This guy is probably chasing moonshine, but TBH "functional neurological disorder" sounds like one of those face-saving labels that doctors use when they don't have any idea what's going on.
The point of giving it a name is in the second part. Its about explicitly acknowledging the limitations of medicine
For a competent doctor it's used too let a patient know they're doing their job and an acknowledgement of symptoms.
Unfortunately to a _lot_ of the field "catch-all" "diagnoses" (in intentionally separating these labels). It's the same as diagnosing someone with chronic fatigue. It's diagnosing via exclusion.
The difference between chronic fatigue and brain disorders being that you're more likely to get someone looking to make a "name for themselves" diagnosing or curing the latter vs the former...
That’ll definitely pause the rapidly progressing dementia and loss of muscle control in patients in their 20s.
When doctors have no idea what something is and aren’t willing to keep trying diagnostics and interventions, it’s always “hey maybe get some more cardio and go easy on the peanut butter cups”.
For the longest time all my data said exercise more. That was expected since I literally didn’t move all the way to a cardiac ward. Then all of a sudden it shifted to ‘exercise less, drink less coffee and sleep much more.’
I understand why doctors fall into that blind spot. It was perfect advice for me for a long time and took a lot of failure (and remarkably bad coping mechanisms) for me to figure out.
Modern medicine is basically a factory line that never ends.
It's not just a case of "we don't know", it's a case of "we've looked at everything under the sun and nothing fits".
Sounds like one of those things that needs more research.
- a casual diagnosis: your problem is caused by C
- a syndrome: you have this collection of symptoms which often appear together, we don't know what causes it, we may have some treatments that can help.
The difference between these two is often not communicated well, but they are valid diagnostic categories.
There is a bigger problem with the third one:
- we have done some investigation and don't think further investigation is worth doing.
This may be a correct judgment, or it may not. But it is not a property of the patient. Essentialising it to the patient is incorrect and potentially dangerous. Especially as, it's rarely the case that they've "looked at everything under the sun". There are many reasons for stopping before that - some of them valid, but some not.
Yes, but it also sounds like the initial stages of "research" should be taxonomy. Starting with QC'ing current testing & diagnosis standards, to have more confidence that the data is reasonably clean.