Health Out of the Haze

When I was a child I was given a lot of homespun advice passing as serious health information. Have you ever heard these in the winter? “Wear a hat and scarf or you will catch your death of pneumonia! Don’t get your feet wet! And be sure to stay out of a draft.” Another one I used to hear was that if you read too much in low light you would go blind. There are hundreds of these, and most people have one to share. How do you know what is true? Whether you hear it from a family member or friend, see it in mass media or a book, or read it on a web site, it is necessary to do some filtering before you adopt a health promotion practice.

I would like to suggest some rules to judge the merits of health claims. The following ideas are suitable for those wanting to be independent and self-activated. Some people want to do their own research, so that they can be intelligent consumers and engage their health care providers in a meaningful question and answer session. The suggestions are not necessarily in order of importance.

First, if adopting the recommended practice requires the purchase of an item or service from the source of the recommendation, you should be cautious. This doesn’t mean go no further, but just ask a lot of questions. Legitimate health and medical sources usually do not conduct themselves like Billy Mayes. You should notice the type is louder here.

An important question is whether you can try the health practice in small increments or is it all or none. For example, if you were interested in the new shingles vaccination, your options are to get it or not. Once you get the shot, you can’t put it back in the bottle. On the other hand, if someone is recommending a one-day-a-week fast, you can try it without making an irrevocable decision. For those practices from which you can’t return, be more cautious upfront.

Never do anything on the basis of a message on a billboard, poster or bumper sticker alone. Many times these brief messages will be correct, but such venues cannot provide enough for an informed choice. If one of those short messages seems appealing and persuasive, you should follow up with additional research from other sources.

For any health claim, you should examine the evidence. This is hard for most people because it requires a lot of specialized knowledge and technical expertise. Even professional journalists have trouble with this. They will most often refer and resort to the two most well known medical journals, the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, not because they are always correct or the best journals, but they are recognized as generally reliable. Journalists use them so they don’t have to get into the weeds of medical research writing; they can just trust the findings.

Sometimes a reasonable shortcut from evaluating the evidence is to evaluate the source of the evidence. Are you getting it from a well known national organization or a respected institution in your community? Even better, if you can corroborate health advice from several sources (e.g. local health department, a hospital, and your physician) you can feel more secure in believing and acting. If you see or hear or read something from a source about which you have doubts, take that advice to a source you believe to be trustworthy, and see if their information agrees. Always know who is sponsoring or hosting a web site where you find health claims.

Remember that physicians, dentists, pharmacists and other health professionals can be very good sources of health information. There are some drawbacks, however. First, you have limited access; they may not be available when you need information. Even during an office visit, time is limited, and will usually prohibit an extended discussion or explanation of important health questions you have. Second, they usually know more about disease and treatment, less about health promotion. Your doctor can diagnose lung cancer but may not be able to help you quit smoking. That is not her or his training.

Because health information is sometimes difficult to negotiate, and because there is such an abundance of sources, it is easy to feel hazed and overwhelmed by it all. Many people just give up trying to understand. I don’t know that there is really a solution. The information superhighway has some inevitable casualties. I would like to suggest a one stop shop for user friendly and reliable health information. This is a web site called Wellness Information Zone, and the URL is http://www.wellzone.org/termsofuse.aspx The site was built by Humana. While they are a commercial business, their bias toward any particular health promotion information is going to be very minimal.

Finally, remember that health information and health promotion recommendations sometimes will change. What we think is true today, based on available evidence, may be found to be incorrect next year. That is just the nature of scientific discovery. For example, there was a time when obstetricians would suggest the option of drinking moderate amounts of wine for women to reduce the stress and anxiety sometimes a part of pregnancy. Now we know that alcohol in pregnancy should be avoided.

It may be true that more than half of all the health information disseminated to the public is not correct. Let the reader beware.