Are doctors healthier than the rest of the population?

[GreenLight23]

I don’t mean particularly in terms of leading a healthy lifestyle. I am thinking more that they can diagnose themselves if they’ve got an ache or a twinge or an unusual symptom. They know if it’s serious or not and they know what treatment they need. For example, can they avoid strokes and heart attacks more than the general population?

Is there anyone here who is a doctor or has one in the family? What do you think?!

Er no..... stressful job, with the physical and mental health risks you would expect from that.
Put work ahead of "self care" of any sort - as they should, but there are consequences.
Higher suicide rate than the general population.
Don't want to "make a fuss".
A fair number will smoke/drink/use recreational drugs.
Funnily enough, unlike so many people who post on here, they're not obsessed with their health in any way - on the whole, an excellent attitude to have, but I suppose it does mean that sometimes things get missed.

A good number of doctors think this, because the jury is very much out as to whether screening has any value. It may not be a popular opinion, but there is a great deal to be said in its favour.

@Saschka I didn't mean in the financial sense 😁 I used to work in an Edwardian prison where I was literally jumping over cockroaches whilst trying to measure methadone. 80 patients in 95 minutes, most on controlled drugs.

Doctors on average have an older age at death than the general U.K. population.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/lim2.23

One dr I know doesn't believe in supplements and the importance of vitamins. They don't know that a healthy diet rich in vegetables provide the vitamins to help your immune system to work well.
They think fasting is extreme even though dh reversed his type 2 diabetes with it.

Access to lethal drugs would have been straightforward when I was a GP. Patients often brought unwanted medication and asked me to get rid of it, and it would have been easy to have kept it instead of advising them to take it back to the pharmacy for proper disposal.

I'm relatively healthy, but that's in spite of nearly 40 years as a doctor, not because of it, and certainly not because of the medical knowledge I have. Working shifts, going for long periods without sleep, eating erratically and on the hoof, not having time to exercise, constant stress, all take their toll and dysfunctional coping strategies like alcohol and disordered eating are common.

I once went to the toilet twice during a 12 hour shift. Everyone knew I went to the toilet ... It was a big deal. I don't know why but it was because I missed some calls during those 30seconds I spent on the loo.

I know a few GPs, all big drinkers, if anything I would say doctors tend to be burnt out

@ReTrainTheBrain my GP relative is the same, thinks vitamin supplements are a complete waste of money

The doctor in my family has terrible orthorexia and is becoming more and more extreme and limited in her diet, she looks pale and not healthy at all, we are all quite worried but she is immune to any suggestion that she might not be eating a healthy diet.

As do most affluent people

Do you know why. ?

Honestly, I think some people don't help themselves, or at least, haven't managed to admit yet that the world will not fall apart if they go for a wee/drink - though if your bleep goes off 5 times in that 5 minutes sometimes it feels that way! I'm pretty bossy about making sure my juniors get breaks, but I'm in a consultant-heavy specialty, and on the wards it's not always so well-supported. Sometimes there is an element of competitive martyrdom as well.

That said, there is definitely something in the mindset of wanting to be seen to be coping. I pushed through horrible pregnancy sickness when I really should have been off sick, if not actually an inpatient myself, because I didn't want to be seen as "weak." And while I'm pretty good at sorting out meal/toilet breaks for myself and others now, it wasn't always the case!

ssd · Today 20:36
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The dr i know thinks cancer screening tests are a waste of time.”

Idiots in every walk of life. Screening saved mine.

Yep, doctors seem to live as long as their income predicts.

Some forms of screening come with a risk of harm as well- eg setting off a sequence of unnecessary medical events with their own risks
if you’re interested look at the stuff Margaret McCartney has done on this

negronicake · Today 23:52
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Some forms of screening come with a risk of harm as well- eg setting off a sequence of unnecessary medical events with their own risks
if you’re interested look at the stuff Margaret McCartney has done on this”

Not interested. Huge breasts, no idea, mammogram, aggressive tumour. Surgery, problem solved. Thanks all the same.

I’m a doctor and apart from not getting enough sleep, I’m pretty healthy. I don’t drink or smoke, I eat plenty of fruit/veg, and I exercise regularly. I’m always slightly baffled at doctors who can see patients suffering every day from smoking related illness, for example, and yet still smoke. I’m reminded every day of my own mortality, and every surgery gives me “there but for the grace of God” moments.

Like many doctors I have no time for moaning from family members though. My kids joke that they always know when they might have a genuinely serious symptom, because I’m actually sympathetic with them, rather than telling them to take a paracetamol and stop grumbling!

I’ve indirectly saved my Mum’s life twice, when she had symptoms that she’d planned to ignore, and I made her go to A&E.

I can think of two female doctors, one in emergency medicine and one psychiatrist, who are both very thin and seem addicted to exercise. One's a runner and the other, who cycles, is skeletal in appearance. I've never seen anyone's sacrum and pelvic bones sticking out like hers, except in photos taken in concentration camps. If she's not cycling 100+ miles a day at weekends she's doing Peloton spinning groups in the early hours of the morning. How she has the strength to keep cycling amazes me. Her belly is concave: I don't know where her energy comes from. Both seem to exist mainly on Huel and other meal replacements. Neither of them drink much alcohol, but both use a lot of drugs — prescription drugs and recreational ones.

At our local hospital pharmacist was sacked and sent to prison for 'helping herself' to whatever she fancied . All computerised and robotic pharmacy as well .

I had a colleague who wouldn't go near a doctor because his father had been a doctor and ruined his health by giving him lots of glucose to treat hypoglycemia

My parents doctor told them covid jabs are pointless and my dentist smokes!

Not in my experience- they tend to dismiss their own health needs. Like how builders never do anything to their own houses.

Really? Doctors have been struck off for this sort of nonsense .

I don't understand what exactly is the point of dieticians when hospital food is notoriously awful/unhealthy/miserable and yet they work there. Are they just improving the health of the select few that pass the pearl barley gates and to hell with the rest of the patients? They seem to be getting away with having a clearly narrow skill set.