A professional a day keeps your health away?

A year ago, a friend went to the clinic to talk about hyperglycemia – a pre-diabetic condition, considered uncommon a few decades ago.

My friend described their physical and emotional symptoms and ask for help to get better.

The one-off visit was described to me as the doctor concluding the session telling my friend the condition was normal at their age – mid-30s.

Doctors are humans. And like the rest of us, most are good, but those who are good can still give bad information.

Sadly I haven’t heard anything further about this story, which could mean things were left as they are.

If a patient feels unwell and a doctor tells them that it’s normal, they will now continue to feel unwell – because a voice of authority, a professional, established a new normal for them. And that normal will likely worsen now that suffering has been ignored and normalized.

We encounter people who claim to know what’s best for us. Some are professionals we rely on. Some might even have a piece of paper to prove it.

It is up to each of us to understand how to meet those claims rationally. Knowledge, or at least the ability to acquire it, has never been so widely available. Consider that until the late 1700s, most people couldn’t read. Such a privilege was left to nobles, statesmen and priests. Around the same time reading became more common, the industrial revolution began. How powerful then is knowledge?

Imagine the direction your life could go if just one day per week, you could challenge something you are told by asking the right questions, having spent a little time on research because the answer mattered.

The good news is, it’s up to you.

The bad news is, it’s up to you.