Similarly, I've noticed dogma in psychiatry discouraging of "self-diagnosis" and the consequence of that: individuals with stories of spending years experiencing their state of mind, many hours researching it yet still having to go through multiple professionals to arrive at the "right" diagnosis (despite often spoonfeeding the professional the answer on a silver platter yet meeting resistance)
That's what you get when wrong incentives are in place. Additionally, I believe it would be better to have a separate market for diagnosis (as in, technicians selling their services, not attached to any doctor or hospital) so that you can get tested whenever you want (at your expenses, or partially reimbursed by your insurer, whichever system works best) instead of having a gate-keeper for everything.
To mitigate this, frequent measurements at home or at work should be taken. Those give you much more information about your status.
Even mild hypertension can be a serious indicator of potentially life threatening, or at least altering, issues. If you measure high at the doctor, measure yourself at home and keep a log.
I was recently diagnosed with HBP and the process went like this: - doctor took the measurement, was very high
- asked me to measure at home, call if it was still high (it was, but much lower)
- invited me over, I got a blood pressure monitor for 24h. That showed a borderline 130/85) higher BP. For comparison, he was reading 160/100 at his office..
This is just to illustrate that doctors should know about the white coat syndrome and shouldn’t diagnose you based on readings in their office only.
You will always find a great cardiologist or dentist in Prague. Ostrava is already much more challenging and Bruntál means playing it on hard mode :)
On the other hand, I had a regular blood test several weeks ago, and my blood sugar was borderline high for a fasting period. I just went out and bought a glucometer and tracked it for days later, it was much lower. It just happened on that one reading at the lab. The only explanation is that I was fasting for too long (close to 16 hours) and the lab was not the first thing I went in the morning, I had one more place to visit before. So my body was already fully woken up and/or my liver started doing its thing and produced glucose from fat or whatever.