That might be doctors new nightmare: people who second guess everything with AI. Previously it was "google your symptoms".
And yea, I already did all the standard things. CBT for insomnia helped somewhat. My insurance didn’t fully cover it either, unless I was willing to wait for 8 to 12 months.
And I recently met someone with slow moving metastatic cancer. Thanks to LLMs they will most likely live another 3 to 5 years extra since the Dutch conventional mainline treatment hasn’t been taken yet. But it is German doctors that helped them and Belgian doctors that pointed out in a second opinion that a lot more can be done.
LLMs have a part to play. The false positives are awful, but I have seen an average of 5 out of 10 care when things become too complicated.
Except for trauma treatment. The Dutch healthcare system is amazing once they diagnose classic PTSD.
So it’s definitely not all bad but the trust I had when I was younger has been eroded quite a bit and LLMs can meaningfully step in, in my case at least.
[1] I know there are worse systems. But from what I have heard there are clearly better systems nowadays. It has slipped a lot
So 3 days out of 7 days I have guaranteed good sleep. The other 4 days are a toss up. But an average of 5 days of good sleep is much better than 3.5 days out of 7 days.
https://www.thecut.com/article/antihistamines-pepcid-ac-peri...
> Then, a few months ago, Angela saw a social-media post from a woman who took daily anti-histamines (like Allegra, Claritin, or Zyrtec) plus Pepcid AC (a common antacid) for her perimenopause symptoms. Her results, as reported, sounded miraculous: no more brain fog, no more tossing and turning all night. Even her mood vastly improved.
Anecdotally, when I took mirtazapine for sleeping problems, it did sometimes seem to have a stronger effect the first time I took it after not using it for a while. After that the effect stayed stable. Overall it shouldn't cause habituation, and my doctor said as much.
Of course trust your doctor and not strangers on the internet, though.
Yea so this is where it gets murky for me. I experience some habituation actually. But my actual doctor went like "wtf is this?" and she didn't really mentioned what she knows about it. So on this particular pill my friend is my doctor. Not an ideal situation. I mean, he is an actual doctor but for him to be my doctor in this is a bit fucked up. He knows a lot more about mirtazapine than my GP though since he read up on it.
I suppose it can be quite different for different people. I stopped using it because it often (not always) made me still feel tired and unfocused in the morning, something that apparently also doesn't happen to everyone.
> But my actual doctor went like "wtf is this?"
Different country, but where I live, prescribing low-dose mirtazapine for insomnia appears to be fairly common practice even though it's off-label. I've had it suggested or mentioned by three or four different doctors, including GPs. I also know several other people who have been prescribed it.
The doctors here seem to prefer low-dose mirtazapine as safer over typical CNS depressants such as benzodiazepines for insomnia nowadays, at least if the problem may be longer-term.
So it's not really something particularly weird. Of course different countries also have different medical cultures so I guess it's not surprising if it's not that common in other places.
[1] https://www.kruidvat.nl/shiepz-melatonine-time-release-0-1mg... - Shiepz Melatonine Time Release 0,1mg Tabletten
I personally take 0.3 mg, two hours before bed. I've done this for about 2 years now. It still works. I know, anecdata, but as you can tell the dose is low.
Instead of music, long podcasts you are given something to imagine at a time interval.
Like if you hear "calm river", imagine that. If you hear "heavy rain over a tree", imagine that.
In short → Close your eyes, listen & imagine.
[1] Account details when I wrote this down:
user: greybox555
created: 27 days ago
karma: 2The dad was a retired neuroscientist who delayed cancer treatment against medical advice because he was certain he had been misdiagnosed based on his own research that he did with the help of A.I.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/13/well/ai-chatbots-cancer.h...
There's a comment on the article from Ben Riley:
> I am very grateful to Teddy Rosenbluth for sharing my father's story with the world, her kindness and curiousity proved to be restorative in ways I didn't anticipate.
> The two words that everyone used to describe my dad: "intelligent" and "kind," and he was indeed both of those things. The sad irony here is that it was his human intelligence, combined with these strange new tools that purport to be a form of 'artificial' intelligence, that led to his ill-advised decision to forego the treatment he needed for his CLL. A doctor has already commented on this story with the observation that AI "confidently asserts erroneous conclusions," and we simply have no idea how often this is happening or the magnitude of the harm that results.
> Not a day goes by that I don't feel the pang of my father's absence. He might still be here if not for AI. I try not to think about that, but sometimes I can't help myself.
This is the real root issue.
At 75 years old, he was stubborn. Is that reasonable ? Yes, perfectly. Could he have been right since the beginning ? Certainly. Did he deny evidence ? Yes.
Zero doubt that he was intelligent, everything points toward that direction, but that doesn't make a person less stubborn, because accepting the evidence, is also accepting that you were wrong if you initially postured yourself as adversarial instead of cooperative.
He would have read Wikipedia, scientific papers, etc, even without AI.
He did not want to be convinced. It works both ways:
https://www.foxnews.com/health/woman-says-chatgpt-saved-her-...
or
https://www.today.com/health/mom-chatgpt-diagnosis-pain-rcna...
Nonetheless, someone very smart, just didn't want to move from his position.
Your comment is akin to saying "Karen from facebook who is a human pushed essential oils and ivermectin as a cure to cancer. Now doctor Y is suggesting chemo. Both are humans, humans cannot be trusted!"
The clanker said I'd be fine, I just needed some rest and OTC meds.
The medical staff immediately turfed me to surgery because the same set of symptoms I told the clanker were enough to concern them that I needed emergency surgery.
Had I have listened to the clanker, I'd be dead because I did need emergency surgery. (Hell, I almost kicked the bucket because I waited for someone to wake up to give me a lift because.my insurance probably doesnt cover an ambulance ride.)
It's a 180 for me: While I believe doctors should explain diagnosis or treatment decisions when asked, I don't believe they should be taxed with explaining away alternatives. In my anecdotal 2nd- and 3rd-hand experience, doing that is taking at least a third of their time (on roughly 5% of the patients who think demanding answers will make things better) -- with zero improvement to diagnostic accuracy or treatment effectiveness. Doctors already consult with other doctors, and it makes no sense for them to have to consult with ignorant patients or treat their AI psychosis on top of their disease. It doesn't increase patient autonomy any more than adding a steering wheel for child car seats would help toddlers learn to drive.
I told my mechanic the film flam is broken but he said it was the rim ram. He fixed it and we all went in with our lives.
But doctors insist on this God like status so it’s a “nightmare” when patients try to help themselves.
Hurts who ? Yes the doctor is super stressed and has maybe 10 minutes for you that's the actual problem, it's not like before LLMs they were super glad to sit there and answer all your questions.
I wouldn't trust AI to make a diagnosis, but I would absolutely trust it to notice where procedure hasn't been correctly followed, where a treatment is counter-indicated because someone has missed a line on a health record, or where there's a clear potential alternate diagnosis which has been missed for spurious reasons. Also, unfortunately, where doctors aren't doing a decent job - often because they're overworked or underfunded.
The same issues that were present with search-engine self diagnosis are still present with LLMs. If you provide Google with an incomplete list of symptoms and can’t interpret the information you find correctly, you will likely get an incorrect diagnosis. The same is true for LLM output.
There's a reason I ask AI about absolutely everything medical and there's a reason I keep extra quantities of prescription medications around for emergencies. I've saved my own ass a lot more times than the doctors have, thanks to good doctors not being available.
I get it. But the current system is also super difficult for the patient: getting time to ask questions, get clear answers, get the best possible diagnosis taking into account your history, symptoms etc and all that in 5-10 minute checkup when your doctor sees 50 patients a day and has very little time for you; this doesn't scale well. Patients run to A.I for a reason.
But AI's problem is that its completely full of shit, sometimes, and the people most qualified to evaluate whether its full of shit are the doctors, not the patients, but just like OP's original article, patients are left feeling like their second opinion from AI might be more trustworthy than their doctors opinion.
It's now quite unusual that it's "Completely full of shit". If it contradicts something your doctor said I don't see why you should feel ashamed to bring it up. Sure it complicates the doctor's work, having ignorant obedient patients must be more comfortable for the doctor, but the end result could be more accurate diagnosis.
Examples of things normal people can verify
- procedural errors that Claude can capture like some blatantly high dosage (grams instead of milligrams)
- outdated treatment plan, maybe there’s a credible new treatment plan that’s been used for years but the doctors were not updated
- literally being injected homeopathic drugs (takes no smart person to flag this)
Let’s stop talking as if doctors have a divine right here. And let’s accept some agency.
A doctor might have never recommended upping X, because they would know what it does to your body. Or they might have suggested additional supplementation to avoid this.
The fact that LLMs are trained on all public knowledge is a huge red flag, because there are more wrong infos out there than right ones. Especially about health, diet, etc.
Studies have found that newer reasoning AIs are about as good at diagnosing illness from a written description of symptoms as doctors are.
Granted, it cannot actually examine a patient, so we're not replacing doctors anytime soon. But your view is obsolete.
It may have some utility after diagnosis, but this test doesn’t demonstrate utility for patients.
The more training data, the more questions it can answer with a reasonable degree of probability of accuracy.
Throwing away a potentially useful analysis just because it’s probabilistic seems a bit like throwing the baby out with the bath water.
This case is about handing a 3D imaging result to a text predictor and hoping for a valid second opinion.
The real question is where’s the cut-off point between accuracy and utility.
Remember: a second human opinion can also be wrong, and even a wrong opinion can still be useful (especially in medicine where differential diagnoses are a common practice - if the LLM gives you a useless opinion, you rule it out and move on).
I don’t think it’s particularly unreasonable to think that an LLM would have enough literature, or enough reasoning ability, to be able to generate a plausible interpretation of the data. A human can then review and say either “yeah that’s clearly not the case here” or “hmm, actually that could explain it, maybe we should order another test”.
We need studies that quantify error rates from each source type, then we need to account for the fact that the artificial type will keep improving.
A con artist, a fraud
[0]: IF.
Like any domain, when you have questions or need a solution, you make research first, then you ask a specialist.
If you explain well the symptoms and context you can have proper advices and then decide on the path next:
Case A) It looks benign and advices / information that you collected seem reasonable, then you go your way.
Case B) You need second opinion of a specialist because the subject is too complex, or there are medications that you need approval.
At home you have the time to assess the options, pros and cons of each approaches, the possible questions to ask and then challenge the doctor.
Shared decision-making is an actual evidence-based model of care, and patients who arrive understanding their condition and carrying specific questions tend to get better attention and better outcomes.
Some doctors get annoyed, because they have big ego and choose to be patronizing, but it is exactly their job to answer such questions.
With LLMs, it's quite good, you get nuanced and rather useful answers.
Before LLMs, no matter the topic you searched for, the answer was the same: "you have cancer / an [obviously deadly] rare disease"
• The doctors are not affordable
• They are too busy for you (< 15 minutes)
• You may need to wait months to get an appointment
• They are not good (country-side is an example, and sometimes even country-level)So, you have something deeply bothering you, your only appointment is in 4 months. It would be insane not to take the time to explore different solutions and not to come informed about the topic.
If you express your prompt properly and do not rely on imagery, you can absolutely have top-tier advices.
Pretty much the like most manager these days, so I understand the frustration of the GPs.