The Evils of Common Sense

Everyone yearns to understand their medical problem. In the absence of evidence, they use common sense which turns out to be a terrible way to get at the truth. It’s a good rule that any common sense explanation of a medical problem is wrong. Here are others that I hear all the time.

“I can walk on it, so I know it’s not broken.”

It turns out that the fibula, one of two bones in the lower leg, doesn’t bear weight. You walk on your tibia.

“I can move it, so I know it’s not broken.” You may know, but I’m not so sure.

“I have to let this run its course…”

Seeing smoke pour out of your car’s exhaust, no one explains that the engine is repairing itself by expelling bad things. Yet plenty of patients believe vomiting or diarrhea is the body’s attempt to cleanse itself. In fact, it’s a malfunction. It’s OK to suppress it although exceptions exist for a few serious diseases.

“Fever is your body’s way of fighting an infection.”

Google “does fever treatment help” for an avalanche of praise for fever's healing properties from doctors and medical sites as well as laymen – a good sign that it’s nonsense.

Here are questions that you might ask.

1. In what specific infections is lowering the fever harmful? I can’t think of any.

2. What infections do doctors treat by giving patients a fever?  The answer is none (doctors tried this about a century ago, but it wasn’t helpful).

3. Every day, across the world, a hundred million people take medicine for fever. How many end up at the doctor who explains that they made the problem worse?

It's Not an Ear Infection!

When I peered into the guest’s ear, the drum looked normal, so there was no middle-ear infection. When I pulled his earlobe, it hurt but not a great deal. In an external infection (swimmer’s ear), pulling is very painful.

Many adults with ear pain don’t have an infection (children are a different matter). I pressed a finger to his temple in front of the ear and asked him to open his mouth. That hurt badly. He had pain in the temperomandibular (jaw) joint.

The jaw joint is no different from the knee, ankle, or shoulder joint. You can injure it, or it can hurt for no obvious reason. This is common, but I can’t remember the last time someone complained of jaw pain. They tell me it’s an earache.

Flying with a middle-ear infection is a bad idea but no problem with jaw pain, so the diagnosis is good news, but guests are skeptical. Ear pain means an ear infection, and pain medicine lacks the cache of an antibiotic. Guests often make it clear that they’re not getting their money’s worth.