This is a problem all over, from health advice to cooking to skincare, lawn care, etc. etc. etc.
A complex system with many variables and optimum points trying to be solved with anecdotes, magical cures, and "good for you" products.
A complex system with many variables and optimum points trying to be solved with anecdotes, magical cures, and "good for you" products.
"This is how I do it!" blog kinds of recipes usually suffer from hidden techniques or undocumented variables where you try it yourself and it's just awful.
In other words, good advice involves science and art, not just one-off reports of success.
I've used a recipe that have worked very well for me but then gave radically different results when I used a different casserole dish. I managed to fix it by taking the lid off later in the process and adjusting the oven temperature by 30°C. Not many recipes mention that amount of temperature variation depending on what cooking equipment you're using.
For skincare, see a dermatologist. Anyone with skincare issues or concerns, PLEASE just see a dermatologist. They might not tell you what you want to hear, but they can usually give you a good baseline description and diagnosis of what to work on. That's 99% of the battle.
For lawn care, try to talk to a lawn care specialist, hopefully someone who is not trying to sell you something. Golf courses usually have 1 or 2 people that know a lot about grass. Even someone that you think has a really good lawn, ask them to come over and take a look at yours.
Getting advice off the internet is helpful, but I've usually found it to not beat getting someone in person who can actually look at what ever the thing is you're looking for advice for.
"Just take the cream damnit" - a couple years later I found that the cream was just adjusting the texture of my skin, and likely overly sensitizing it. The doc didn't care and was happy to continue prescribing it.
When doctors abscond their responsibility to know what they're talking about, folks have no choice but to seek it out. Many people have this experience with physicians of all stripes.
Sure enough, it worked. I was just hurting my neck by using my PDA too much with my neck craned downward, and getting massages/exercise or just not using a mobile device fixed the problem completely
I really lucked out with that guy
To be totally fair, I did recently seek help for recurring pain in the back of my head (also the top of the neck, but I described it as the head) and the urgent care nurse did some simple nerve damage tests, asked me about my sleeping posture, and told me the problem was likely that I was sleeping wrong and I should take a different position. He was right.
Of course, he wasn't a doctor either. :/
If you want to turn the tables on your Chinese-born dentist, ask him about the Chinese habit of stopping by the hospital for intravenous saline solution whenever you're feeling like you might have a cold.
If it can't be "solved" with the standard antidepressant, antibiotic, skin cream, or "diet and exercise"; good luck getting anybody to even try to solve an issue that isn't obvious. (your leg is broken, you have a tumor, etc.)
Medical expertise has a problem with only doing one dimensional solutions for one dimensional issues.
Another thing that bothers me is that they never seem to do any sort of testing. They just throw solutions at the problem until one of them works. It is 2021 we have had the technology to grow something in a culture for over 160 years now, but no just take these antibiotics and if they don't work come back and I'll take another random shot in the dark.
“Bacterial culture is frequently more difficult and often requires more training than molecular techniques”[1]
There’s a good chance that many doctors are stuck in a mindset that culturing is too difficult, costly, and time consuming to be effective for all but the most resistant infections, but I’m not sure they’re wrong.
I did see a dermatologist when the skin on one of my fingertips started peeling uncontrollably. He told me 'We call this "desquamation", which just means "it's peeling". We don't know why it happens or what might make it stop.'
It was a less than ringing endorsement of the idea that if you have a skin problem, you should see a dermatologist.
Realistically, this isn't good advice - you probably just want to see your regular doctor. The waiting list for a dermatologist can be long, but that GP will probably get you in quickly. They will recognize worrysome skin patches that might be cancer, and can generally do basic things to help common skin conditions (athletes foot, cysts, poison ivy and other common rashes, and so on).
Besides, a lot of folks can't just see a dermatologist - not without a referral, anyway.