On the sweet 16th episode of Shit We Don’t Talk About, we are welcoming Kelly Wilson, of fitfizzstudio.com and host of the FitFizz podcast; Kelly is a personal trainer, nutrition coach, behavior change specialist, and autoimmune educator who has been in the health and fitness industry for 25 years. So she is more than qualified to talk about today’s pressing issue: medical gaslighting.
Simply put, medical gaslighting happens when a doctor dismisses a patient’s concerns, questions, or symptoms. It even occurs when they downplay what you’ve got going on. We’re pretty sure everyone has been affected by this–particularly people who are chronically ill.
Gaslighting, in general, might be better referred to as “crazymaking.” People engage in this behavior to get what they want and not address the problem at hand. Also, they are assholes.
Those are a few takeaways from this episode of the Shit We Don’t Talk About podcast. Here are three more.
- A part of the reason that medical gaslighting occurs is because we have all grown up to place such trust in doctors. We’re not supposed to question them. After all, they’ve gone to school for hundreds of years.
- Medical gaslighting can involve being diagnosed as idiopathic–which is a fancy way of saying we don’t know what caused this.
- It might help to look for a functional doctor instead of a doctor who is mainly focused on western medicine methodologies. Functional doctors typically do much deeper testing.
You want to go into your doctor’s office and be an empowered person. You want to be able to speak with some authority on what is going on with your body. And women seem to be dismissed more than men, maybe because a lot of the test ranges doctors use on patients have come from the 1950s and were primarily derived from men!
You need to listen to this episode of the Shit We Don’t Talk About podcast to understand that medical gaslighting is alive and well, especially in the wake of Covid. But make sure that you recognize the signs of it, so you can take action on it and get back your control. Ensure you are listened to. Call your doctors on what has been said in prior appointments, and don’t ever stop being an advocate for yourself.
To reach out to Kelly, visit her site: https://fitfizzstudio.com.
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Music Credits:
Inspiring Experience by Rafael Krux
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/5670-inspiring-experience-
Inspirational Infinity Of Space by WinnieTheMoog
Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/6593-inspirational-infinity-of-space
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
❤️ How did I missed this live! Listening to this on my walk and thank you for sharing.
8 years ago I went to see a cardiologist, because I noticed that my breathings were more heavier than normal when I run. I explained it to the doctor, Im older and I understand my running isn’t fast as it used to be, but I felt laboring when I run. I would like some test done on my heart. He told me I’m old and I shouldn’t be running anymore. I almost ask him if I was fat would he be telling me to stop eating.
I went home and wrote a letter of complaint to my healthcare provider and requested a new doctor. My company paid a large premium for my health insurance and the doctor isn’t provided me with the services we paid him. I requested for a more qualified doctor. Within 48 hours, I got a bunch of test schedules, MRI, C-scan, Oceanscan. Tests that I didn’t even know existed. As it turned out after all the tests, I have stage 2 of heart murmur and sleep apnea. When I went back to see him to go over the test results, he was friendlier and nicer. My old coach, also a doctor, advice me that we need to tell our doctor directly what we need to get done on our body. No one know our bodies better ourselves.
Sorry for the long message.
This Sh!t We Don’t Talk About rocks.
Odette – Thank you for this valuable feedback & relevant story – this is exactly what we are talking about! “No one knows our bodies better than ourselves”
[…] As mentioned in the podcast, here is the link to the Medical Gaslighting Episode […]
This website has got lots of extremely useful stuff on it! Thank you for helping me!