Comment by pyuser583
6 hours ago
I feel very uncomfortable trying to talk my doctor into doing something they don't recommend. I know too many people who buy into fake medical stuff.
Why is this different? Why is pestering a doctor to give me a medicine they don't recommend a good idea?
Because doctors are human and fallible operating in suboptimal systems. Don't want to provide me with a low risk, potentially high reward, low cost intervention? I'll shop until I find a doctor who will, or source it myself. Suboptimal systems and practitioners of various quality require advocating for one's self. I had to twist Planned Parenthood's arm to get Gardasil before it was approved for older adults, even though I was paying cash out of pocket, but had no problem with a trusted PCP providing me Metformin, GLP-1 prescriptions, etc simply by arguing my case and meeting sufficient criteria it would not come back to bite them.
Doctors don't have the time or capacity to know their patients well enough to make personalized recommendations in most cases. If you show up with symptoms of X they can recommend Y and will probably ask you whether you have Z which can impact the treatment. But virtually no doctor is going to ring you up proactively and say "hey, I noticed you haven't had a HPV vaccine yet, and I think it might make sense for you because I know this and that about your risk profile".
Doctors are not all knowing, infallible oracles. They are human beings you can have a conversation with about your health. If you think something makes sense for you, you can run it past them. No one is suggesting randomly asking doctors to prescribe random shit.
You need to be your own advocate.
The doctor likely didn't recommend it because GP is 40 years old. Most people's sex lives is comparatively... boring at that age.
Your own doctor is as likely to be a quack/have quack-like beliefs as you are. Unironically this is true! Better learn to start reading Pubmed!
Doctors/medical associations don't agree with each other on much, even at the very highest levels. For example, the USA and EU have totally different recommendations related to digital rectal exams for aging men. One believes that finding cancer in old men is important, the other claims it's bad because most of those cancers are benign and sticking a finger up an old mans butt often causes its own complications.