misses the point of what they’re trying to report on.  The frequency with which the media presents medical information in a misleading way however is frightening to me, since it makes me wonder how many other media reports on topics other than medicine that I’m reading are full of misinformation and I’m simply too ignorant to recognize it.

Here’s one from today.  An article from the AP regarding minute, trace amounts of prescription drugs which are detectable in some water supplies.  Sounds pretty scary, right?  I mean, after all, you don’t want to be taking any prescription drugs unless you really need them and they’re prescribed and monitored by your doctor, particularly not if they’re unknowingly mixed into your tap water.  The article focuses on the potential for possible toxic long-term effects on humans due to decades of such exposure.

Ok, so I’ll admit there’s a remote possibility such exposures could have some kind of long-term effect on humans.  But, in the grand scheme of things we should all be worrying about, this one has to be near the bottom of the list.  We’re talking about extreme trace amounts here, which push the limits of very sensitive detection devices - concentrations of a few parts per billion or trillion!  There is virtually no evidence of any detrimental effects on any human being from being exposed to such low concentrations of virtually any compound or chemical.  There’s not even much hypothetical or animal evidence of any potential for harm.

Even if there is some effect, it’s likely to be incredibly minute and have little or no impact on your life odds compared to a long list of other factors.  It nearly falls into the category of an environmental factor anyway, which as I discussed here; you can’t really do much about, unless you want to run out and buy a reverse-osmosis water filter and hook it up in your house.  I won’t be doing that anytime soon.

This is the kind of health info the media loves - sensationalistic.  Not really practical or useful, but worrisome to some.  Generates a great headline to pull in net traffic and/or sell papers.  It works because most of us don’t do a good job of estimating relative risk and prioritizing what’s important accordingly.  That is, most of us need to worry a lot more about such things as avoiding essentially preventable cancers like cervical and colon cancer, and much less about getting eaten by a shark.  But which of those two risks do you think generates more interesting headlines?  I just wish we’d see more articles with headlines like “Another 10,000 People Died of Heart Disease this Week” with a subheadline saying “In other words, it was an average week.”

What I’m getting at here is that articles like this one just distract people from what’s important, from what they can do that will really substantially and easily improve their life odds.  In my opinion, avoiding tap water will not substantially improve your longevity, while measures such as taking a baby aspirin each day on the advice of your doctor because you have multiple cardiac risk factors most certainly will.

So sit back, have a nice cool glass of tap water, keep reading this blog and get your priorities straight.  Increasing your odds of a long healthy life will be your reward.Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification