← Back to context

Comment by qlm

5 days ago

Crazy, considering rhabdo isn't that rare.

This was in India, where he describes the medical knowledge of providers as subpar at best.

  • Yeah but rhabdo is something literally any e.g. body builder, power lifter, etc could tell you about. Actually if somebody knows what hypertrophy is, they probably know what rhabdo is. It's a pretty normal and big concern in any sort of high intensity weight training.

    I can't think of many ways that otherwise healthy and fit younger people can physically nearly kill themselves doing normal activity, so it kind of stands out - let alone it being not all that rare either. Rhabdo has even gone viral in the news like when a while back a couple of Chinese girls nearly killed themselves doing a social media 'squat challenge.' They did 1000, got rhabdo, didn't know what was happening, ended up in the ICU with kidney damage.

    It also manifests in other ways too. For instance I had an elderly family member give himself rhabdo during a manic phase he was going through when he started going wild on construction and other physical tasks that were way beyond what his body was ready for.

    Basically it's not some super obscure thing you'd expect only a good doctor, let alone a specialist, to know about.

    • People commonly knowing about Rhabdo is a much newer thing. I never heard people talk regularly about it all before CrossFit become popular

      1 reply →

    • there's a very large variance in doctors' abilities in India. At the very top they are close to the best in the world, esp with an insanely high workload.

      but on an average, not great

      Also, a lot of gymgoers and physical trainers I know hadn't heard of rhabdo either (and this is a relatively wealthy part of a tier 1 city)

      things are changing for the better however

“What do you call a medical student who graduated at the bottom of their class?”

“Doctor.”

  • I studied biochem in undergrad and my classes were full of premed students.

    I loved the subject and nerded out about the course material - I spent my time designing my own experiments around gene cloning that took several semesters to run. They were sharing last year's tests with their frat buddies and laughing at us nerds.

    I've never looked at doctors the same way again after college. I looked up to them as a child, yet after seeing how the sausages were made, I started to doubt everything.

    I frequently ask doctors, who spend all of ten minutes with me while the nurses do all the work, about the molecular specifics of what they're talking about. They talk down to me as if they're explaining to a child, yet they're frequently quite wrong. I'm not trying to sound superior to them, but I'm shocked they seem to care so little about the subject. It doesn't give me much hope about what they know and their abilities or competency.

    I suspect surgeons and specialists are a different breed and aren't like this at all.

    And to be clear, this isn't everyone. But it does seem to be the majority I've interacted with throughout my life.

    When they act disgruntled at patient interaction, I detest that their profession tries to cap the number of med students per year. We should be letting in as many med students as we can take. We should let doctors from overseas immigrate and easily become practicing doctors here in the US. We should provide easy paths for nurses to become doctors.

    The premed students in my university were chiefly concerned about money and prestige. They drove BMWs gifted to them by their parents and laughed at what I drove and how hard I studied. I had to put up with their bullying for years. I know not everyone who studies to become a doctor is like that, but it permanently skewed my view of their profession.

    • >When we should let doctors from overseas immigrate and easily become practicing doctors here in the US.

      Lol, what does this has to do with anything regarding aptitude or curiosity!?

      9 replies →

  • Well, I guess it would be nice if the graduation cutoff were above the level of “knows what rhabdo is”

Everyone and their dog who is on statins knows what rhabdo is. Bonkers!

  • I've been on statins for years, and I don't remember anyone talking to me about rhabdo. To be fair the education I received about my medications was a firehose of information after a heart attack and major heart surgery, so perhaps it's possible I missed a few things.