As many rare disease sufferers know, sometimes the key symptom that leads to a diagnosis may be mundane or bizarre. Whether you are healthy or chronically ill, daily life is full of other concerns to distract you from the seemingly harmless quirks of your body. Many of these strange ailments are completely benign or explained […]
Read MoreCategory: Medical Detective Posts
CrowdMed Blog Topic: Medical Detective Posts
Here are several CrowdMed Medical Detective Posts. CrowdMed has built up a global, interdisciplinary community of more than 15,000 “Medical Detectives” who volunteer to help patients who anonymously post their tough medical cases here. The members of this community are solving cases that had gone undiagnosed for an average of 8 years, and they’re doing it in just months here on CrowdMed. You might be interested to read their take on various medical issues and the state of healthcare today.
There was a time in history when nearly every medical condition recognized today was an unidentified mystery. Rabies victims in Europe inspired stories of the holy water-fearing undead and citizens of Salem suffering from Ergot poisoning were hanged for witchcraft, long before medicine had a name and a treatment for either malady. As medical research […]
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We all experience fatigue from time to time. But when is it actually considered a disease? Medical Detective Rachel Vassar explores the subject.
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What is Lupus, how does it get diagnosed, and what do we do once we’ve found out we have it? Deanna Brownlee answers all these questions and more.
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The longer you wait for a diagnosis, the more likely it is that a doctor may tell you that it’s “all in your head”. What should you do when that happens?
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Lyme disease can present with a wide range of symptoms, resulting in frequent misdiagnosis. The most common presentation includes fever, fatigue, headache, and a bull-eye rash at the location of infection, but as many as half of infected individuals never report a rash and present with other symptoms. And, you may be surprised to hear […]
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When searching for a cure for an uncommon disease, doctors and medical detectives are confronted with a difficult knowledge problem. The correct answer is out there, but it’s likely known only to a handful of people, dispersed among a lot of people who haven’t a clue, or worse, have the incorrect diagnosis. How can we […]
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Note: this will be the first in a three-part series about addressing the new world of knowledge about genetic disorders. This first post will be about assessing the chances that we may be at risk for a genetic disease. Future posts will address what we can do with this knowledge. We live in a relatively new era […]
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How the frustrating experience of dealing with an undiagnosed chronic condition led this writer to understanding the motivation behind the anti-vax movement.
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From Celiac disease sufferers to the rest of us, has the gluten-free diet craze delivered on its promises?
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