Suggestibility

Every once in awhile, I'm thinking about nothing in particular and something that may or may not be brilliant pops into my head.

I was wondering if, in this culture of a-pill-for-everything and pharmaceutical ads which run through symptoms that "you should seek medical attention" for that we are to some extent just triggering all the suggestibility of people. I think suggestibility is an under-appreciated concept in the world of medicine.

How many of you have gone through a bunch of questions with a patient to try to narrow down your diagnosis only to have the patient start to complain of something of which they weren't previously complaining?

Maybe they deny dizziness, but then the next time you enter the room, they insist they are dizzy. You ask about burning on urination, and they say no, but then after they pee the next time, all-of-a-sudden they have burning on urination despite having a stated chief complaint of headache.

Or, of course, there are the patients who just answer "yes" to everything you ask, which, to me, is less evidence of suggestibility than some sort of secondary gain issue.

Similarly, how many people watching Lyrica ads have subconsciously or consciously associated their aches and pains with "fibromyalgia"? How many people who hate their jobs and are feeling annoyed with the world have become "depressed"? How many have the anxious runs and have convinced themselves they have irritable bowel? A little heartburn every once in awhile? It's GERD! How many of these people have exaggerated symptoms or come up with additional symptoms to fit the "mold" of the disease they are convinced they have?

People in a state of emotional distress are more suggestible. Those with low self-esteem are suggestible. Those who are more passive/less-assertive are more suggestible too. Oddly, these people seem to be the people who have some of these soft diagnoses like chronic fatigue and irritable bowel.

Our culture has triggered the suggestibility of people into seeking medical care for things that they have unconsciously come up with on their own, that's for sure. Could this concept apply to entire disease states? Are there entire diseases that are nothing more than the manifestation of mass suggestibility?

One time, I was bored and one of my readers and I visited a fibromyalgia chat-room. My reader was chatting, and I was feeding her information to say to the group to test their suggestibility and see their reaction. It happened to be cold that day, and I told her to say "the changing temperatures have made my irritable bowel flare up again." I simply made that up. If it was hot, I would have said the heat made it flare up. Of course, the fibro-chatters chime in with "I know, sweetie" and "Yeah, me too."

With the ten or so people in the chat-room, at least one person agreed with my ever-increasing asinine correlations ("am I the only one who THIS happens to?") between things like Raynaud's Disease and left-shoulder pain and pollen content leading to full-blown fibro flare-ups. Suggestibility.