Unfortunately doctors have no magic fixes for back pain related to muscular strains or degenerative disease/arthritis, which is most back pain. Treatments are basically physical therapy and nsaid medications. Surgery for low back pain from degenerative disease/arthritis alone has poor evidence with most randomized trials suggesting no difference. Even opiates fail to show any superiority over nsaids (like ibuprofen or naproxen) for back pain. Not saying don’t see your doctor about bad persistent back pain, there’s always edge cases or bizarre causes that may need addressing. But unfortunately no magic bullet for the vast majority of typical low back pain.
Review on surgery indications in back pain ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10107811/#mja251…
Randomized trial of opioid and nsiads in back pain, hip pain, and knee pain from degenerative disease/arthritis pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29509867/
Also, I know it’s a meme, but the billing code doctors use for even the most complicated of visits going over an hour and involving multiple potentially life threatening conditions or treatments isn’t anywhere close to $3000. Let alone a visit for routine back pain which wouldn’t qualify for anything like the highest billing codes.
That’s true! But the mri costs are billed by the facility and hospital and generally have nothing to do with the doctor. Doubly the insurance and hospitals play games with each other, so the billed amounts end up being way more if not paying with insurance. I get bugged by memes and statements suggesting that doctors are the driver of the cost when it’s actually insurance companies, health care facilities, hospitals, medical equipment companies, and pharmaceuticals that are primarily driving all of this. Your doctor probably wanted to be sure there was nothing dangerous or abnormal. If it only showed arthritis there’s usually not much more that can be done besides pt and nsaids. Even the radiologist fee is a small part of the actual mri charge. Doctors just want to get people the tests and treatments that are indicated, but are the person people actually interact with so tend to take all the blame. I agree with you our health system is a mess.
People say the content of the meme in all seriousness all the time too is mainly why, thinking the doctor is responsible for that cost. I didn’t want it to become an attack on OP though, not my intent. And maybe my comments will encourage more wholesome memes about evil health care administrators and insurance company execs instead, the true enemy, haha.
You’re right it wasn’t a very scholarly article, that article was just the first thing that pops up on a Google search meant for people who weren’t familiar with Olestra, was mostly intended as a joke.
To take it more seriously though, a lot of those studies took place after a formulation change, so the later incarnations may have been better. It’s also possible that some of the reports came from people consuming large amounts of it at once. The studies I saw that didn’t show much difference all had a relatively small amount of chips ingested (see studies cited by article here www.acsh.org/news/1996/…/whats-the-story-olestra#…), for instance one of these studies was a double blind crossover with only 2 Oz of chips. I’m not aware of studies that would simulate downing a whole can of Pringles with Olestra at once. It was often included in snack foods that people don’t always moderate themselves on. Many of these studies, like the one you cite, were run by the manufacturer so important to be skeptical of the methods. They apparently started to fortify it with fat soluble vitamins to address concerns it could exacerbate deficiencies of those vitamins (besides basic science which should logically suggest this would happen, there’s evidence to back that up as well jn.nutrition.org/article/…/fulltext). The principle of every stool softener on the market now is that it’s something your body cannot absorb that will remain in the gi tract, eat enough Olestra or anything like it and it’ll have an impact on your stool consistency, just a matter of dosing. Animal studies also suggested it doesn’t cause weight loss and may even lead to increased weight. In the end it stopped being sold in the US altogether, because why go to all that trouble for something that probably doesn’t have any benefit.
It’s tough though, common symptoms are common. Many side effects you see on medications or things like Olestra may not even have anything to do with the product and were just coincidence or nocebo effect.
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