I don't remember exactly what was done last time and only knew when they pulled up the xrays and I saw the date of the last one. They hygienist sits you down and just does it as if it is normal. I googled and found what you mentioned.
I am low risk for cavities. Those exact words came out of his mouth. I was pissed off after the fact, because I'm paying out of pocket for this, and for fluoride treatment. I have in my records to not give me fluoride treatment but she called it "varnish" which caught me off guard.
I speculate the office got bought out by PE as dentists have changed over the last few years.
They also told my wife she needs a night guard. She's been wearing one for 12 years.
I slowly see why there are people who do not trust medical professionals.
The opinions I trust the most are the doctors that have previously told me that no treatment is necessary and the problem will resolve on its own.
The more often they’ve said that, the more I’d value the opinion, especially if it suggested something invasive.
I think the slider isn't between trusting and not trusting medical professionals - it's between being a passive and active patient. We have to involve ourselves in our care. Educate yourself, get second opinions, connect with fellow patients and national experts. And ffs, do not listen to yt/x/tiktok people for anything.
Bonus anecdote: My previous dentist, who I went to once, had an office full of hygienists that were young, blonde, skinny women without exception. Something tells me the interview process was not merit-based...
This applies double or even triple for vets. There is a lot of cash to extract from pet owners who would “do anything”, no matter how unnecessary or ineffective, for poochy.
If pet owners are inclined to take the "do anything" route it can open a lot of doors. I don't see anything wrong with that.
So sometimes people, typically women and typically larger people, live for years with painful conditions because doctors didn't bother to look deeply at all.
I'm telling you this because my father was the same way you are. he avoided going to the doctor at all and diagnosed himself.
He also smoked for 60 years. Yeah. He had his first heart attack in his 30s. Very avoidable. His second in his 40s. Then another in his 50s. Finally died of lung cancer in his 70s. Honestly a miracle he made it that far.
You can tell if you're feeling okay. But a lot of diseases have no symptoms. The reality is you cannot run your own blood tests. If you're young, maybe it's fine. But as you get older it no longer flies. What happens is you will become very sick, realize it's due to something like high blood pressure or diabetes, and you're WAY too far gone to fix it. The earlier you get on top of bad markers, the better. You don't want to live 30+ years with something like high blood pressure or high cholesterol.
Maybe you don't smoke (good for you), but that doesn't save you. Neither does living an active lifestyle. You can get high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, heart failure, etc regardless of your lifestyle. There're people who die MUCH younger than my father did while being much healthier.
It’s a tricky subject to phrase correctly and way to early in the morning to come up with a good example.
These doctors were, and are, actually reducing profit by not treating illnesses and instead prescribing things such as diet, exercise, and stress reduction.
And yes, doctors do that. All of them. If you're obese, the first thing out of their mouth is weight management. And yes, this is typically a good thing. But it does mean that lots of genuine issues are missed because any problem is attributed to weight. When in actuality they actually do have a tumor in their colon and no, they aren't just eating bad. And then they die when it was easily preventable.
To believe we live in a body positive world is to be deeply delusional. At the absolute most extreme, you have people asking not to be ridiculed for their weight. There are almost 0 people who legitimately think being fat is good for health. I would say 0, but then I remember some people think the Earth is flat.
All that is to say: yes, we know being fat is bad. Yes, even fat people know being fat is bad. Yes, doctors often prescribe not medicine to treat obesity. And yes, this often leads to missing genuine issues. And no, before anyone asks, I'm not a fatty, I'm actually quite thin. Not that I think it matters, but people are vain so it might matter to you.
If this comment feels very ungenerous to you, that's because you have forced me to make many assumptions about what you're trying to say. You can avoid that by not speaking as though you're an oracle in a medieval fantasy movie.
And, before I hear some nonsense about how you have no biases and you just want to conduct a thought experiment - uh, no. You are implying something, and we both know it. You do have an opinion on this topic. It's best to just let it out or say nothing at all. Otherwise, I might assume your opinion is dumb.
If it helps, keep in mind most medical issues don't kill you. They just lower your quality of life, sometimes a lot. So, if you've decided to stick it out, you might as well try to live the best life you can. Nobody wants to be chronically fatigued, or have bathroom troubles, or lose their hair, or whatever.
If 99% of the time it's just a symptom of being obese, is it really a good idea to put 99 people through unnecessary procedures because 1 other person has a fixable problem? What if said testing procedure has a 1/1000 chance of perforating the colon and causing a serious problem for those 99 people without a tumor?
>> If pet owners are inclined to take the "do anything" route it can open a lot of doors. I don't see anything wrong with that.
How about just like people-medicine: diagnostic tests when there is no likely treatment should not be proposed. Or charging 20-50x the generic cost for the same drugs humans use? The fact that some people will "do anything" when there's nothing that can be done is prone to abuse.
Meaning that, because they are fat, they will be treated differently than they would have been if they were thin. Meaning their symptoms won't be listened to, they won't be taken as seriously, they will be assumed to know very little about health, etc. In through one ear, out the other.
This subconscious bias is the same reason why simply having a non-white sounding name on your resume greatly reduces your chance of being hired. It's not like anyone is actively racist, but in their mind there exists connections already made and those influence their decisions, without their knowledge.
In actuality, if you have, say, anal bleeding, pain, bloating, and dark stools you should get a colonoscopy.
Women and larger people face much more of this subconscious bias. Many women aren't taken seriously at all.