Diseases You May Have But Doctors Miss

You see your doctor regularly to be sure you are in best shape. You see your doctor when you feel something bizarre about your body, such as unusually painful cramps. You submit to physical tests and other procedures to make sure you’re doing well, or know as soon as possible the cause of any physical discomfort. And then, you ensure that you take your medications, but all to no avail because you still not relieved of the unknown ailment. Even if you get second and third opinions, you seem to get no satisfying explanation from doctors and the treatments you’ve undergone didn’t work as expected. Could it be that those doctors missed your real ailment?

The truth is there are medical conditions that are not easy to diagnose because symptoms are similar to yet other diseases. These symptoms create haze to the real ailment, giving doctors in those uniforms scrubs hard time telling what it is, and patients suffering from supposedly easily treatable maladies. Let’s take a look at some of the diseases that even skilled and experienced doctors often overlook.

1. Sleep Apnea – Usually considered by people as normal, this medical condition, which involves disordered breathing during sleep or heavy snoring, is linked with stroke and heart attack. Sleep apnea symptoms include fatigue, daytime sleepiness, poor concentration, slow reflexes. The condition is most common among adults, but has recently been increasing among children. Sleep apnea is a treatable disease through lifestyle changes, mouthpieces, breathing devices, and surgery.

Read more about sleep apnea treatments:

sleep apnea facts in nhlbi.nih

sleep apnea info in webmd

sleep apnea information in mayoclinic

2. Migraines – Doctors easily diagnose migraine on patients having symptoms like severe pain on one side of the head, sensitivity to light, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting. With several types of migraines, symptoms also vary. Hemiplegic migraine, for instance, mimics symptoms of stroke. Significantly, upon seeing symptoms of more complicated and risky disease, doctors would often focus on the latter than look into other possible causes. Sometimes, the debilitating pain suffered by the patient is simply blamed on sinusitis or tension-type headache. Migraine is treatable through therapy and medications or medications only.

Read more about migraine treatments and medications:

migraine facts in medicinenet

migraine facts in mayoclinic

3. Glaucoma – This eye disease can occur to anyone, but symptoms are normally disregarded until they already bump unto something more frequently because they’ve lost peripheral vision. Such an ailment is hard to detect, though, causing many sufferers to lose their eyesight. Glaucoma is hard to detect through eye screenings and has no cure; comprehensive dilated eye exam is necessary in detecting the condition and treatments will only halt or slow its development. Medicines, eye drops, laser trabeculoplasty, and conventional surgery.

Read more about glaucoma facts, symptoms and treatments:

glaucoma info in ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

glaucoma facts in nei.nih.gov

4. Bipolar Disease – Tantrums in children and growing pain among teenagers come in the way of early detection of bipolar disease or manic depression. Instead of correctly giving the diagnosis, the doctor may see it as ADHD or ODD. Only until the patient becomes adult can the disorder be easily detected, with the help of physical examination, interview, and laboratory tests using fMRI or functional magnetic resonance imaging and PET or positron emission tomography. To help determine bipolar from other psychological problems among children, doctors will have to know if the behavioral disorder of the patient is episodic rather than chronic behaviors shown by ADHD and ODD sufferers. But the normal child behaviors bring challenge to determining bipolar disease, plus the fact that it could be difficult for them to describe their feelings. Bipolar disorder remains incurable, and is recurrent. Treatments, which include medication and psychotherapy, simply help them have better their symptoms.

Read more about bipolar facts:

bipolar facts in emedicinehealth

bipolar info in nimh.nih.gov

5. Childhood Asthma – Wheezing and shortness of breath are the common symptoms of childhood asthma, but children under the age of two wheeze due to other disorders such as RSV bronchitis or anatomically small airways. The latter normally goes away as a child grows and the airways develop. Other symptoms of asthma in children include frequent coughing spells, congestion, and pain or tightness in the chest. Some may also show restlessness, poor sleep, coughing after laughing, and inability to keep up with other children in physical activities. One treatment used for asthma is inhaled corticosteriods.

Read more about childhood asthma:

childhood asthma information in nhs.uk

childhood asthma info in nationalasthma.org.au

6. Lupus Erythematosus – When the patient exhibit tell-tale butterfly rash, doctors will easily know the person is suffering from lupus erythematosus, a long-term autoimmune disease that may affect brain, joints, kidneys, skin, and other organs. However, when the patient has roundish discoid lesions on the scalp or ear that is when the professionals in lab coats will have hard time. Physical exam and nervous system exam will have to be done to detect lupus, along with antibody tests, CBC, chest x-ray, kidney biopsy, and urinalysis. Lupus erythematosus is also an incurable disease with treatments that can only control symptoms. High dose of corticosteroids or cytotoxic drugs are used for treatment.

Read more about lupus erythematosus:

lupus erythematosus facts in ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

lupus erythematosu info in nlm.nih.gov

Pesticide on Food Warnings, Junk Science?

When the food pyramid was abolished and replaced with MyPlate, the public was left with a recommendation that half of everyone’s diet should be filled with fruits and vegetables. The move was pushed by the worldwide obesity epidemic and the drive to encourage Americans to live a healthy life. However, e-coli outbreaks as well as pesticide residues found in fruits and veggies are pestering the advocacy.

According to the US Department of Agriculture or USDA, traces of pesticides were found on most popular fruits and vegetables. The residue still lingers even if the produce is washed 10 seconds, and even after peeled. It only means that pesticides are present inside the known healthy foods. On the other hand, USDA revealed that overall pesticide residues found on foods tested are at levels below the tolerances set by EPA, with 99.7% of the federal government samples were within safety levels. Among the tested produce, 98% of conventional apples tested positive, putting them on top of USDA’s Dirty Dozen. Following apples is the celery, found positive on 57 different pesticides. Third on the list are strawberries, which tested positive on 13 different pesticides.

If the top 3 of the Dirty Dozen have sent you shivers already, you would most likely be more concerned to find more of your favorite fruits and vegetables to actually act as vectors of possible health problems and cause of unnecessary visits to professionals in uniforms scrubs and lab coats. Completing the Dirty Dozen are peaches, spinach, imported nectarines, imported grapes, sweet bell peppers, potatoes, domestic blueberries, lettuce, and kale or collard greens. But even if these produce are dubbed to have the highest pesticide residues, the public are still encouraged to eat fruits and vegetables, saying that doing so far outweighs risks of pesticide exposure.

Amidst the fear of pesticide contamination on conventionally-grown produce, people can find ways on how to reduce exposure. One way is to buy organic. Consumers can also go to farmer’s markets to avoid produce that have been modified or grown to resist normal rotting time, such as those that need long transport time. And of course, the public can grow their fruits, vegetables, and spices. For those who don’t have much option, they can go for those products listed to have the least amount of contamination found. Included in that group are the onions, sweet corn, pineapples, avocado, asparagus, sweet peas, mangoes, eggplant, domestic cantaloupe, kiwi, cabbage, watermelon, sweet potatoes, grapefruit, and mushrooms. Seasonal fruits and vegetables are also less likely soaked in dangerous chemicals.

“Not so fast,” said financialpost.com, saying Environmental Working Group, the group that made the announcement, is notorious in spreading junk science. Financial Post also claims the EWG, along with the media, spread junk science for personal benefits. It says EWG is scaremongering to get lucrative donations. In the opinion section of Financial Post, it almost seemed desperate at overturning claims by activists and scientists. For a financial institution, such an action is understandable. But personally, they all look funny.

The public is no longer ignorant about all the negative effects of overly commercializing produce, and their underlying harms. But they choose to ignore it. Who is ignorant about the health problems posed by cigarette smoking? Even 5-year-olds know that. But has smoking been eliminated? Quite the contrary. And even if people would want to avoid chemicals in their foods, they don’t have much choice. If they are going to grow their own corn, for instance, how sure are they that they’re corn is not genetically modified? They don’t even have crop options. And can they get any good harvest without using pesticide nowadays? Hardly.