How to be Your Own Health Consultant

Dr. Lee Sheldon

You can be a successful health consultant for yourself.  Here’s how:

  1. A person may be a product of his or her experiences. However, one creates those experiences rather than falls victim to them. If you don’t like the experiences, create different ones that you do like. 
  2. What may seem good for others may not be good for you.
  3. You can be a better health consumer if you know what your doctor knows. The way to do that is to study the literature that applies to your own situation. A good place to start is the Cochrane library. Cochranelibrary.com
  4. Mapping out your daily health routines have a greater effect on your overall outcomes than a procedure or a pill. 
  5. The reason for second opinions is rooted in the word, “opinion.”   A doctor takes scientific findings along with the product of his or her experiences to make a recommendation to you.  Science alone is not an answer.  The cartoonist and commentator, Scott Adams, describes this well:
    1. Science is objective. 
    2. The scientist has biases. 
    3. The journalist who comments on what the scientist says has biases on those biases. 
    4. The owner/publisher has obligations to his or her advertisers that determine what is published and compounds those biases. 
    5. When you read the published document, you have biases. 
    6. Therefore what you see online or on TV is nothing close to objectivity. (The Cochrane library gets you closer to the truth.)  Therefore, understand that opinions are just that.
  6. Integrity may provide a better result in the absence of science.
  7. Diagnostics sometimes lead you on a path toward destruction. Please read the book, Overdiagnosed by Dr. Gilbert Welch.

Create your plan for success.

Lee N. Sheldon, DMD
Dental Implants-Periodontics
2223 Sarno Road  Melbourne, Florida 32935
www.DrLeeSheldon.com
(321) 259-9980